Hamzat Bek

Unlike his predecessor Ghazi Muhammad and his successor Shamil, Hamzat Bek was the son of an Avar nobleman and was not a member of the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya Sufi order.

Hamzat Bek was born in 1789 in the large village of Hutsal or Gotsatl in the Avar Khanate to a noble father and a commoner mother.

He spent a few years of his adolescence at the khan's residence in Khunzakh, where Ali Sultan Ahmad's widow Pakhu Bike arranged for his education.

[1][b] In late 1829–early 1830, Ghazi Muhammad was proclaimed imam (religious and political leader) of Dagestan and he declared the beginning of a holy war (jihad or ghazawat) against the Russians.

[2] He became one of Ghazi Muhammad's main commanders and led one of the counterattacks against the Russians after they conquered Jar-Balakan (south of Dagestan, in modern-day Azerbaijan) in 1830.

[6] Many of Ghazi Muhammad's followers had abandoned the movement shortly before or after his death, and few local elites initially accepted Hamzat Bek's authority.

[8] In the summer of 1832, he made another incursion into Kakheti and conducted punitive attacks on Avar and Dargin communities in central Dagestan that had cooperated with the Russians.

[9] Unlike his predecessor and successor, who relied mainly on the uzden ("free") communities and rarely on the nobility, Hamzat Bek focused on gaining the support of the royal family of the Avar Khanate, with which he had personal connections.

[1] The assassination was an act of revenge for the destruction of the Avar ruling family, as Uthman and Hajji Murad had been "milk brothers" of the khan.

However, Hajji Ali, an eyewitness to the Caucasian War, describes Hamzat Bek as "learned and wise, and no one in Daghestan could rival his gallantry."

Moshe Gammer argues that Hamzat Bek's importance has been overlooked in both Dagestani and Russian sources, partly because he is "overshadowed" by the other two imams.

Gammer stresses the significance of Hamzat Bek's swift succession after Ghazi Muhammad's death in preserving the jihad movement.

He also notes the importance of Hamzat Bek's destruction of the Avar khanate, which allowed the imamate to spread its control over all of central Dagestan and made war with the Russians unavoidable.

[15] Because of Hamzat Bek's noble origins and reliance on the nobility, Michael Kemper characterizes his reign as "a brief 'aristocratic' interlude between the charismatic leaders Ghāzī-Muḥammad and Shāmil who stood for the interests of the 'free' Avar communities and relied on noblemen only in certain cases.