in the campaign “Suppression of the 1860-1861 uprisings, the execution of Baysangur, and the shooting of the zikrists near Shali (1860-1864)”
Baysangur of Benoy was taken prisoner by the troops on 17 February 1861: General Kempfert reported to the Minister of War on 28 February - "...Despite desperate resistance, [we] took prisoner Baysungur and four of his companions... the families of Baysungur and Sultan-Murad were also seized — 14 people in all"[1]. In March 1861 a field court-martial in Khasav-Yurt sentenced him to hanging; the historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova relays the Chechen oral tradition about the execution: none of those standing by the gallows agreed to act as executioner, and "only after the officers in charge of the execution offered a monetary reward to a volunteer executioner did one of the Dagestanis standing in the crowd take this role upon himself"[2]; Baysangur's family and sons were exiled to Siberia[1]. The leaders of the uprising who surrendered - Atabi-Mullah Atayev, naib of Lesser Chechnya, whom the imperial papers call Atabai (14 November 1861), and Uma Duyev (14 December 1861) - Emperor Alexander II ordered exiled to the inner provinces - separately: "Uma... is to be sent to reside in provinces distant from the Caucasus... but on the condition that he not be in the same town as Atabai"[3]. Sheikh Kunta-Haji, a Muslim preacher who taught that God should be remembered aloud, in chorus, with singing and circling in a ring (such remembrance is called zikr - hence the imperial nickname of his followers, the zikrists), who had been under permanent police surveillance since the beginning of 1862, was arrested on 3 January 1864 in Serzhen-Yurt by order of the Viceroy. His followers had a single demand: "The main demand of the zikrists, as before, was the immediate release of those arrested and an end to new arrests. In that case the Kunta-Haji followers promised to obey the authorities once more"[4]. The head of the Chechen district, General Tumanov, rejected the demands and pressed for the surrender of those who had escaped arrest; on 18 January 1864, near Shali, the matter ended in a shooting. Those who came had left their firearms behind deliberately - the decision to go with blades alone is attributed to Machik-Mullah, who announced that Kunta-Haji, having appeared to him, would fill the soldiers' rifles with water[4]. The historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "the Kunta-Haji followers advanced on the dense squares of regular troops with nothing but shashkas and daggers in their hands. Tumanov allowed them to attack, and then gave the order to open rifle and artillery fire"; they put the dead at "over 150"[4]. The historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova gives the count at the site of the slaughter: "164 dead remained at the site of the clash. Among those bayoneted there proved to be 5 women's bodies"; the detachment's losses - 8 dead and 33 wounded[2]. Eighteen people were exiled in this case - the sheikh himself, indefinitely, to Ustyuzhna in Novgorod province; his brother Movsar - to the Vyborg fortress; the vekils, the sheikh's trusted men, - to Smolensk province; nine rank-and-file zikrists - to fortress labor with subsequent settlement in Siberia[4][2]. In the archival register of persons under surveillance in Novgorod province for 1865 the sheikh is entered in a single line: "Chechen Shikh-Kunty. Age 35. Exiled for spreading the fantastical teaching of 'zikr'... Receives 1 rub. 80 kop. a month"[2]. Having lived in exile a little over two years, Kunta-Haji died of starvation[4].