Traditionally, it is considered that amanathism is a simple hostage-taking, since the word amanat is translated as “hostage”. Instantly, an ordinary person imagines an unsightly picture of a bunch of citizens on the floor of a bank under the barrels of automatic weapons, a kidnapped person hidden in an old garage on the outskirts of the city, or a group of tourists languishing in a hole somewhere in the Middle East.
All this, of course, has nothing to do with amanity as a diplomatic, political and social institution.
The very word "amanat", for example, in Islam is understood as the obligation to preserve something entrusted to you by God or man and at the same time is the most trusted entity. At the same time, both intangible values and quite tangible objects can appear under the amanat. Thus, the soul, body, Islam and even time appear as the amanates of Allah, sent down to people. But the amanats given by society include family and property, debts and secrets told under the strictest confidence. And a careful and careful attitude towards the amanat is considered a sacred duty. Some of these subtleties eventually passed into the military-political interpretation of the amanat.
Amanaticism itself has been known since ancient times. Do not confuse it with a banal predatory raid with the subsequent hijacking of people in captivity for the purpose of resale or exchange. And, of course, amanity was not an invention of the Russians in principle. It was practiced in Spain and the Ottoman Empire, in Austria and Italy, in Ancient Russia and the Golden Horde, etc.
Amanat was not just a hostage, he was a living guarantee of trust, a guarantee of compliance with a fully formalized agreement in advance. And both parties had to follow the terms of the agreement, including the one with the high-ranking amanat. His health and comfort of stay were entirely on the conscience of the party who took the amanat. The murder of such a "hostage" was considered not just some kind of shame for the conscience, but had quite tangible consequences in the political arena, undermining the reputation and status of this or that ruler and, as a consequence, the state he ruled.
Fraud in the Caucasus is a necessary compromise
The Caucasus, in which amanathism also existed since ancient times, during the most active expansion of the borders of the Russian Empire in its direction, that is, in the 18-19th centuries, was a boiling cauldron of principalities, kingdoms, khanates, shamkhal dynasties, Maysums, communities, communities and quasi-state associations, which quickly appeared and disappeared with the same speed.
For example, by the second half of the 18th century, in the west of the Caucasus, there were lands of disunited Circassian tribes and Nogai nomads, Abkhazia and Svaneti, Megrelia and Guria, etc. In the center were Kabarda and Ossetia, the lands of the Ingush and Chechens, divided into separate teips and periodically dependent either on the Kabardian or on the Kumyk rulers. In the west lay a real carpet: Avar, Kyurin, Kazikumukh, Kuba, Sheki, Shirvan, Baku, Derbent and Ganja khanates, Tarkov shamkhalstvo, Tabasaran Maysum and Kaitag utsmiystvo, and these are not all formations that have a quasigation.
All this wealth was in constant flux. Alliances were created and collapsed, some khanates or principalities were exalted, levying tribute to their neighbors, others instantly disappeared. At the same time, the princely and khan's families were extremely mixed. For example, the famous Derbent warrior Tuti-Bike, being married by her own brother to her ally Fat Ali Khan, soon faced a terrible choice, because brother and husband began to quarrel. When the army of Tuti-Bike's brother Amir Hamza was at the walls of Derbent, she sided with her husband and led the defense of the city, fighting, in fact, with her own blood.
Naturally, in such a situation, any agreement, even the most profitable one, sealed by high-ranking officials, easily lost all force. Even if a prince or khan himself asked for Russian citizenship, after a while his own nobles (junior princes, bridles, viziers, etc.) could persuade the ruler to a profitable traditional raid or completely remove the obstinate "bosses". This was followed by a military expedition of the Russian Empire in order to force them to fulfill their voluntarily assigned obligations. Such expeditions have often done more harm than good.
That is why the institution of amanity has become a compromise choice. In addition, the Caucasus was familiar with amanity better than the Russian troops. Moreover, high-ranking amanats ruled entire principalities. For example, before becoming the prince of Abkhazia, Kelesh-bey Chachba was an amanat in Constantinople among the "friendly" Ottomans.
It is generally accepted that it was Aleksey Petrovich Ermolov who became the main initiator of amanathism and almost its author. As it has already become clear, he could not be the author in principle, and the fact that in his energy he deftly combined military and diplomatic toughness is true. Taking people as amanats, Ermolov set firm, but justified and fully realizable conditions. Often these conditions were just a repetition of previously concluded contracts.
And you definitely don't need to think that Ermolov practiced amanity alone or imposed this institution in the Russian army. Amanatov in the form of princes was taken, for example, by General Ivan Petrovich Delpozzo in Kabarda. These princes, by the way, enjoyed great freedom until they formed an armed conspiracy. Only after that were the princes imprisoned in the Kizlyar fortress. In addition, Delpozzo at one time was himself a hostage in the Caucasus, but not on a contractual basis, but on the basis of profit.
The Georgian prince, General Yegor (Georgy) Evseevich Eristov-Ksansky, also took the opponents into amanats. Tired of raids over the Terek and empty promises not to carry out them anymore, then Colonel Eristov not only conducted a tough military expedition, but also took several noble Chechens with him as guarantees of the promised peaceful coexistence.
