Shadee Elmasry – Imam Shamil- Dagestans GREATEST Leader
AI: Summary ©
The history of the Apes and their movement against the Russians during the Middle East conflict is discussed, including the arrival of the Apes in Ghana, the spread of Islam in Kazakhstan, and the arrival of Russia in the area. The history of the lion of DagGeneration, the son of a mountainous beast named Shamil, is also discussed, along with the loss of supplies and food during the war. The history of the European war, including the rise of resistance and the formation of the Committee for the War, is also discussed, along with the loss of leaders and warfare as a means of revenge. The history of the first General Hamza Bey in the military warfare, along with the history of the stronghold, and the history of the Russian army is also discussed.
AI: Summary ©
And today we're going to talk about the
last line of Dagestan.
Where is Dagestan?
So that's Dagestan on the western bank of
the Caspian Sea.
On the opposite side of the Caspian Sea
is Kazakhstan.
And the Ottomans were beasts of the Caspian
Sea and they spread Islam in those places
and the Muslims themselves, the Sahaba, sorry, had
gone to Azerbaijan.
You all see under there, you see Azerbaijan?
The Sahaba had gone there.
The Sahaba had gone there through Persia.
Syria is right there.
And then you have, what is that?
That's Iran.
You see Persia?
Through Persia they went up to Azerbaijan.
So Islam's been there a long time.
And the Ottomans were strong in the Caspian
Sea.
So that's Dagestan.
Now to the left of Dagestan is the
hook of Russia.
So Russia is mainly on the east but
it hooks down like that so that Dagestan's
western border is Russia.
And of course now we all know that
Russia has absorbed Dagestan into its empire now.
So that part Russia has been trying to
access Dagestan for a long time.
You know why?
Obvious reason.
They want access to the Caspian Sea.
All the trade and all the ships and
the ferries they don't want to have to
go through Dagestan for that.
You understand now why Dagestan and Russia have
always had issues.
And today we're going to read about the
last lion of Dagestan who is Al-Imam
Shamil.
He was born in 26th of June 1797.
1797 and he died in 1871.
He was born with the name Ali.
And as he became sick, apparently some kind
of local custom, if your son becomes ill
when he's young you change his name.
So they changed his name to Shamil but
the pronunciation became Shamil.
And when he got to the Arabic lands
they called him Shamil.
His father Dingo was a landlord and his
close friend was Ghazi Muhammad so they were
very wealthy.
And wealthy kids studied back then.
You studied the martial arts using a sword,
riding horses, shooting, etc.
And you studied knowledge.
From an early age he studied the Arabic
language so he became fluent in Arabic and
he was a alim.
And he studied al-uloom al-aqli or
al-aqliyat such as mantiq and logic.
He grew up at a time when the
Russian Empire was expanding into the Ottoman lands
and into Iran.
And he grew up in that when he
was young the Russo-Turkish War happened between
the Russians and the Ottomans.
And this is where the bad blood of
the Russians has been now for a while
now.
Many Caucasian peoples united in resistance with the
Ottomans against the Russians.
And the imperial aspiration of what became known
as the Caucasian War.
Earlier leaders of the Caucasian resistance included *
Dawood, Sheikh Mansur, and Ghazi Mulla.
Shamil or Shamil, we're just gonna call him
Shamil from now on, was a childhood friend
of the Mulla and he would become his
disciple and took advice from him.
Shamil, he married and he married an Armenian
woman who was born in Russia.
She was captured in a raid and brought
into the Dagestani land and into the tribe.
And as a teenager she entered Islam.
And she married Imam Shamil and she remained
loyal to him to the end.
After the death of Imam Shamil she moved
to the Ottoman Empire and the Sultan assigned
her a home and a pension so she
never had to have worry about any of
this.
In 1832 Ghazi Mulla, who was basically like
you can say the Sheikh of Imam Shamil,
the one he looked up to, he died
in the Battle of Gimri.
Shamil was one of only two murids of
Ghazi Mulla to escape.
Imagine your Sheikh is the general of an
army, right?
I mean how cool is that?
During this fight Imam Shamil was stabbed with
a bayonet after having jumped from an elevated
building clean over the heads of all the
soldiers who were trying to fire on him.
And when he landed he whirled around with
his sword and was able to cut three
of the soldiers but the fourth one was
able to bayonet him.
And the bayonet is like a gun, a
rifle with a blade.
