Myths and myticism: A longitudinal perspective on Islam and conflict in the North Caucaus

Middle Eastern Studies

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 31-54

  Reynolds, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL CONFLICT; ISLAMISM;

CAUCASUS; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; WORLD;

EID: 13644283501     PISSN: 00263206     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0026320042000322707     Document Type: Review

References (121)

1. Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (New York: Modern Library, 2003);
2. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), especially his thesis about 'Islam's bloody borders'.
3. see John L. Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002),
4. John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
5. Khassan Baiev with Ruth and Nicholas Daniloff, The Oath: A Surgeon under Fire (New York: Walker, 2003);
6. Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (New York: New York University Press, 1998);
7. Thomas Goltz, Chechnya Diary (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003);
8. Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
9. see, in addition to Baiev's extraordinary narrative, Andrew Meier, The Black Earth (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003);
10. Anne Nivat, Chienne de Guerre (New York: Public Affairs, 2001);
11. Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). These accounts of the second war succeed in relating the complex and horrendously destructive nature of the current conflict in Chechnya. Analyses are lacking. An exception is Valerii Tishkov's extraordinarily rich study, Obshchestvo v vooruzhennont konflikte: Etnografiia chechenskoi voiny (Moscow: Nauka, 2001).
12. Alexandre Bennigsen, 'Muslim Guerrilla Warfare in the Caucasus (1918-1928)', Central Asian Survey 2, No.1 (July 1983): pp.45-56;
13. Alexandre Bennigsen and Enders Wimbush, Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union (London: C. Hurst and Company, 1985);
14. Leslie Blanch, The Sabres of Paradise (New York: Viking Press, 1960);
15. Marie Broxup, 'The Last Ghazawat: The 1920-1921 Uprising', in Marie Broxup (ed.), The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance towards the Muslim World, (London: Hurst, 1992), pp.112-45;
16. Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan (London: Frank Cass, 1994);
17. N.A. Smirnov, Miuridizm na Kavkaze (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo AN SSSR, 1963);
18. Paul Murphy, The Wolves of Islam: Russia and the Faces of Chechen Terror (New York: Brassey's, 2004);
19. Sebastian Smith, Allah's Mountains: Politics and War in Russia's Caucasus (New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998);
20. M.I. Qandour, Miuridizm: Istoriia Kavkazskikh voin, 1819-1859 (Nal'chik: El-Fa, 1996);
21. Anna Zelkina, In Quest for God and Freedom: The Sufi Response to the Russian Advance in the North Caucasus (London: Hurst and Company, 2000).
22. M.M. Bliev and V.V. Degoev, Kavkazskaia voina (Moscow: Roset, 1994).
23. Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
24. Bernard Lewis, 'The Revolt of Islam' in Bernard Lewis, The Middle East and the West (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp.95-114.
25. For the sake of reader accessibility, Arabic words in the text are transliterated without diacritics.
26. Hamid Algar, 'A Brief History of the Naqshbandi Order', in Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic, and Thierry Zarcone, Naqshbandis: Historical Developments and Present Situation of a Muslim Mystical Order (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1985), pp.34-6.
