94 Orientalism and Empireinterior, was adjucated according to customary law. Murder was in-
creasingly resolved by the diiat, or a payment that purchased for-
giveness from a victim who possessed the right of vengeance
(krovomshchenie), a fine, or other methods. The remarkable aspect of
Dondukov-Korsakov’s presentation, a set of ideas also evident in nu-
merous ethnographic discussions, was his respect for the traditions of
mountaineer customary law. While the political purpose of his sup-
port for customary legal practices was clearly “to paralyze the influ-
ence of the main enemy of Russian power – Muslim law [the shari’a]
and its representatives,” as he put it, his position included a fair
amount of respect for the manner in which conflict was resolved in
mountaineer society. Customary law worked, and in most cases both
parties abided by its terms. “[S]uch was the internal structure of the
order of mountaineer society,” Dondukov-Korsakov explained. “It has
developed over centuries and has been preserved through the severe
measures adopted by Shamil and his predecessors.”^30 The governor-
general’s argument was a summary of ideas developed by ethnogra-
phers, whose work in turn was directly commissioned by the state.^31
High officials of the imperial state were not immune to questions of
tradition, cultural authenticity, and native soil.
As in matters of faith, imperial service, and narodnost’, the
Georgian example again contributed to the climate and tenor of im-
perial culture and empire-building in the region. Georgia’s Romantic
exploration of its own traditions produced positive portrayals of
peasant customary law practices, including those of the “mountain
Georgians” such as the Tushin and Khevsur. “[O]ne of the more orig-
inal customs” among the Khevsur, explained D. Pazliashvili in Tsno-
mis Purtseli, was their manner of resolving judicial disputes between
families.^32 To illustrate this, he told an extended story of an unin-
tended murder in a Khevsur village as a result of incorrect medical
advice. The guilty individual and his family, however, were com-
pelled yearly to sacrifice an animal in honour of the deceased and
were prevented from receiving traditional forms of village communal
labour help at key moments in the agricultural season. After a period
of time the offended family declared that the penance had been prop-
erly performed, and the village council oversaw the matter and de-
clared the case resolved. Pazliashvili portrayed customary law (adati
in Georgian) as effective and an outgrowth of centuries of historic
Georgian development.^33
In the North Caucasus a notion of “custom” was at the centre of
this colonial and administrative project on customary law. Like the
reformed courts of rural Russia, the mountain courts were to be
“based upon local customs [obychai],” as a judicial statute declared.^34