Caucasus: Mountain Men and Holy Wars

by Nicholas Griffin

When the Russians bombed the capital of Muslim Chechnya in 2000, a city with almost a half million people was left with barely a single building intact. Rarely since Dresden and Stalingrad has the world witnessed such destruction.

The Caucasus is a jagged land. With Turkey to the west, Iran to the south, and Russia to the north, the Caucasus is trapped between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. If it didn't already possess the highest mountain range in Europe, the political pressure exerted from all sides would have forced the land to crack and rise. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Peter the Great, Hitler, and Stalin all claimed to have conquered the region, leaving it a rich, but bloody history. A borderland between Christian and Muslim worlds, the Caucasus is the front line of a fascinating and formidable clash of Russia versus the predominantly Muslim mountains.

Award-winning writer Nicholas Griffin travels to the mountains of the Caucasus to find the root of today’s conflict. Mapping the rise of Islam through myth, history, and politics, this travelogue centers on the story of Imam Shamil, the greatest Muslim warrior of the nineteenth century, who led a forty-year campaign against the invading Russians. Griffin follows Imam’s legacy into the war-torn present and finds his namesake, the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, continuing his struggle.

Enthralling and fiercely beautiful, Caucasus lifts the lid on a little known but crucially important area of world. With approximately 100 billion barrels of crude oil in the Caspian Sea combined with an Islamic religious interest, it is an unfortunate guarantee that the tragedies that have haunted these jagged mountains in the past will show no sign of abating in the near future.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, Russia

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 2, 2001

About the author

NIcholas Griffin is the author of seven books. He has written for film, TV, newspapers and magazines. He currently has two works, Ping Pong Diplomacy and The Year of Dangerous Days, under option for film and television. A soccer addict, a carnivore of books, Griffin lives in Miami Beach with his wife and two children. And his dog. The dog is very important.

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned a lot about Chechnya and Imam Shamil but had to wade through quite a lot of self-indulgence and cultural inaccuracy to do it.

[Bob Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dazedly Seeking Shamil

OK, so Nicholas Griffin's got a knack for writing. You can't fault him on his skills: he vividly traces the life of the famous (to some) Caucasus mountain warrior leader, Shamil, who held off the Russians for over three decades in the nineteenth century. He weaves in the lives of various Russians and others (including a French woman captive) who knew him or had to deal with him, shows how the Russians consistently misjudged their ability to capture or kill him and bring the resistance of the Muslim mountaineers of the north Caucasus to a halt. In their misguided tactics, the Russians wasted the lives of thousands of their own men, and killed huge numbers of Chechen, Avar, and Lezgin villagers (not to mention a host of other, smaller peoples) to almost no avail. Shamil was able to unite the usually-fractured tribes of the region under the banner of Islam, though he was not above murdering dissenters. Griffin has brought the amazing, violent story of the long anti-Russian resistance to Western readers again, albeit with a fair measure of mythology and little background information for those "few readers" who aren't up on Caucasian ethnography.

But that's not all. He set off with four companions on a very dazed, unorganized trip around the Caucasus region with minimal preparation and planning. His skillful writing contrasts almost hilariously with the group's utter inability to get along or even to know what to do next. The "interpreter" can hardly speak English and is plastered out of his mind most of the time. Nobody seems to know anything about the customs or languages of the people they meet (and need to survive). They drink vodka, bicker, and fight, and even take up using boxing gloves against each other to the great amusement of some lower-depths locals. Becoming drunken clowns hardly is the way to learn about history or culture, no matter how "untouristy" it may seem to the participants. And, though Shamil came from Dagestan, and many of his supporters came from Chechnya, and many famous battles occurred in those two places, the group failed to get across the border into Russia at all. They did spend a fair bit of time in Armenia, though, where nobody had even heard of Shamil. They didn't seem to be able to figure out why not. Nice going, boys.

So, it's a grab bag. But, I do admit, a well-written grab bag which I enjoyed a lot. The parallels between Shamil the Imam's war against Russia and the two Chechen wars since 1994, are clear. Quite a few errors that I (a non-expert) could pick up. I wonder what the experts would say. On page 129, he's got Shamil at the wrong age. He says Armenian is the oldest alphabet. It's not---google Bishop Mashtots and see. He writes "Arzrum" instead of the international "Erzurum". On page 188, he talks of the railways carrying the Chechen exiles south from Grozny in 1944---uh, that would be east or north. On page 224---he mentions Basayev's attack on Chechnya in 1994. It was Dagestan, no? These may be pedantic quibbles, but they also may indicate that the editing, like the trip itself, was a bit chaotic and ill-considered. But if you get this book, you will enjoy it anyhow.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a weird book but not...not worth reading. It was the author's travel through the north Caucasus with some dudes who might have also been making a documentary, but he never talks about the documentary. And what they are doing when they are not traveling is unclear. I mean, maybe they are interviewing people for the other dude's documentary but other than alluding to interviewing some professors in Tbilisi, we don't hear about it. We hear about them getting drunk and fighting each other and riding horses in the mountains. And then we have flashbacks to the original Imam Shamil (not Shamil Basayev) fighting with the Russians and then at the end we hear about Shamil Basayev's fighting the Russians now. The "old Shamil, new Shamil" trick isn't really executed, but it is unclear if that's what the author was trying to do. It is just a weird book but not unentertaining; it was fun to read, even. But what was it? I don't know. You want to learn about the Caucasus? Skip to the extensive bibliography in the back. You want a travelogue? Maybe this is the only one on the Caucasus -- I don't know. But there is better travel writing out there. I picked this up on a whim from a "FREE!" bookshelf -- I'm not sad I read it, but...what?