27. Algar's 'Political Aspects of Naqshbandi History', pp.123-52.
28. Bliev and Degoev, Kavkazskaia voina, pp.186-7;
29. Gammer, Muslim Resistance, pp.39-40;
30. Albert Hourani, 'Sufism and Modem Islam: Maulana Khalid and the Naqshbandi Order', in Hourani, The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (London: Macmillan, 1981), pp.75-90;
31. Zelkina, In Quest for God and Freedom, pp.75-99.
32. The reader should be aware that the use of the term 'Dagestan' here is anachronistic. Composed of the Turkic word for mountain, Dagh, and the Persian word for country or land, stan, the word emerged in the fifteenth century to refer to the area occupied by the Republic of Dagestan.
33. D.M. Dunlop, 'Bab al-Abwab', Encyclopedia of Islam, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1954) Vol.1, p.835.
34. Şeraffedin Erel, Daǧistan ve Daǧistanlilar (Istanbul: Istanbul Matbaasi, 1961), pp.58-9.
35. Erel, Daǧistan, pp.60-61.
36. Erel, Daǧistan, pp.42, n., 103, 61.
37. D.M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp.41-88.
38. Erel, Daǧistan, p.71.
39. Dunlop, History of the Jewish Khazars, pp.210-12.
40. V.F. Minorskii, Istoriia Shirvana i Derbenda X-XI vekov (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo vostochnoi literatury, 1963),
41. Mirza A. Kazem-Beg, Derbend-Nâmeh (Saint Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1851).
42. Erel, Daǧistan, p.83.
43. Chantal Lermercier-Quelquejay, 'Cooptation of the Elites of Kabarda and Daghestan in the Sixteenth Century', in North Caucasus Barrier, p.26.
44. John F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (London: Longmans, Green, 1908), pp.xxi-xxii.
45. Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Kirim ve Kafkas Tarihçesi (Kostantiniye: Matbaa-yi Ebüzziya, 1305 [1897]), p.54.
46. See also Ismail Berkok, Tarihte Kafkasya (Istanbul: n.p., 1958), pp.13-16.
47. ceSamil Mansur, Çeçenler (Ankara: Sam Yayinlari, 1993), p.43.
48. see Ali Arslan, 'Rusya'nin Kirim ve Gürcistan'i Ilhakkindan Sonra Osmanli Devleti'nin Çerkes Kabileleri ile Münasebetleri (1784-1829)', Kafkas Araştirmalari, Vol.1 (1988);
49. Mirza Bala, 'Çerkesler', Islam Ansiklopedisi, p.383;
50. Mustafa Budak, '1853-1856 Kirim Harbi Başlarinda Doǧu Anadolu-Kafkas Cephesi ve Şeyh Şamil', Kafkas Araştirmalari, Vol.1 (1988), p.53.
51. Bennigsen and Wimbush, Mystics and Commissars, 8, p.32.
52. Algar, 'Brief History of the Naqshbandi Order', p.35.
53. See Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, The Naqshbandi Sufi Way: History and Guidebook of the Saints of the Golden Chain (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1995).
54. Gammer, Muslim Resistance, p.34.
55. see Ian Chesnov, 'Byt' Chechentsem: lichnost i etnicheskie identifikatsii naroda', in D. Furman (ed.), Chechnia i Rossiia: Obshchestva i gosudarstva, (Moscow: Polinform-Talburi, 1999), pp.69-71, 95-9.
56. See also Anna Zelkina, 'Islam and Society in Chechnia: From the Late Eighteenth to the First Half of the Nineteenth Century', Journal of Islamic Studies, 7, No.2 (1996), pp.240-2.
57. Saidan Mohmadan Ibrahim, 'Meyx-Qiel' (translated from the Chechen to Turkish by Tarik Cemal Kutlu), Kafkasya yazilari 8 (2000), pp.32-4.
58. Gammer, Muslim Resistance, p.35.
59. Algar, 'Brief History of the Naqshbandi Order', pp.3-44.
60. see Yohanan Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi: An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000).
61. Algar, 'Brief History of the Naqshbandi Order', pp.30-1.
62. Lewis, 'Revolt of Islam', p.100.
