Caucasian Imamate - Background

Background

Previously in the Northeast Caucasus, there had, since recordable history, been a large array of states.

Caucasian Albania had existed in Southern Dagestan, but eventually the majority converted to Islam by traveling Arabs- after the Arabs left, they left the new Muslim states of Lezghia (centered in the Islamic learning center of Derbent), Lakia (centered in another, rival city of Islamic learning, Kumukh) and their less important neighbors. In these areas (Southern and Southeast Dagestan), where interethnic conflict was often present, Islam served a unifying role, and it was often the clerical establishment which mediated disputes. To this day, this is the most devotedly Islamic region of the Caucasus, with this as one of the major reasons (another, less popularized reason, is its rampant poverty and lack of established secular nationalism).

Islam was far less well-ingrained, but still highly important, in Central and Western Dagestan. These areas had always lied far outside the influence of Caucasian Albania and similarly fiercely fought off (as the neighboring Chechens, or Vainakh at that time, did) the Arab invaders, with assistance from the Khazars. Here lay Massaghetia, the Dargins and their neighbors, Didoya (probably a state of the modern, now marginal Dido peoples), and Sarir. The Georgian chronicles noted the existence of a Dzurdzuketia (Dzurdzuks, the Georgian name for the Vainakhs, the ancestors of Chechens and Ingush), which appears to have been absorbed into Alania at times, constituting an important part of the latter. Sarir was the strongest. Sarir at times adopted Christianity as the nominal, but not in reality, official religion. It was reduced at various times to a puppet state of Alania, Khazaria, or Sarmatia. In this area, kingdoms arose and fell or were subjugated frequently, and the Dido were reduced to their current state.

In Chechnya, Islam was considerably less ingrained than in the Imamate's other claims. Islam only began to make inroads in the 16th century in Chechnya, and even then was not highly important, with the indigenous Vainakh religion still holding strong. It was only at the point of the threat of Russian conquest that people began to turn en masse, to Islam as a way to mobilize a coordinated resistance to Russian encroachment. Islam was spread to the Chechens this way mainly through the work of Sheikh Mansur. Nonetheless, as Shamil and his predecessors discovered, the actual commitment of the Chechens to Islam was disappointingly small. Paganism remained in practice until the early 19th century, and Chechen Islam today is often described as lax (often epitomized by the popularity of tobacco and alcohol) and is indeed, highly syncretic with Chechens building mosques near streams, and referring to God as Deila, the old head of the Vainakh pantheon. For these reasons, the Chechens became "unreliable" and there was a mutual dislike between them and Avar Imams.

However, although Islam was indeed extremely important in parts of the Caucasus, and was also a unifying force for resistance to Russia, political Islam was challenged by many different groups. Islam in Central and Northern Dagestan and Chechnya was overwhelmingly Naqshbandi at this time. However, Naqshbandiism, which was highly mystical in nature, had internal divisions over whether it should be political or whether, indeed, political Sufism tainted the religion's purity. The drive to establish sharia law in particular was opposed on many fronts. First of all, the indigenous Caucasian elites of states run by Avars, Kumyks, Lezgins, Laks and others (particularly the widow ruler Pakhu Bike, Queen of the Khanate of Avaria) opposed it as it seemed to take legitimacy away from their own positions. Sharia also clashed with adat, the indigenous law system that many, especially peoples such as the Chechens, viewed as superior to sharia. For these reasons, and other more subtle ones, in most areas the Imamate claimed as its domain, it was, in fact, simply viewed as the lesser evil to Russia.