[Sarah Epton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A read again inspired by Ali and Nino. It's a good travelogue cum history lesson, centered on the character of Shamil, Imam, revolutionary. It does a nice job of capturing life in the road in an unstable region and weaving in history and current events. I wish the author had delved deeper into the history that made Shamil the man of his moment, instead of offhandedly rattling off the empires that have swallowed the region for a few thousand years, but he does a nice job of tying events of the mid 19th c to events of the late 20th. I wonder, too, how his refusal to explain basic things like what a seraglio is and how it functions, or what a decembrist is, or any other of a number of cultural or historical details goes over with people who aren't on a tear through books about this region and East-West/Muslim-Infidel/Empire-Tribe conflicts. There's also far more passive voice than is strictly healthy to read, if that bothers you.

[Ansgar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good and well written book on such an unknown region! Also very funny at times. Would recommend!

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part travelogue, part narrative history, this book provides a wavetop overview of the cultures of the Caucasus told through the lens of one of their most renowned historical figures, Imam Shamil.

[ctwayfarer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seemed sloppily researched, heavily opinionated and full of half-truths. Additionally the travelogue delivery style to this complex subject seemed out of place.

[Jorge Bardwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and very interesting book. The writer achieves almost perfect balance in the telling of the history of the region combining past and present as he explores the territory.
Good pace...well recommend.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat interesting but not great overall

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Causasus provides insight to an important but rarely visited part of Europe: the mountain region between the Caspian and Black seas. While it is part travelogue, the story of four very different men as they share cars, houses and hotels on this trip, most of the book comprises a synthesis of literary and historical references to the region strung over a framework comprising the life of a particular terrorist/freedom fighter/brigand who resisted the incursion of the Russian empire in the 1800s. Both elements are interesting, but both feel like narrow glimpses into the past and present of a region which is notorious for its very fine scale ethnic and linguistic diversity. So it is hard to gain a sense of the extent to which the text provides information as opposed to anecdote. Inevitably, both also include personal comments (Tolstoy's gambling; the author's aggravation with another member of the party) which pad the book while not adding to the book's insights into the region. It is somewhat like Oprah meets John Gunther. Nevetheless, I enjoyed reading the book, and as indicated at the outset of this review - there aren't many books about this region to choose from.

[Lila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite a syntactical and paragraph-structuring malaise that occurs throughout the book, this is an entirely engrossing read. I mean, I put up a map of the Caucasus over our wall so I could follow along. I took notes. But really, it's a popular travelogue over the region, occurring in 1999 (just as the Chechen War is rearing once again), of a party of Westerners (plus one crazy Uzbek Jew) tracing the steps of Imam Shamil. Shamil is a now-mythic Daghestani mountaineer who declared holy war on Russian in the 19th century and posed the last serious threat that the Empire faced to rule over the Caucasus -- until the Chechen Wars of the 1990s. The author doesn't give modern Georgia enough treatment for my (totally partial) taste, but the account of Shamil extracting hostages from the Alazani Valley will prompt shouts and sights, even if you're not as Caucasus-engrossed as me.

[Steve Hanson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be a good overview of the history of the Caucasus as a whole. He covers the early periods, the Russian conquest, and has a few chapters on the post-Soviet situations. It is a good introduction to the topic, and I especially appreciate that he doesn't devote too much time to the whole Shamil story (which some books tend to overdo).
I found the chapter called "The Imaginary Caucasus" interesting. He examines the whole mythology of the Caucasus in Russian and world culture. These kinds of discussions of colonialism and its mentality are interesting. He draws a parallel the the American mythology of the Native Indains.

It includes an extensive bibliography for further reading.

[Ellis Amdur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Both a travel book and history of the war between the Muslim mountain people and the Russians – not today, but one hundred and fifty years ago, showing that nothing has been learned, and nothing has changed. Will serve to illuminate the threat that faces our world today – not simply Islamic fanaticism, but also the futility of trying to force an alien culture and worldview upon people who will die for their own.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fast-paced travelogue about modern day Caucasus that incorporates a lot of history without dragging down the narrative--he ties it all into the present. The book will show you why this part of the world is so important.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great travelogue/history in a region not well documented. easy prose, but difficult topic to read. I'd say this is a great way to start understanding the Caucasus and the turmoil therein.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended reading along with Tolstoy's Hadji Murat for understanding modern day Chechnya.

[cwrigh13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read. The personal accounts were a tiny bit laboured in places.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

unfortunately too short a history of the caucasus and long part on shamil, the "modern" freedom fighter and benchmark for chechnyan bravery and fortitude, if not sense.

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bad version of Bread and Ashes