Sheikh Mansur is a famous Islamic religious preacher, primarily known as the first imam in the North Caucasus region. His activity fell on the second half of the 18th century. At one time he led the so-called national liberation movement of the highlanders in the North Caucasus. It is considered the first Caucasian revolutionary.
Sheikh biography
Sheikh Mansour was born in 1760. He is a Chechen by nationality. The hero of our article came from the teip of elistanzhkh, and the eastern peoples pay special attention to this.
His father's name was Shaabaz, along with his brothers, whose names were Shahab and Elamkha, he moved to Aldy, where he came from his farm, where he used to live in very solitude from others. The farm itself, from where Sheikh Mansur was born, was located in the area of the Tevzan aul. This happened around the 1740s. Interestingly, geographically the farm was located approximately in the same places where the village of Khattuni was founded almost a century later.
Activities
The story of Sheikh Mansour is well known since when he began to actively preach his religious teachings among Chechens. Thus, he began to set them increasingly against Russia. Indignation among the Caucasian people grew.
As a result, the tsarist army even allocated a detachment that was supposed to capture the Chechen Sheikh Mansur and his closest supporters and like-minded people. It consisted of two thousand people and two guns. The detachment was led by Colonel de Pieri. But the military expedition ended in crushing failure. On July 6, 1785, Russian soldiers and officers were routinely defeated in the area of the village of Aldy. Pieri himself was killed. According to one version, as a result of that battle, even the future hero of the Patriotic War of 1812 Peter Bagration was among the prisoners .
On the offensive
The success in this battle led Sheikh Mansur to begin active offensive operations against Russian villages and fortifications located on the Caucasian line. The difficulties in their defense consisted in the fact that the garrisons, which were responsible for the fortifications from Vladikavkaz to Mozdok, were not able to protect the road leading to Georgia from regular attacks and attacks from the Chechens.
As a result, in 1786, the garrisons were actually forced to abandon the literally just built fortifications. This is Grigoripol, now the village of the same name, which is part of the Novoaleksandrovsky district of the Stavropol Territory. Even Vladikavkaz was left.
The ideas of the liberation movement
The revolt of Sheikh Mansour pursued very specific goals. This is the fight against slavery, the confrontation of the feudal lords, the popular blood feud among the highlanders, the replacement of the mountain adat with Muslim Sharia law.
The movement of the hero of our article rapidly spread and became popular not only among Chechens, but also among Dagestanis, Circassians, and soon swept the entire North Caucasus. The Turks came to his aid during the Second Turkish War, which lasted from 1787 to 1791. The confrontation of these forces required the use of large resources from the Russian Empire, which led to a large number of victims.
In 1785, the hero of our article officially became the first imam of the North Caucasus. This gave him significant weight in society, making him the most influential religious, political and military leader of the time.
Confrontation with the Turks
Of course, the Turkish army was able to significantly strengthen the Chechen rebel units. It is worth noting that the Russo-Turkish war itself was officially waged between the Russian Empire, which acted in alliance with the Holy Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. The Turks expected to regain the lands that had been transferred to Russia during the previous Russo-Turkish war, which unfolded from 1768 to 1774, as well as the Crimea, annexed four years before.
In pre-revolutionary historiography, this war is better known as the Potemkin, so named after the commander in chief of the Russian troops.
It all started with the fact that in 1787, Turkey put forward an ultimatum to Russia, demanding the return of land, as well as obtaining an official right to inspect ships passing through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Having been refused, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia. In this case, the fact that Russia entered into an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire, the Turks learned much later. Otherwise, they would probably have delayed opposing such a strong adversary.
Initially, the successes of the Turks were significant, especially in the confrontation with the Austrians in Banat, but then followed by setbacks, when Russia actively joined in the hostilities.
Among the main events of this confrontation, the Kinburn battle, the siege of Khotin, the naval siege of Ochakov, the battle at Fidonisi, and the assault of Ochakov directly should be noted.
The Turkish sultan Selim III categorically did not want to make peace without having won at least one significant victory in the confrontation with Russia, so he sought to restore the greatly shaken prestige of his state. But it soon became apparent that the state of the Turkish army would not allow this. It all ended with the fact that in 1791 the Ottoman Empire was forced to sign the so-called Iasi Peace Treaty, according to which Crimea and Ochakov remained the Russian Empire, and the border was pushed to the Dniester.
Turkey confirmed that Crimea and Taman are forever inferior, and also pledged to pay an indemnity of 12 million piastres. When converted to money of that time, this was comparable to seven million rubles.
True, they were never paid. Count Bezborodko, immediately after this amount was officially included in the contract, refused to receive it, acting on behalf of Empress Catherine II. The fact is that the financial situation in Turkey at that time was so deplorable, and after the defeat in the war with Russia, the economy completely fell into catastrophic decline.
In the war organized by Mansour, Turkish troops played a role. Without their participation, defeating the Chechens of the Russian army would have been much easier.
Defeat of the rebellion
The decisive factor for the future of the uprising was the battle on the banks of the Kuban on September 30, 1790. General German won a more than convincing victory over the Turkish-mountain squad, which was led by the Turkish Pasha Batal.
After this, the forces of Mansur and his closest supporters were greatly exhausted. With his last detachment, he managed to take refuge in the Anapa fortress, built by the Turks. But in June 1791, Russian troops began to storm it.
Anapa was taken, the wounded Mansour was captured.
Death
The biography of Sheikh Mansour claims that he died in the Shlisselburg fortress. According to the information provided in the report, he died on April 14, 1794. On the 15th of the same month he was buried after his body was taken out of the fortress to the Transfiguration Mountain region. In the report, he is called a secret prisoner.
The commandant and colonel of the Russian army Kolyubakin, who was engaged in the burial of the leader of the Chechen uprising, noted that he had taken the body out of Shlisselburg fortress along with Lieutenant Yukharev, and it was interred on the Transfiguration Hill. He reported this to the Secret Expedition in the same month in the government senate.
Sheikh family
In the Mansur family, in addition to him, there were three more brothers. Their names were Gambulat, Lama and Epal. The latter was killed in 1785 at the battle of the Alds.
His parents died at about the same time that Mansur himself was imprisoned in the Shlisselburg fortress. The descendants of Sheikh Mansour are his three children. True, not one of them lived to adulthood. Son Madak died when he was nine years old, and his daughters Ragmat and Neamat died at two and four years old, respectively.
His wife's name was Chechi. How her fate has developed is not known to historians for certain. Among his descendants, only nephews born from a younger brother named Gambulat can be distinguished; he was the only one who managed to raise and raise his children.
Today they bear the names of the Yakhyevs, Umarkhadzhiyevs and Abdulkadyrovs, live in the village of Alda in the Chechen capital of Grozny.
The memory of Mansour
Many towns have streets named after him. For example, in Shali, Khasavyurt, Kobe, Znamensky, Silk Factory.
During the time of Chechnya's actual independence from Russia, which arose as a result of a confrontation between the republic’s leadership and the federal government, the name Sheikh Mansur received Lenin Square, Mayakovsky Street and Severny Airport, which were located in Grozny.
Famous Chechen bards named Timur Mutsuraev and Khasmagomed Khadzhimuratov have many songs dedicated to Mansur.
In 2015, his descendants erected a memorial plate at a mosque in his honor.