Imam Shamil

Still, little progress was made in the north, where a Muslim revival move­ment led to an “Imamate,” or religious state, in Dagestan, governed by a Sufi order, aiming to end tribal conflicts, blood feuds, and other impediments to the resistance.

Although his forces were outnumbered and outgunned, Shamil's dar­ing tactics, personal bravery, dramatic escapes, and great charisma brought him many successes during almost three decades of struggle against the Russians. Being an ethnic Avar of Dagestan (Turkish for “Land of the Mountains”), and bearing one of the Arabic names of Allah, Shamil, mean­ing “universal” or “all-embracing,” he was able to temporarily unite the mountain tribes, including even the ferocious Chechens, notorious for their blood feuds. But he was opposed by Muslim potentates of the eastern coast of the Black Sea, with more easy-going interpretations of Islam; as well, the Circassians of the north-west, most of them Muslim only in name, con­sidered imam rule inappropriate for their more “feudal” social structure, which made allowances for different social and economic strata. But Sham­il, like his predecessors, enjoyed considerable success in the high mountains and forests, where urban civilization had not yet extended its reach.

During the 1840s, Shamil performed his most spectacular feats, which became legendary in Caucasian, Russian, and even contemporary European history.

While [de Balmen] was on active service in the army, he was named deputy commander of the fifth corps of General O.M. Liders. During the Dargin expedition, when after the destruction of Shamil's resi­dence, the army retreated to its old positions, Liders' corps, which followed the advance guard and was cut off from the main column, fell into a trap. The gorge was closed off. To re-establish contact with the High Command and with the goal of scouting out the situation that was developing, General O.M. Liders ordered his adjutant de Balmen out, and he was killed in a clash with the mountaineers in the district of the Shuan Heights.¹⁸

During the Crimean War (1853-56), Shamil remained active, even raiding Christian Georgia. During the conflict the French and British gov­ernments and most especially the Polish exiles and refugees in Ottoman Turkey tried to contact and support him, but never reached him. War's end brought the full force of Russia's enormous armies down on him, and they eventually captured him. By that time, he was already a legend across Rus­sia and all of Europe. The Russians treated him honourably; he was received by Tsar Alexander II, and he was allowed, with his wives and suite, to live in Kaluga, a small town near Moscow.¹⁹

After several years in Kaluga, Shamil, old and unwell, asked to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. He gave his parole d’honneur to no longer oppose the tsar, became a Russian subject, and received the go-ahead. To prepare for his trip south he was given permission to move to the milder climate of Kyiv, where he stayed for two years.²⁰ Legend has it that inquisitive crowds gathered around his Kyiv home, and admiring radical students of the uni­versity and others (raznochintsi) threw notebooks with hand-written copies of “Kavkaz” at his carriage as it passed through the streets.²¹

From Kyiv, he went to Odessa and then on to Istanbul, where the court painter Stanislaw Chlebowski, of Polish background from Podolia in right­bank (eastern) Ukraine, painted a famous portrait of him.²² Shamil made it to Mecca, and died in Medina in 1871.