63. see Zelkina, In Quest for God and Freedom, pp.164-8.
64. see Alexander Knysh, 'Sufism as an Explanatory Paradigm: The Issue of the Motivations of Sufi Movements in Russian and Western Historiography', in Die Welt des Islams, 42, No.2 (2002), pp.139-73.
65. Zelkina, 'Islam and Society in Chechnia', pp.243-6.
66. see V.O. Bobrovnikov, Musul'mane Severnogo Kavkaza: obychai, pravo, nasilie (Moscow: Vostochnaia literature, 2002), pp.110-41.
67. see Gammer, Muslim Resistance, pp.225-47.
68. Cafer Barlas, Dünü ve Bugünü ile Kafkasya Özgürlük Mücadelesi (Istanbul: Insan Yayinlari, 1999), p.199.
69. Zelkina, In Quest for God and Freedom, pp.209-12.
70. Gammer, Muslim Resistance, pp.244-5.
71. 'Uchenie 'zikr' i ego posledovateli v Chechne i Argunskom okruge', in Sbornik svedenii kavkazskikh gortsakh, Vol.2 (Tiflis, 1869), p.4.
72. Gammer, Muslim Resistance, p.235.
73. see V. Kh. Akaev, Sheikh Kunta Khadzhi (Groznyi: NIIGN Chechenskoi respubliki, 1994).
74. Paul Henze, 'Circassian Resistance to Russia', in Broxup, North Caucasus Barrier, pp.98-9.
75. K.M. Khanbaev, 'Miuridizm v Dagestane v XIX - nachale XX vv', Islam v Dagestane (Makhachkala: Dagestanskii Ordena Druzhbyi Narodov Gosudarstvennyi Univesitet, 1994), p.35.
76. see Michael A. Reynolds, 'The Ottoman-Russian Struggle for Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, 1908-1918: Identity, Ideology, and the Geopolitics of World Order', Ph.D. dissertation (Princeton University, 2003), pp.515-97.
77. See, for example, 'Otkrytie logo s'ezda gorskikh narodov Kavkaza', 1.5.1917, in M.D. Butaev (ed.), Soiuz ob'edinennykh gortsev Severnogo Kavkaza i Dagestana (1917-1918 gg.), Gorskaia Respublika (1918-1920 gg. (Makhachkala: Institut istorii, arkheologii i etnografii DNTs RAN, 1994), p.26.
78. Robert Seely, Russo-Chechen Conflict 1800-2000: A Deadly Embrace (London: Frank Cass, 2001), p.20.
79. Firuz Kazemzadeh's The Struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917-1921 (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951).
80. see Ismail Berkok, 'Büyük Harpte Şimalî Kafkasyadaki Faaliyetlerimiz ve 15. Firkanin Harekâti ve Muharabeleri', Askeri Mecmua, No.35 (Eylül, 1934);
81. Nâsir Yüceer, Birinci Dünya Savaşi'nda Osmanli Ordusu'nun Azerbaycan ve Daǧistan Harekâti (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basim Evi, 1996).
82. 'Pis'mo diplomaticheskogo predstavitelia Gorskogo pravitel'stva G. Bammatova predsedateliu pravitel'stva A. Chermoevu o politike Germanii i Turtsii v otnoshenii Kavkaza i Rossii', 31.8.1918, in Soiuz ob'edinnennykh gortsev, p.152.
83. Berkok, 'Büyük Harpte', p.73.
84. Berkok, 'Büyük Harpte', p.31.
85. Alexandre Bennigsen, 'Muslim Guerrilla Warfare in the Caucasus (1918-1928)', Central Asian Survey 2, No.1 (July 1983), pp.46, 48.
86. Marie Broxup, 'The Last Ghazavat: The 1920-1921 Uprising', in Broxup, North Caucasus Barrier, pp.113-45.
87. see Bobrovnikov, Musul'mane, pp.79-97.
88. 'Poslanie Muftiia N. Gotsinskogo k mullam i prikhozhanam Severo-Kavkazskogo Muftiata', 4.11.1917, Soiuz ob'edinennykh gortsev p.76.
89. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv, fond 39247, opis 1, delo 1, list'180, 'Kratkaia Ob'iasnitelnaia Zapiska', 25.4.1921.
90. Bennigsen, 'Muslim Guerilla Warfare', p.53.
91. See, in particular, Mustafa Butbay, Kafkasya Hatiralari, Ahmet Cevdet Canbulat (ed.) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1990), pp.23, 56, 80, 101.
92. Broxup, 'Last Ghazavat', p.123.
93. Lieven, Chechnya, p.319.
94. see Moshe Gammer, 'Walking the Tightrope between Nationalism(s) and Islam(s): The Case of Dagestan', Central Asian Survey, 21, No.2, (2002), pp.133-42.