There were also a few curious cases. Before the famous campaign to Khevsuria (Khevsureti, an area in the northeast of modern Georgia) in 1813, Lieutenant General Fedor Fedorovich Simanovich decided to guarantee the loyalty of the Pshavs (considered an ethnographic group of Georgians with various versions of origin). Having carried out a proper reconnaissance of the social structure, Simanovich refused to accept any elders as amanats, but took as amanats … Pshav cattle in tens of thousands of heads. Russian troops began to graze the cattle, and the Pshavs from unreliable subjects turned into the best guides and scouts.
How amanats were kept
Amanats were usually kept in fortresses (Georgievskaya, Kizlyarskaya, Nalchikskaya, Astrakhanskaya, etc.), although there were many exceptions. Naturally, such content paints a picture of some kind of stony zindan or casemate of the Count of Monte Cristo, but again, the philistine imagination will lie.
Of course, the general picture of the content of the amanats cannot be added, again due to the scattered specifics of the Caucasus. Each was kept in accordance with the significance of the lands that gave it and on the basis of any specific agreements. Some had the right to carry edged weapons and walk under the supervision of guards or proxies near fortresses and even leave for a certain period of time in neighboring cities or villages. Others were kept only inside the fortress walls, however, in a separate house, as a rule, with a garden laid out next to it. Amanatov was periodically changed, so the "hostage" could be at the fortress from one to 15 years, if the contract was violated by the party that gave the amanat.
Moreover, there was even a certain instruction for dealing with amanats. Should
"Treat them with circumspection, caution, fairness, friendly, with moderate affection, but not servile."
Educated amanats could conduct free correspondence, had the right to subscribe the necessary books. The amanat's dining table was never inferior to that of the commandant of the fortress, and sometimes even surpassed it. Healers and other necessary personnel were always provided at the services of amanats.
The entire content of the amanats fell on the treasury of the Russian Empire. Some lived at the level of officers, while others, thanks to the same political and diplomatic collisions of the Caucasus, lived like real princes. For example, after General Pavel Dmitrievich Tsitsianov persuaded the Karabakh khanate with its capital in Shusha to become a Russian citizen, he took the oath of office from the ruler of the khanate, Ibrahim Khan. At the same time, the ruler's grandson was taken into amanats with the annual maintenance of the boy, according to various sources, from a thousand to 10 thousand rubles.
Amanat schools as a way to life
Most often, the children of Caucasian rulers became amanates. With the pacification of the Caucasus and the multiplication of the lands of the empire of the Amanats, it became more and more. In addition, naturally, none of the Russian officers, accepting amanats, even thought of punishing children for the sins of their parents. Some communities were so fragmented that they gave away up to ten boys at a time. On the one hand, a gang of boys, left to their own devices, cannot come up with anything worthwhile; on the other hand, the empire received an excellent resource for educating the mountain children of an imperial sense of belonging.
Awareness of these facts has created a special phenomenon - the Amanat schools. In these schools, amanats were taught the Russian language, mathematics, geography and other sciences. The training and maintenance of students, of course, came at the expense of the empire's treasury. Many mountain boys, who discovered the whole world for themselves, showed simply amazing abilities. Some already by the end of the first year read books in Russian quite clearly and quickly.
Outstanding amanats were periodically sent to the cadet corps to continue their studies. Later, many of them would form real dynasties of "Russian" officers who fought for the glory of the empire, in which they were once held hostages. So the institution of amanity eventually became an instrument of socialization, education and just a springboard into life.
Outstanding amanats of the Caucasus
There are many Amanats who have become brilliant officers in the Russian army. So, Aslamurza Yesiev, born in 1836, was taken to amanat at the age of 9. Soon the boy ended up in St. Petersburg, where he was enrolled in the Second Cadet Corps. In 1853 he began serving in the Elisavetgrad hussar regiment. After six years of good service, he was forced to retire for family reasons.
Yesiev returned to service in 1864 as the commander of the 2nd hundred of the Terek-Gorsk irregular regiment. By the beginning of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1879, Aslamurza had already commanded the Ossetian division of the above-mentioned regiment, having distinguished himself as part of the Danube army. After the war, he entered the detachment of General Skobelev in Turkestan, etc.
Former amanat Aslamurza retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel, proudly carrying on his chest the Order of St. Vladimir of the 4th degree, the Order of St. Anna of the 2nd degree, the Order of St. Stanislav of the 2nd and 3rd degrees. Yesiev spent the last days of his life in the village of Kartsa, engaged in peaceful agriculture, gardening and beekeeping.
Another famous amanat was Aslambek Tuganov, who rose to the rank of general and became a kind of founder of the Ossetian military intelligentsia. Tuganov, who came from a noble feudal family, was given to the Amanats at the age of 4 in 1808. Aslambek was brought up in the family of a Russian colonel, therefore, at the age of 19, he began serving as a private in the Kabardin infantry regiment, in which he quickly rose to the rank of officer with a transfer to the Life Guards Caucasian mountain half-squadron.
