Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas
Im Auftrag des Osteuropa-Instituts Regensburg
herausgegeben von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz
Ausgabe: 59 (2011) H.4
Verfasst von: Moshe Gammer
Clemens P. Sidorko Dschihad im Kaukasus. Antikolonialer Widerstand der Dagestaner und Tschetschenen gegen des Zarenreich (18. Jahrhundert bis 1859). Wiesbaden: Reichert 2007. XXXII, 483 S., 9 Abb., 6 Ktn. = Kaukasienstudien – Caucasien Studies, 10. ISBN 978-3-89500-571-8.
The three decade long Islamic resistance to the conquest of Chechnya and Daghestan by Imperial Russia (1829–1859), more then both its forerunners and successors, enjoyed prominence in Russian and Soviet historiography. This prominence, in itself the result of the several U-turns in the movement’s description in the Soviet Union, arouse a great interest to it in the West, too. Thus, the removal that followed Gorbachev’s perestroika and the dissolution of the USSR, of restrictions on the study and writing of history in general, and of the barriers to the study of local sources in particular, resulted in a great number of publications on this topic in both Russia and the West.
This massive book (the likes of which have, unfortunately, become by now so rare in English) is among the first in the West to make use of the abundant and steadily growing number of accessible local manuscripts. These additional sources enable the author to fill in lacunae – sometimes rather large ones – in our knowledge of the movement as well as to reinterpret it. More important, the book looks at the topic through a wide angle camera. That is, Sidorko puts the movement within a broad context temporally and geographically. Inter alia, the conclusion connects the Caucasus to the wider world of Islam through the application of a model of Islamic resistance movements suggested by Nikki Keddie.
The above characteristics are displayed throughout the book, beginning with the first four, introductory chapters. These deal with the geographical, geopolitical, ethnic and social background (chapter 1), the tripartite Great Power struggle for the Caucasus in the 16th – 18th centuries (chapter 2), types of traditional resistance to foreign powers, including two antecedents of this movement (chapter 3) and the Russian expansion and colonial policy in the 1800s – 1820s and the spread of the Khalidiyya offshoot of the Naqshbandi Sufi brotherhood (chapter 4). Chapter 3 offers one of many innovations to the expert reader when in addition to the obvious movement of Imam Mansur (1784–1791) it discusses the one led by Hajji Da’ud (1719–1728) against the Safawids and later Peter I (“the Great”) of Russia.
The next three chapters, dealing each with one of the Imams (leaders) of the movement – Ghazi Muhammad (1829–1832; chapter 5), Hamza Bek (1832–1834; chapter 6) and Shamil (1834–1859; chapter 7) – are followed by a description ‘from above’ of the state established by Shamil – the Imamate (chapter 8). The final chapter (11) describes the ultimate Russian conquest and the fall of the Imamate. These chapters add some details and refine some interpretations. They even pose some questions unasked so far. For example, the Imamate’s social policy and the original vis-à-vis borrowed elements in its structure (both in chapter 8). Still, the general picture that emerges does not change drastically in comparison to that portrayed by previous studies. The two chapters in between (9 and 10), on the other hand, do exactly that: they use new sources, ask novel questions and offer innovative interpretations.
Chapter 9 – “the View from Below: the Imamate as an Environment” – deals with a complex of questions hardly asked before, mainly (but not exclusively) economical: how did the war influence economy? How did people live in, and with war? But also what were the new structures of the Imamate and what did it inherit from previous polities? And how did war affect women?
Chapter 10 – “Who Were the Murids” – eliminates quite a large ‘white stain’ from our map of this subject. It discusses in detail the people who participated in, and opposed the movement; its leaders; the elites, old and new; the networks; the competing branches of the Khalidiyya in Daghestan; and most important – the relationship of this brotherhood with the movement and the Imamate. In recent years revisionist voices have been raised with regard to the role of Sufi brotherhoods in resistance movements in the Caucasus and elsewhere. It has been claimed that both Soviet and Western scholars grossly exaggerated this role. Following the evidence, Sidorko does not subscribe to this “too narrow” view: “it is true that the tariqa was neither the initiator nor the exclusive carrier of jihad,” still “the struggle could have hardly been possible, without the agreement of its most important representatives or against their will” (p. 432). And while “strict separation between tariqa and jihad” (p. 400) was insisted upon, “one may say that the Naqshbandiyya enjoyed a firm place in Shamil’s state and was omnipresent in everyday life” (p. 403).
On another matter, Sidorko omits the pitfall of viewing the struggle one-dimensionally, as most Soviet and Western – both traditionalist and revisionist – historians do. They deal with its less important, anti-colonial facet, omitting (or ignoring) its crucial reformist/revivalist essence. Here Sidorko rightly emphasizes that “the original aim of the Daghestani Imams and their jihad was not the struggle against the Russian colonizers, but rather the introduction of a social order oriented on Islamic law” (p. 328).
Assessing the movement and Shamil in particular, Sidorko concludes that the Imamate’s greatest achievement was “certainly the integration of the Chechens into the common struggle”, which helped to secure the Imam’s hold over “the more vulnerable Daghestan” (p. 434). This is, indeed, an important point too often lost because it seems so obvious. It also leads one to associate and ponder whether the Imamate’s relationship with the Circassians is not underestimated in both Western and Russian scholarship, too. Indeed, a recent study of Shamil’s delegates to the Northwestern Caucasus suggests that this entire question might need a serious reconsideration.
This point, however, has nothing to do with the book under review. “Dschihad im Kaukasus” is a most significant book. It is a major piece of scholarship, an eminent contribution to our knowledge and a must for everyone interested not only in this specific movement or in the history of the Caucasus and Russia. It is no less important to anyone interested in a large array of topics and disciplines, beginning with Islamic revivalism and anti-colonial movements up to Islam’s (and non-Western civilizations’ in general) response to the challenge of modernity and the onslaught of the modern West. One can only hope that the book will be translated into English, for the benefit of those who do not read German.
Zitierweise: Moshe Gammer über: Clemens P. Sidorko Dschihad im Kaukasus. Antikolonialer Widerstand der Dagestaner und Tschetschenen gegen des Zarenreich (18. Jahrhundert bis 1859). Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag Wiesbaden 2007. XXXII. = Kaukasienstudien – Caucasien Studies, 10. ISBN 978-3-89500-571-8, http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/JGO/Rez/Gammer_Sidorko_Dschihad_im_Kaukasus.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)
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