Muhajir (Caucasus)

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Muhajirism was emigration of Muslim indigenous peoples of the Caucasus into the Ottoman Empire following the Caucasian War (in the last quarter of the 19th century). During this mass movement, hundreds of thousands Muslims left Russia. "Muhajir" (Arabic: مهاجر) is an Arabic word meaning refugee, immigrant or emigrant.

[edit] Background

Following the conquest of the North Caucasus by the Russian Empire, its Muslim populations began emigrating, driven by a combination of various reasons: the imperial policy of Russia in the conquered lands, promises of Turkey, as well as the urges of the local Islamic clergy.

Among peoples that moved to Turkey were Abadzekhs, Shapsugs, Ubykhs, Muslim Abkhazians (especially Sadz branch), Muslim Ossetians, Adyghe, Khatukais, Chechens, Lezgins and Karachays, mostly from West Causasus. Thousands of Muslim Georgians (Chveneburi) and their Laz relatives also became Muhajirs when the Ottomans ceded the largely-Muslim Georgian provinces (Adjara, Lower Guria, former Tao-Klarjeti) and Lazistan to Imperial Russia in 1878.

Russia was eager to get rid of "disquiet" peoples ^{[citation needed]} and settle the area by Cossacks and other Christian settlers. In fact, the resettlers were given some money, paid the road to Turkey, and provided with ships.

Turkey have sent emissaries, including mullahs that called for leaving the dar al-Kufr and move to dar al-Islam. Ottomans hoped to increase the proportion of the Muslim population at the peripheries of the Empire, where Christian populations constituted sizable populations in those times.

Local mullahs and chiefs favored resettlement, because they were not favored by the Russian administration. They threatened their people that in order to gain full Russian citizenship they would have to abolish Islam and convert to Christianity ^{[citation needed]}. The conscription was also among the factors that worried these populations.

As a result, during the year of 1864 alone about 220,000 muhajirs disembarked in Anatolia. The term Çerkes, "Circassians", became the blanket term for them in Turkey because the majority were Adyghe.

[edit] Consequences

See articles "Circassians" and "Adyghe" for some detail.

The overall resettlement was accompanied with hardships for common populace. A significant part died of starvation (Many Turks of Adyghe descent still do not eat fish in our day, in memory of the tremendous numbers of their kinsfolk they lost during the passage of the Black Sea.).

Some of the resettlers did well and made it to higher position within the Ottoman Empire. There was a significant number of former muhajirs among Young Turks.

All nationals of Turkey are considered Turkish for official purposes. However, there are several hundreds of villages considered purely "Circassian", with population of "Circassians" estimated to 1,000,000, although there is no official data in this respect, and the estimates are based on informal surveys. The "Circassians" in question may not always speak the languages of their ancestors, and Turkey's center-right parties , often with varying tones of Turkish nationalism generally do well in localities where they are known to constitute sizable parts of the population (such as in Akyazı).

Along with Turkey's aspirations to join the European Union population groups with specifities started receiving more attention on the basis of their ethnicity or culture.

In Middle Eastern countries, which were created from the dismembered Ottoman Empire (and were initially under British protectorate) the fate of the ethnos was better. The Al Jeish al Arabi (Arab Legion), created in Trans-Jordan under the influence of Lawrence in significant part consisied of Chechens (arguably because the Bedouin were reluctant to serve under the centralized command). In addition, the modern city of Amman was born after Circassians settled there in 1887.

Jordanian citizen of Chechen ethnicity, Shamsutdin Yusef, was Foreign Minister in Dzhokhar Dudayev's government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.