148 Orientalism and EmpireGeorgia’s relationship to Islam and the East was an outgrowth of
its relationship to the idea of a Europe that included Russia. Its his-
toric location on one of the fault lines of Christianity and Islam (but a
frontier vastly under-researched compared to the Balkans or Spain)
obviously produced a ready reservoir of hostility toward the Islamic
empires and their faith, most often remembered in frightening refer-
ences to the sack of Tbilisi in 1795 by the Persians. Mountain peoples
were similarly menacing, threatening faith, family, high culture, and
everything Georgian, as the extraordinary literary reproduction of
the Chavchavadze episode illustrated.^15 Russians, Georgians, and im-
perial educated society generally were quick to portray the influence
of Islam in the North Caucasus as something that obstructed social
development from primitive to civil life, tragically distorted gender
relations within the family, destroyed authentic legal tradition, inhib-
ited the reorientation of Shamil and his family toward Russia, and of-
fered only “savagery” and “fanaticism” in place of enlightened
civilization. This familiar form of “Orientalism” flourished in the
Russian Empire.
The unique Russian imperial context, however, produced a specific
form of Orientalism that shaped the evolution of the empire and even
contributed to the formation of the eventual Soviet state. The Roman-
tic preoccupation with narodnost’, “originality,” and authentic historic
custom that influenced the climate of imperial educated society espe-
cially shaped imperial discourse on the eastern borderlands. Islam
posed the question of “apostasy,” in this case a “falling away” not just
from the correct faith but from correct custom and the past itself.
Georgians, Russians, and many others portrayed Islam as an impedi-
ment to the preservation and cultivation of tradition. Cataloguing cus-
toms, the ethnographic impulse that flourished throughout the
empire, was an act of “correct faith,” a means to counter the “heresy”
of foreign borrowing and imitation. Disciplines such as ethnography
and geography in Russia emerged from the unique context of imperial
competition among Christian and Islamic states. Georgians were espe-
cially interested in the “rescue” of a “literature of the people” under
threat not just from the corrosive influence of time but also from exter-
nal threats – indeed, “ferocious enemies.”^16 Georgians valorized their
own mountain peoples such as the Khevsur, whose history they por-
trayed as a story of beleaguered but preserved Georgian custom and
culture under threat from the vicious Kistebi (Chechens).^17 The
Georgian experience on the frontier of Islam shaped the imperial pur-
pose and mission in the North Caucasus.
The visualization of empire thus emerged as a product of multiple
influences and contexts. The frontier itself was most important. Local