The fate of this officer, like many others, deserves a separate material, if not a book. He participated in the Polish campaign and in the Caucasian War, was in the convoy of the emperor himself and served as a kind of diplomat, recruiting mountain youth into the ranks of the Russian army. On December 6, 1851, Tuganov was promoted to major general. The list of his awards was great: the order of St. Anna, St. Stanislaus 1st and 2nd degrees, St. Vladimir 1st and 4th degrees, the insignia of the Polish Order, etc. The general died in 1868.
The highest-ranking and most unfortunate amanat of the Caucasus
The most famous and at the same time unfortunate amanat was Shamil's son, Jamaluddin. The 10-year-old Jamaluddin got into the amanats during the battles for the aul Akhulgo, when Shamil sent him to General Pavel Grabba to delay the inevitable assault, which threatened him and his murids with death. As a result, Shamil fled, and Grabbe remained with the young Jamaluddin in his arms.
The boy was quickly sent to St. Petersburg, where Nicholas I himself took patronage over him, in a sense, even replacing his father. Jamaluddin was enrolled in the Alexander Orphan Cadet Corps for noble children who had lost their parents. The emperor took an active part in the boy's fate, talked with him for a long time and took him at any time. The boy had a sharp mind and liveliness of character. He was interested in absolutely everything, discovering more and more new sciences and aspects of life. In 1849, Jamaluddin in the rank of a cornet was sent to the Vladimir 13th Uhlan regiment. During the service, he fell in love with the daughter of General Peter Olenin Elizabeth, at the same time firmly resolved to be baptized. The future of a professional officer seemed bright.
All this time, Shamil continued negotiations, trying to get his son back. For these purposes, he even took the prince and general Iliko Orbeliani hostage. True, the demands put forward by Shamil were so utopian that Orbeliani himself renounced freedom on such conditions. After this failure, Shamil made a daring raid on Kakheti, taking many hostages, including noble persons of the princely family of Chavchavadze. Among the prisoners were women with one-year-old children in their arms. The emperor found himself in a difficult situation. On the one hand, he did not want to give up his beloved Jamaluddin at all, and on the other, he could not leave Shamil's hostages to the mercy of fate.
Jamaluddin at that time was seconded to Poland with the rank of lieutenant. He did not even know what trouble awaited him, continuing to dream of marriage with Elizabeth and reading works on mathematics, which he became interested in while still in the cadet corps. Soon he was summoned to the headquarters in Warsaw, outlining the situation. Jamaluddin was dumbfounded. His life, new world, officer service, beloved woman - all this was crumbling before our eyes. He hesitated for a long time, but was forced to agree.
On March 10 (old style), 1855, an exchange took place near the village of Mayrtup. Jamaluddin fervently said goodbye to his comrades and, taking with him as luggage only numerous books, atlases, paper and pencils, wandered towards the family, which solemnly greeted his son from "captivity".
Many people close to Shamil noted the extraordinary intelligence and education of Jamaluddin, but already a few days after the heated meeting, the growing tension between father and son was felt. Jamaluddin persuaded his father to come to terms with the Russian Empire, spoke extremely laudatory about Nicholas I and admired the Russian army, which, of course, caused his father's dislike. And as a responsible officer, Jamaluddin could not waste away without work, so he inspected the auls, the administrative structure and the troops of Shamil themselves. After that, he lashed out with extremely harsh criticism of everything he saw. This pushed the son away from his father even more.
True, for some time Jamaluddin managed to moderate Shamil's ardor, to establish contact with the governor in the Caucasus, General Alexander Baryatinsky. A mass exchange of prisoners began, and Jamaluddin was instructed to put in order the administrative affairs in the North Caucasian imamate. But his son's openly pro-Russian orientation angered Shamil more and more. Despite the unconditional successes of Jamaluddin, the brothers moved away from him, his fellow tribesmen did not communicate with him, the naibs avoided him.
The last straw for the powerful imam was the attempt to secretly meet Jamaluddin with his beloved Elizabeth. Shamil was able to disrupt this meeting. The Imam immediately after this married his son against his will to the daughter of his naib Talkhig Shalinsky, which finally broke the endlessly lonely Jamaluddin.
The young man began to suffer from chest pains and coughing, walked around the aul like a wordless ghost, as if awaiting a tragic end. Shamil, noticing this, still loving his son, sent him to the high-mountainous village of Karat (now a village in Dagestan), the climate of which was considered curative. But the young man continued to fade, not seeing the point in continuing his life. Shamil was forced to enter into negotiations with Baryatinsky so that he would send a Russian doctor to Jamaluddin. Baryatinsky sent the regimental doctor Piotrovsky.
Piotrovsky diagnosed Jamaluddin with consumption and loss of vitality. The doctor left all the necessary medications along with the necessary recommendations. But the treatment did not go to the broken Jamaluddin. On June 26, 1858, the most famous and educated amanat for his time died in the village of Karat. The clerics immediately spread the rumor that the Russian doctor had poisoned the unfortunate man, which, of course, had no foundation or even any logic.
Now the mausoleum of Jamaluddin, an amanat and an officer of the Russian army, is still in the same village of Karat.
