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Caucasus: A Journey in the Crucible of Civilisation
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Asia Trips Trips Price: $5.95
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Manufacturer: Headline Review
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Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780747236306
ISBN: 0747236305
Label: Headline Review
Manufacturer: Headline Review
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2001-08-02
Publisher: Headline Review
Studio: Headline Review
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Editorial Reviews:
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The Caucasus is a jagged land. Sandwiched between the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, Turkey to the west, Iran to the south and Russia to the north, if the Caucasus didn't already possess the highest mountain range in Europe, the massive political pressure exerted from all sides would have forced the land to crack and rise anyway. Conquered in its time by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Peter the Great, Hitler and Stalin, its history is eventful to say the least. Noah's Ark lies, apparently, on the borders of Armenia; the Garden of Eden can be found in the south of Azerbaijan; and Prometheus was, for his sins, bound and pecked on the peak of a mountain in Georgia. Here, the author combines history with travelogue as he explores the Caucasus in search of the legacy of Imam Shamil, 19th century freedom fighter and guru of the modern Chechen resistance.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent history and travel piece
Comment: Griffin's account of his travels through the Caucusus Mountains succeeds on two levels: first, as an historical document on the life and times of the holy warrior, Shamil, who fought for more than 30 years against the Russian and Cossacks during the mid 19th century; second, as a fascinating and, at times, funny account of his travels in 1999 through a very dangerous region of our world: Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Chechen border. Griffin hits home the point of how difficult it is to truly "win" in this region, an area that is accustomed to fighting across the generations. As America is learning in Afghanistan, the fighting never truly stops. So, too, with the Caucusus. Fighting is, seemingly, within the DNA of many residents within this region. Griffin paints a fascinating portrait of Shamil who, throughout his life, miraculously escaped numerous near-captures by the Russians. The end of the book focuses on the "lion in winter," so to speak, as Shamil lives out his final years as a "guest" of the tsar. The historical chapters within this book are separated by Griffin's current-day travels with an interesting gang of characters, the most unusual -- and seemingly dangerous -- one being his translator Ilya. Ilya is not only dangerous with his drunken exploits, but with his poor translations, as well.
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Summary: Dazedly Seeking Shamil
Comment: 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, the last of which is still sputtering on, 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amateur
Comment: The author falls into the usual mistake of Caucasus writers: he believes in the mythology of the noble mountain warrior. His search for the fantoms of Imam Shamil is pretty shallow and amateur. The reader would probably want to go for real fiction instead and buy Leslie Blanch's Sabres of Paradise. For those who want something serious (more than the boring ride of a young hype journalist in a decrepit Zhigouli across the Caucasus) go for Yo'av Karny's Highlanders.
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Summary: Travels in the Caucasus Mountains.
Comment: This is a relatively quick read about a film crews travels in the Caucasus Mountains. There are two stories here. The first is the story of the travels in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Chechnya. Then there is the story of Iman Shamil, a leader of the Avars and Chechens who led the revolt against the encroaching Russian Empire. Shamil led the revolt that took the Russians thirty years to suppress. This revolt was termed the Murid Wars. It cost the Russians dearly. In the end the revolt was quelled when the Russians cut down the trees that constituted the hiding places of the rebels. Both sides were vicious in dealing with the civilian population. This harks to the present conflict which is just as destructive and vicious as the one of old, if not worst. This book is interweaved with these two stories. The one distraction with this book is the exploits of Ilya, an Uzbek Jew who causes trouble with the other film crew members.
This sheds light on a little known conflict. The book is an easy read, but I wish the author had concentrated on one story, rather than two.
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Summary: Overly romanticizes brutality
Comment: There is no doubt whatever that this book is exceptionally written, bordering in parts on the poetic. Alas, Griffin's romanticization of the Murid wars which consumed the better part of 50 years, from the 1820s through the 1860s, leaves a great deal to be desired, mostly because Griffin did absolutely no work to place these wars into the historical context of the global Islamic jihad, which began with Mohammed's reign of terror in the Jewish and other non-Muslim communities of seventh century Arabia, and continued throughout Islamic history, wherever non-Muslim communities abutted Islamic ones.
Griffin describes, for example, the particularly horrific capture of some princely wives and children from an idyllic estate in the southern Caucasus and their entrapment for many months with the wives of the leading jihadi of the era, including at least one Armenian woman, herself a victim of the historical Islamic tradition of entrapment and enslavement of non-Muslim women and children forced to submit to Islamic life and law.
To Griffin, however, this episode, along with every other bloody exploit of the Islamic warriors was somehow justifiable, despite the fact that the so called victims began the wars when Islamic chieftains and their brigands encroached upon Russian communities along their borders to rape, pillage, thieve and otherwise harras their neighbors on the northern frontier.
Griffin sets these wars into a text that spans his journey of several months through the region in the 1990s, before the Russian counter-terror operations in Grozny again reached a crescendo late in the decade. It is passingly interesting to learn of the various drunkards with whom he traversed the region, but wholly unimportant except as a window onto a way of life that continues in the tradition of Islamic jihad.
Unfortunately, Griffin draws upon the equally false and romanticized musings of Leo Tolstoy, whose last novel eulogized a central figure in the Murid wars, Haji Murid, who despite his Islamisist attitudes and barbarities, occasionally demonstrated kindness, as when he won back Tolstoy's ruinous gambling losses and returned the promissory notes to the famed novelist the next morning.
Certainly there have been many ugly eras in Russian history, but it is historical outrage to suggest that 19th century Russian treatment of Muslims (after all, resulting from ceaseless Muslim assaults on Russian communities near the Caucasus) in any way justified Muslim slaughters of Russians during those horrible decades.
Worse, the account ignores massive historical evidence of 1,400 years of Islamic human rights abuses (of which the Murid wars were just a tiny microcosm). Griffin presents 19th century terrorists as somehow heroic and awesome, a pattern repeated in modern reporting on the continuing jihad.
I am sorry, but I miss the romance in stealing other people's women and children, murdering the stragglers, tying naked nursemaids to trees and reigning death on legions of entrapped Russian soldiers whose sole purpose was in the first place to protect Russian communities from Islamic terror.
Now, history repeats.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
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