no hope of resisting the Russians when Aqa Mohammad was far away in
Khorasan. Therefore, he submitted to the Russians. In addition, many
khans did not see Russia as a benefactor. Above all, they feared that
Zubov intended to overthrow them and persecute Islam while favor-
ing the Armenians. It is not surprising that they suspected this when
Zubov did oust the first khan he encountered, Sheikh 'Ali, and de-
manded that Russian garrisons be allowed into the citadels of the
various capital cities at the same time. Archbishop Argutinskii-Dol-
gorukov did his best to offend Derbenti Muslims.
The Zubov campaign had little impact on the Caucasians in the
short run. The Russian occupation lasted less than a year, in some
places only a few months; in other places there were no Russian
garrisons at all. It brought few changes except when one member
of a ruling family was substituted for another. The sedentary inhabi-
tants had little opportunity to voice their preferences and, living un-
armed in walled settlements at the mercy of Russian artillery, could
not risk an armed contest with the Russians. Some peasants in Qob-
beh fled to the forests and mountains, from which they staged guer-
rilla raids. More opposition came from nomadic tribal cavalry living
in the mountains of Derbent, Shirvan, and Shakki. When Aqa Mo-
hammad returned to the Caucasus in 1797, all the khans, except
Ebrahim Khalil of Qarabagh and Salim of Shakki, submitted to him.
The Qarabaghis overthrew their khan and submitted to the Qajar
ruler. Salim had obtained power two years earlier by persuading
Aqa Mohammad to oust the current khan of Shakki. Aqa Moham-
mad learned later that he had been tricked by false evidence and in
1797 reinstated the man he had ousted.
The Russians themselves, not the khans, were their own worst
enemies in 1796. The combination of inadequate information and
terrible planning made it harder for Valerian Zubov to accomplish his
objectives. Only luck saved him from any major calamities. The years
of warfare, famine, and disease in the region; the miscarriage of sev-
eral anti-Russian plans; the failure of the Ottomans to capitalize on
the situation; and the preoccupation of Aqa Mohammad in Khorasan
made it possible for the Russians to have some success in spite of
their mistakes. Like many of the campaigns of the Russo-Iranian War
a decade later, Zubov's triumphs only narrowly escaped being disas-
ters. The expedition had too few troops to garrison even a small frac-
tion of the projected area of operation. The further Zubov advanced,
the more troops he had to assign to protect the rear. Even though
there were recent published descriptions of the eastern Caucasus,
Zubov was not prepared for the terrain he encountered. The narrow
Russian Expansion under Catherine the Great 41