120 Orientalism and Empirediscovering that they had mistakenly cut off his left hand rather than
his right, they returned to cut off his other hand.^69
This dissenting voice of 1859 was in the minority, however, and
was roundly and quickly criticized by numerous other commenta-
tors. Gariainov was chastised for his lack of humanity and for embar-
rassing Russian society by reproducing the gutter talk of uneducated
soldiers in a Russian newspaper.^70 The promise of Shamil in 1859 lay
in his potential for cultural transformation. Like the conduct of the
tsar and Bariatinskii, whose polite treatment after the capture Shamil
found surprising, Russian society intended to inspire the imam’s re-
spect and admiration. The spitefulness and anger of Gariainov and
Egorov were incongruous with the purpose of Shamil’s trip to Russia.
shamil in kaluga, 1859–1871
Once he was finally settled in Kaluga, Russians expected to witness a
new direction in Shamil’s family history. A. Runovskii’s replacement
of Boguslavskii as the pristav (police officer) responsible for Shamil
and his household afforded him a special opportunity to encourage
generational cultural change. Runovskii was especially interested in
the fate of the younger generation of men within Shamil’s household,
such as Kazi-Magomet’s younger brother, Magomet-Shefi, Khadzhio,
a close but young murid of Shamil, and Abdurrakhman and Abdu-
ragim, the sons-in-law of Shamil. Khadzhio, he believed, epitomized
the younger generation of muridism, whose ideas about their faith,
women and gender, the Caucasus War, and the situation of the moun-
taineers of the North Caucasus were in flux and distinguishable from
the ideas of Shamil and the older generation.^71 Khadzhio in particu-
lar, Runovskii claimed, was fascinated and intrigued by the greater
pleasures of Russian society, and in Kaluga he took up smoking, fre-
quented Russian social events, and courted a number of Russian
women, activities that served to motivate his efforts to acquire
Russian.^72 “Regarding the shari’a,” Runovskii’s Khadzhio confided,
“I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: it forbids all that is good and per-
mits the bad.”^73 Pavel G. Przhetsslavskii, a subsequent family pristav,
also noted a similar openness on the part of Abduragim, who “wor-
ried little about a trip to Mecca and Medina.”^74 Abduragim once ex-
claimed in exasperation, according to Przhetsslavskii, “I am unable
and do not want to be a ‘murid’ – not of Kaluga or Dargo!”^75 Like
Khadzhio, Abduragim attended the theatre in Kaluga in the company
of Russian women.^76
Reform of the views of Shamil’s party about gender and the family
were central to Runovskii’s notion of cultural progress. The younger