Caucasus: Mountain Men and Holy Wars [Hardcover]

Nicholas Griffin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2003

When the Russians bombed the capital of Muslim Chechnya in 2000, a city with almost a half million people was left with barely a single building intact. Rarely since Dresden and Stalingrad has the world witnessed such destruction.

The Caucasus is a jagged land. With Turkey to the west, Iran to the south, and Russia to the north, the Caucasus is trapped between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. If it didn't already possess the highest mountain range in Europe, the political pressure exerted from all sides would have forced the land to crack and rise. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Peter the Great, Hitler, and Stalin all claimed to have conquered the region, leaving it a rich, but bloody history. A borderland between Christian and Muslim worlds, the Caucasus is the front line of a fascinating and formidable clash of cultures: Russia versus the predominantly Muslim mountains.

Award-winning writer Nicholas Griffin travels to the mountains of the Caucasus to find the root of today’s conflict. Mapping the rise of Islam through myth, history, and politics, this travelogue centers on the story of Imam Shamil, the greatest Muslim warrior of the nineteenth century, who led a forty-year campaign against the invading Russians. Griffin follows Imam’s legacy into the war-torn present and finds his namesake, the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, continuing his struggle.

Enthralling and fiercely beautiful, Caucasus lifts the lid on a little known but crucially important area of world. With approximately 100 billion barrels of crude oil in the Caspian Sea combined with an Islamic religious interest, it is an unfortunate guarantee that the tragedies that have haunted these jagged mountains in the past will show no sign of abating in the near future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist Griffin (The Requiem Shark) wonderfully weaves historical facts and compelling characters in this adventure through the Caucasus region, the rugged land between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. As the current home to the republics of Georgia, Chechnya, Azerbaijan and Dagestan, the Caucasus region is politically tense and historically convoluted, but Griffin deftly explains the past and present state of the region through two parallel narratives. First, Griffin describes his travels though modern Caucasus with a small film crew as they investigate the legend of Imam Shamil, a Chechen leader who successfully fought Russian invaders during the 19th century and whose exploits continue to inspire Chechen fighters today. Griffin then recounts the many stories and myths regarding Shamil, "a figure revered throughout the region, yet virtually unknown to the West," but who was "a front-page regular of the London Times" as he fought against the Russians for almost 20 years. Through powerful descriptions of the fierce combat between Shamil and the Russians, which pitted a guerrilla forces of an indigenous people against the massed troops of an empire, Griffin shows the many ways in which "the echoes of Chechnya between the mid-19th and turn of the 21st century are remarkable." This short work is an excellent and richly detailed look at an important but relatively little-known geopolitical region.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

A great American writer, referring to his native South, said that the past is not forgotten; it's not even the past. He could easily have been referring to the tortured Caucasus. For over two millennia, the region has endured constant invasions and internecine tribal, religious, and ethnic violence. Presently, the Chechnya conflict is prominent in the news, but struggles between Armenians and Azeris, Sunnis and Shi'a, and various political factions are ongoing. Griffin journeyed to the Caucasus to examine the legacy of Iman Shamil, a legendary fighter who resisted Russian occupation in the nineteenth century. Yet, he discovered most of the current conflicts have roots even deeper in the past, and that past is alive in the hearts of Caucasians. Griffin is a fine writer with a sharp sense of both humor and irony. This memoir of his journey is filled with revealing episodes that are often amusing and sometimes frightening. This work is part history, part travelogue, and part lament for people who cherish their past but remain imprisoned by it. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312308531
• ISBN-13: 978-0312308537
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #796,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Travels in the Caucasus Mountains., February 27, 2005

By 

Kevin M Quigg (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Caucasus: Mountain Men and Holy Wars (Hardcover)

This is a relatively quick read about a film crews travels in the Caucasus Mountains. There are two stories here. The first is the story of the travels in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Chechnya. Then there is the story of Iman Shamil, a leader of the Avars and Chechens who led the revolt against the encroaching Russian Empire. Shamil led the revolt that took the Russians thirty years to suppress. This revolt was termed the Murid Wars. It cost the Russians dearly. In the end the revolt was quelled when the Russians cut down the trees that constituted the hiding places of the rebels. Both sides were vicious in dealing with the civilian population. This harks to the present conflict which is just as destructive and vicious as the one of old, if not worst. This book is interweaved with these two stories. The one distraction with this book is the exploits of Ilya, an Uzbek Jew who causes trouble with the other film crew members.
This sheds light on a little known conflict. The book is an easy read, but I wish the author had concentrated on one story, rather than two.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revealing, March 2, 2003

By 

Newton Munnow "Newton Munnow" (Atlanta, Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Caucasus: Mountain Men and Holy Wars (Hardcover)

I've always felt much safer following novelists into non-fiction than say biographers, or historians into the realms of fiction. Griffin, who has written a couple of historical novels, is on familiar, though foreign ground. His fictional stories seem to examine cruelty and hope and his first work of non-fiction is no exception. It's a mixture of many genres, all neatly rolled into a short, decisive book. The Caucasus is one of those places, much like the Balkans, which used to confuse me to the point where I'd rather turn the page. But Griffin keeps everything simple and clear, following myths, history and politics along the lines of an expanding Christian nation (Russia) and a defensive Islamic nation (what came to be called Chechnya, Dagestan and Azerbaijan). This book is obviously more topical than the author thought when starting it four years ago. My only complaint is in the inclusion of the author's own travels. At first, it didn't feel as if they merited belonging, but once you catch the writer's drift, that everything is really very close to how it was two hundred years ago, his aims become more and more apparent. Caucasus is blessedly easy to read, and that's no mean feat.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Amateur, July 15, 2005

By 

sebastienag "sebastienag" (ottawa, ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Caucasus: Mountain Men and Holy Wars (Hardcover)

The author falls into the usual mistake of Caucasus writers: he believes in the mythology of the noble mountain warrior. His search for the fantoms of Imam Shamil is pretty shallow and amateur. The reader would probably want to go for real fiction instead and buy Leslie Blanch's Sabres of Paradise. For those who want something serious (more than the boring ride of a young hype journalist in a decrepit Zhigouli across the Caucasus) go for Yo'av Karny's Highlanders.