24 Orientalism and Empireand 10,000 Kabards from 186 0 to 1861. Adygei exile included 4,300
Abaza families in 1861–63 (from the Kyzylbekov, Tamov, Bagov,
Bashilbai, and Shakhgirei tribes), 4,000 Natukhais, 2,000 Temirgoi
families, 600 Beslenei families, and 30 0 Bzhedugs. In the winter of
186 4 there was extensive Ubykh and Abadzeg emigration, and by this
time the Natukhais and the Shapsugs had virtually disappeared.^78 In
186 5 some 5,000 Chechen families from the northeast Caucasus were
sent to Turkey. They became subject to conflict between Russian and
Turkish officials, who argued about their eventual destination. The
Russians wanted them to continue into Anatolia, while the Ottoman
officials initially hoped to keep them near the Russian border. Viceroy
Grand Duke Mikhail accused the Ottoman officials of being unpre-
pared to supervise the mountaineers after they crossed the border.
While mountaineers waited for instructions and settlement prepara-
tion from Ottoman officials near the village of Musha, in search of
food they began to threaten the local inhabitants. Captain Zelenyi, a
Russian official assigned to oversee the process in Turkey, actually in-
tervened to convince Turkish officials not to raise arms against the
mountaineers. A similar event led to the death of at least fifteen
Karabulaks (Ingush) and several Turks.^79 Russians later in the cen-
tury often emphasized the difficulties encountered by mountaineers
as they attempted to rebuild their communities in the Ottoman
Empire. North Caucasus mountaineers eventually settled in Turkey,
Syria, Jordan, Libya, and even Egypt.^80
Military officials were proud of their concern for the mountaineers
in the process of exile. The regime formed a special commission to
oversee the process, tried to aid the mountaineers in their sale of be-
longings, and helped the most impoverished mountaineers to pay for
the price of the journey.^81 Other witnesses, however, emphasized, a
different story. “A striking spectacle greeted our eyes on our route
back,” wrote N. Drozdov of a village thirty versts from the Black Sea:
“the scattered corpses of children, women, and old people, half torn
apart by dogs, emigrants emaciated from hunger, barely supported
by their weak legs, falling from exhaustion, but still alive and repre-
senting booty for the starving dogs.”^82 Terrified by the rapid success
of General Evdokimov and the Caucasus Army, the majority of the
mountaineers gathered in dire conditions at the mouths of the moun-
tain rivers that flowed into the Black Sea, such as the Shakhe,
Vardane, and Sochi. Women and children, Drozdov noted, bore a dis-
proportionate share of the toll of hunger, disease, and the effects of
the war.^83 The date of 20 February 1864 was set as the deadline for
their emigration, and the starving and beleaguered mountaineers
were faced with rapidly falling prices as they sold what remained of