The Russo-Ottoman struggle over the support of the Muslims of Southern Caucasus in the 1890s

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Russo-Ottoman conflict spread over centuries of wars and campaigns between wars. This article delves into one of those campaigns, which took place in the Southern Caucasus in the 1890s. In that decade, the Muslim population of that region found themselves being courted by both the Ottoman and Russian empires, each pursuing its own interests against the other. This struggle was set in the general historical context of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, but the Muslim population of the Southern Caucasus were quite different to those from the north. These differences, combined with Russia’s bitter experience with the Muslims of the Northern Caucasus, necessitated the adoption of a more flexible policy towards the Muslims of the South, especially in the face of Ottoman endeavours to win over their active support in the accelerating Russo-Ottoman tension, which in 1914 resulted in yet another war. The article offers a glimpse into this flexible policy and into the complex picture of dependence and patronage, of ruler and ruled, between the Russian government and the local Muslim population.