So it operates as both.
And that steel went deep into his chest.
He seized the bayonet, pulled it out of
his own flesh, killed that man and then
cleared another wall.
Jumped over a wall and vanished.
And he went into hiding.
Both the Russians and the murids all assumed
him to be dead.
Murids were the name of the Muslim soldiers.
Once he recovered he emerged from his hiding
and he rejoined the army of the murids
led by now the second Imam Hamza Bey.
And he would wage an unremitting warfare on
the Russians for the next 25 years until
he became their leader and he changed the
strategy.
There would be no more head-to-head
combat.
It would be all guerrilla warfare.
Guerrilla warfare is when you come in on
the enemy as a small group, you do
a quick attack and you leave.
It's not meeting the enemy anymore on a
certain plane, on a plane of land.
Hamza Bey was killed only two years, he
led for two years only.
And that's when Imam Shamil took his place
as the prime leader of the Caucasian resistance
and the third Imam of the Caucasian Imama.
Mulla Ghazi, Hamza Bey and Imam Shamil.
This picture, how do we do it?
This right here is Mulla Ghazi.
And now we're gonna turn to Imam Shamil.
In June of 1839 after leading for five
years now, Shamil and his followers, being 4
,000 men, women and children, were under siege
in the mountain strongholds of Akhulgo, nested in
the bend of the Andi Koisu, about 10
miles east of Gimri.
Under the command of Pavel Grave, the Russian
army trekked through lands devoid of supplies because
of Shamil's scorched earth strategy.
In other words, he burned all the path
for them to come.
They wouldn't have any food or anything.
The geography of the stronghold protected it from
three sides, adding the difficulty of conducting the
siege.
So there's very difficult siege.
Eventually the two sides agreed to negotiate.
Complying with Grave's demands, Shamil gave his son
Jamal al-Din in a sign of good
faith as a hostage.
Shamil rejected Grave's proposal that Shamil command his
forces to surrender for him and to accept
exile from the region.
He said, no, that's off the table.
The Russian army therefore attacked the stronghold after
two days of fighting.
The Russian troops had secured the stronghold.
Shamil escaped the siege on the first night
of attack.
His forces had been broken and many Dagestani
and Chechen chieftains proclaimed loyalty to the czar.
They basically, many tribal leaders gave up and
they said, all right, white flag is up.
We're Russians now.
We're loyal to the czar.
We're with Russia.
Shamil then left Dagestan after his whole army
is obliterated and he went to Chechnya.
There he made quick work of extending his
influence over the clans and he gathered another
group.
Shamil was effective at uniting the many quarrelsome
tribes of the Kukas to fight against the
Russians.
And by force of his charisma, his known
piety, his fairness and his knowledge of the
Sharia, they gathered around him in Ashishan.
And that's Dagestan.
So he went west basically.
The reason you can't see any of this
stuff on the map anymore because it's just,
they just put Russia all the way to
the Caspian Sea.
That's why you can't see it on the
map anymore.
So Imam Shamil then gathers a new army
of the tribes in Ashishan.
And one Russian source commented on him as
a man of great tact and a subtle
politician.
He believed the Russian introduction of alcohol in
the area corrupted the traditional values against the
large regular Russian military.
Shamil made effective use of irregular and guerrilla
tactics.
And that's where, as I said earlier, he
shifted now to guerrilla warfare.
Before that, in Dagestan, he had a country,
he had a land.
He had an imam.
He had a, he was sultan.
It was at the Caucasian imamate.
Now that he's in Chechnya, he's using guerrilla
warfare against them.
Against the large Russian military, he used guerrilla
tactics.
In 1845, now this is now, he's been
leading for 11 years now.
He's been the imam there for 11 years
now.
In 8,000 to 10,000 strong column,
under the count, Russian count Mikhail Vorontsov followed
the imam's forces into the forests of Chechnya.
The imamate's forces surrounded the Russian column.
Shamil and his forces surrounded them and cut
them all down.
He destroyed this column of Russian forces.
This destroyed Vorontsov's attempt to cut away Chechnya
from the imamate, which was his plan.
Imam Shamil was active that year and his
forces destroyed this Russian contingent.
Imam Shamil now, his forces, his fortunes got
better.
He joined forces with * Murad, who defected
from the Russians in 1841 and tripled by
his fighting the area under Shamil's control within
a short time.