104 Orientalism and EmpireOfficials had to intervene to ensure the prosecution of men guilty of
these horrific crimes related to gender and sexuality.^92
There were limits to this colonial support for the downtrodden, of
course. Rape was a standard issue for students of customary law, but
compilers of mountaineer traditions usually stipulated that female
victims of rape needed to have their screams heard in order to lodge a
complaint.^93 And further, “Women who are well known for their de-
bauched behaviour are not allowed to charge someone with rape.”^94
Not surprisingly, rape generally went unreported. Rape victim Pati-
mat’ Suleiman testified before the Kazi-Kumukh district court that
she was reluctant to yell or scream because “if she had done this, then
Gusein Ramazan would have run away but returned later to perse-
cute her again, having threatened to kill both her and her husband if
she told him.”^95
Patimat’ only related the rape in court because she was expecting
exoneration for what she claimed was sole responsibility for the mur-
der of Gusein. Officials aware of the traditions of the blood feud,
however, felt that they were on the scent of a more complex murder,
in spite of the fact that alleged witnesses were reluctant to get in-
volved in a matter they understood to be between two families.
Where was the blood on Patimat’s dress? Was she strong enough to
deliver the six kinzhal wounds to Gusein’s chest? The court ex-
plained to Patimat’ that her status as a victim of abduction and rape
did not give her the right to murder the criminal, and it convicted her,
along with two male family members, of the crime.^96 For Patimat’,
historic “custom” justified retaliatory homicide; officials knew this
and looked to unravel the circumstances of the event and the family
conflict they knew it would provoke.
These many horrible events were not fictions of the colonial imagi-
nation. Educated officials administering the courts and following
these events were understandably disturbed by problems and rela-
tionships they were at a loss to understand. The composite picture of
mountaineer criminality that emerges from the work of the courts
and a journal such as Sbornik Svedenii o Kavkazskikh Gortsakh, however,
served to justify colonial rule and explain in a particular way the
sources and causes of crime. Impulsive, quick to anger, self-
destructive, excessively macho, and exhibiting a pronounced lack of
personal self-control, mountaineers predictably appeared incapable
of self-government. The family, the home, and women’s sexuality of-
ten provided the background and setting for this drama of mountain-
eer criminality. Ethnographers and administrators, however, did not
attribute these characteristics to the realm of “custom.” The publica-
tion of “mountaineer criminal statistics” was not a contribution to the