Taxation

The amanat-and-tribute system of Pullo, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line (a chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), imposed a tribute on the seized auls of Chechnya. Pullo in a memorandum of 1840: "As the highland communities were subjugated, each handed over amanats, paid a tribute of one silver ruble per saklia, handed over all Russian captives held by it" (saklia - a highlander's house: the tribute was levied on every house; amanats - hostages whom the empire took away from the auls to control them)^[1]. The 1840 register of the highland peoples, published in the documentary collection «Движение горцев северо-восточного Кавказа в 20-50 гг. XIX века» together with Pullo's memorandum, calls the tribute a punishment outright: the Qachqalyq people, the Michik Chechens and the Aukhovites (Chechen communities of eastern Chechnya) "pay a tribute imposed on them as punishment for repeated revolts", and the Chechens living beyond the Sunzha river, "as punishment for revolt, have been burdened with a tribute"^[1]. The money was squeezed out regularly: general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line and Pullo's superior, in a report to the empire's Minister of War Chernyshev of 23 March 1840, named the regular payment of tributes a sign of the "tranquility" that had set in - the report lists the "regular payment of tributes and duties" weeks before the uprising^[2]. Muhammad Tahir al-Qarakhi, the chronicler of Shamil (Shamil - imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest), named this exaction - one ruble from every house and one gun from every ten houses - as the reason the Chechens called upon Shamil.