95. See also Vincenzo Olivetti's polemic, Terror's Source: The Ideology of Wahhabi-Salafism and its Consequences (Birmingham, U.K.: Amadeus Books, 2002).
96. see Haneef James Oliver, The 'Wahhabi' Myth: Dispelling Prevalent Fallacies and the Fictitious Link with Bin Laden (n.p. Trafford Publishing, 2003).
97. see Hamid Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2002).
98. see Sanobar Shermatova, 'Tak nazyvemye vakhkhabity', in D.E. Furman (ed.), Chechnia i Rossiia: Obshchestva i gosudarstva,. (Moscow: Polinform-Talburi, 1999), pp.399-425;
99. V.O. Bobrovnikov, 'Mif o 'Severokavkazskom Islame': Strakhi i nadezhdy', in V.A. Mikhailova (ed.), Kavkaz i Tsentral'naia Aziia na sovremennom etape, (Moscow: Sotsium, 2003), pp.115-123.
100. Cf. Anna Matveeva, 'The Islamist Challenge in Post-Soviet Eurasia', in Lena Jonson and Murad Esenov (eds.), Political Islam and Conflicts in Russia and Central Asia,. (Stockholm: Swedish Institute of International Affairs, 1999), pp.37-8.
101. Amri Shikhsaidov, 'Islam in Dagestan', in Jonson and Esenov, Political Islam, p.60.
102. Mikhail Roshchin, 'Fundamentalizm v Dagestane i Chechne', Otechestvennye zapiski, No.5 (2003);
103. Enver Kisriev, Werner J. Patzelt, Ute Roericht, and Robert Bruce Ware, 'Political Islam in Dagestan', Europe-Asia Studies 55, No.2 (March 2003);
104. See also Georgi Derluguian, 'Che Guevaras in Turbans', PONARS Working Paper (Oct. 2003).
105. See Marlise Simons, 'Europeans Warn of Terror Attacks in Event of War in Iraq', New York Times, 29 Jan. 2003;
106. Jim Boulden, 'France Opened Moussaoui File in 94', 11 Dec. 2001, at http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/12/06/gen.moussaoui.background/.
107. For an example, see Meier, Black Earth, pp.127-33.
108. see Aukai Collins, My Jihad (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2002).
109. see al-Sayyid Muhammad Yunus, al-Muslimun fiJumhuriyat al-Shashan wa Jihaduhum fi Muqawamat al-Ghazw al-Rusi (Mecca: 1415[1994]) (The Muslims in the Chechen Republic and their Jihad in Resistance to the Russian Invasion).
110. see Baiev, Oath, pp.224-30;
111. Politkovskaya, Small Corner of Hell, pp.138, 180.
112. see Zelimkhan Iandarbiev, V preddverii nezavisimosti (Groznyi: Groznenskii rabochii, 1994) and Checheniia - bitva za svobodu (L'vov: n.p., 1996).
113. see Vakhit Akaev, 'Religious-Political Conflict in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria', in Jonson and Esenov, Political Islam, pp.47-57.
114. See also Vakhit Akaev, Sufizm i Vakhkhabizm na Severnom Kavkaze (Moscow: Institut etnologii i antropologii RAN, 1999), p.10.
115. see Tishkov, pp.390-423.
116. Magommedkhan Magommedkhanov, 'Current Trends and Tensions in Dagestan and Chechnya', paper presented to the conference, 'Conflict in the Caucasus: Yesterday and Today', Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., 9 May 1998.
117. Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, Vozvrashchenie varvarov (Moscow: Mekhk Kkhell, 2002), pp.147-8.
118. See also Nukhaev, Vedeno ili Vashington? (Moscow: Arktogeia-tsentr, 2001)
119. P. Khlebnikov Razgovor s varvarom (Moscow: Detektiv-Press, 2003).
120. see Edward W. Walker, 'Russia's Soft Underbelly: The Stability of Instability in Dagestan', Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies Working Paper Series, winter 1999-2000.
121. Cf. Enver Kisriev, Werner J. Patzelt, Ute Roericht, and Robert Bruce Ware, 'Stability in the Caucasus: The Perspective from Dagestan', Problems of Post-Communism 50, No.2 (March April 2003).