Hadji Murad

23 April] 1852) was an important North Caucasian Avar leader during the resistance of the peoples of Dagestan and Chechnya in 1811–1864 against the incorporation of the region into the Russian Empire.

According to the legend relayed by Leo Tolstoy, Murad's mother Patimat was originally to have been forced to give up her baby to become wet nurse for Omar.

Hadji Murad supported the Russians in their imperial ambitions for a while, to counter what he saw as the threat of Muridism in the North Caucasus.

He was allowed to move from Tbilisi to the small Muslim town of Noukkha (now Shaki, Azerbaijan) accompanied by a Cossack escort.

The Cossack guards were ambushed and killed but the town's garrison, led by Colonel Karganov, tracked Hadji Murad down.

The Russians were joined by many tribesmen, including Akhmet Khan's son, and Hadji Murad was killed in the ensuing fight.

In 2017, his descendants and activists in Dagestan petitioned to retrieve his skull from St. Petersburg and reunite it with the rest of his remains believed to be buried in modern Azerbaijan's Qakh District.

Hadji Murad