Born in the Chechen aul Avtury, Mitayev was educated at a madrasah in Grozny and, in 1912, founded a similar school in his native village.

In 1919 he forged an alliance with the Bolsheviks against Denikin's White forces provided the Bolsheviks would guarantee Chechen autonomy and Muslim religious practices within a Soviet system.

Mitayev himself joined the Communist party and became a member of the Chechen revkom.

Mitayev's cooperation with the Soviets ended in 1923, when he declared a jihad to the Bolsheviks and attempted a coup.

In April 1924 he was arrested as a "counter-revolutionary", "saboteur", and "clerical bourgeois nationalist" and was accused of preparing a joint Georgian-Chechen rebellion against the Soviet rule.