Between Love and Honor

Начало книги

The story of Jamal Eddin Shamil, eldest son of the third imam of Dagestan and Chechnya, a man caught between two cultures, two faiths, and two loyalties, is true. I have chosen to write it as a novel in order to more fully flesh out—in dialogue, action, and sequence—the fruits of my three years of research in Russia and the Caucasus. The reader can be certain that the dates, the sequence of events, and the actions of the main characters cleave to the facts and closely follow the sources that I uncovered in the archives.

At the end of the text, the reader will find a small glossary of Caucasian terms, a list of main characters and place names, and a short bibliography.

As the coffin of Czar Nicholas I descends into the crypt of the Romanovs in Saint Petersburg, two groups of horsemen gather on the banks of the Mitchik River, in Chechnya.

On one side of the river stand the warriors of the imam Shamil, the Lion of Dagestan, who has been resisting the Russian invader and decimating his immense Christian army for the past thirty years. The sounds of the horses’ pawing and the clicks of loaded rifles are the only signs of his troops, most of whom are hiding among the trees of the forest, which ends abruptly at the riverbank. The imam’s personal guard stands in a row along the shore. With their long beards, shaved heads, and lambskin hats and black coats, sabers slung bandolier-style across their shoulders, and banners held at arm’s length, they are the warriors of Allah. They surround four heavy canvas-covered wagons, which reveal no sign of life within. A splendid white stallion in silver-trimmed tack, riderless, paws the gravel at the riverbank nervously.

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