| Jihad in the Caucasus -- Part Seven |
Shamil leads the attack on the fort of Akhdi, c. 1847 CE.
For another ten years, Shamyl's flags flew over Chechenya and Daghestan, proclaiming what Caucasians still refer to as the Time of Shari'ah. The Tsar, fuming in his vast palace in St Petersburg, received message after courteous message from his generals praising their own victories; yet still Shamyl ruled. Vorontsov, Neidhardt and others were recalled, and died in gilded obscurity. But in 1851, command was given to a younger man, General Beriatinsky, the Muscovy Devil who was to change the course of the war for ever.
The new Russian commander knew his enemy, and adapted his techniques accordingly. He knew that the Chechens disliked going into battle unless they had performed their wudu-ablutions, so he ensured that great dams were built to cut off the water supply to his opponents. He adopted a policy of bribing villages into accepting Russian authority, and delayed the enserfment process indefinitely. He ended the former policy of informally butchering women and children during the capture of aouls. But his most significant innovation was his long, slow campaign against the forests. Like the Americans in Vietnam and the French in Algeria, he realised that his enemy could only be defeated on open ground. He thus deputed a hundred thousand men to cut down the great beech trees of the region. Some were so vast that axes were inadequate, and explosives had to be used instead. But slowly, the forests of Chechenya and Daghestan disappeared; while Shamyl, watching from the heights, could do nothing to bring them back.
In 1858, the last great battle erupted. The Ingush people, driven from their aouls by the Russians into camps around the garrison town of Nazran, revolted, and called on Shamyl for aid. He rode down from the mountains with his Mujahideen, but sustained a crippling defeat under the cannon of a relief column sent to support the beleaguered garrison. When he returned to the mountains, he found the support of his people beginning to melt away. Whole aouls went over to the Russians rather than submit to siege and inevitable destruction. Even some of his most faithful lieutenants deserted him, and guided Russian troops to attack his few remaining redoubts.
Russian's Siege of the Aoul Ghounib
In June 1859, Shamyl retreated to the most inaccessible aoul of all: Gounib. Here, with three hundred devoted Murids, he determined to make a last stand. The Russians were driven back time and again; but finally, after praying at length, and moved by Beriatinsky's threat to slaughter his entire family if he was not captured alive, he agreed to lay down his arms.
Thus ended the Time of Shari'ah in the Caucasus. The Imam was transported north to meet the Tsar, and then banished to a small town near Moscow. Here he dwelt, with a diminishing band of family and relations, until 1869, when the Tsar allowed him to leave and live in retirement in the Holy Cities. His last voyage, through Turkey and the Middle East, was tumultuous, as vast crowds turned out to cheer the Imam whose name had become a legend throughout the lands of Islam.
His son Ghazi Muhammad, released from Russian captivity in 1871, traveled to meet him at Makka. He arrived, however, when the Imam was away on a visit to Madina. As he was walking around the Holy Kaba, a tattered, green-turbaned man came up and suddenly cried, "O believers, pray now for the great soul of the Imam Shamyl!"
On that day, Shamyl, murmuring "Allah! Allah!" had passed on. He was buried, amid great throngs and much emotion, in the Baqi Cemetery. But his name lives still; and even today, in the homes of his descendents in Istanbul and Madina, in flats whose walls are still adorned with the faded banners of black, mothers sing to their children words which will be remembered for as long as Muslims live in the Caucasus:
O mountains of Gounib,
O soldiers of Shamyl,
Shamyl's citadel was full of warriors,
Yet it has fallen, fallen forever ..
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