Population Transfer

Abstract

The half century before World War I saw mass population movements from Russia to the Middle East. One of the largest of these was the migration of Muslims (muhajirs) from Russia’s North Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire. This chapter focuses on one strand of this mass migration: after anticolonial unrest in the region of Chechnya in 1864, the Russian and Ottoman governments cooperated in resettling thousands of Chechen Muslims in the Ottoman domains. The chapter juxtaposes and analyzes three documents: 1865 reports by the Russian ambassador in Istanbul, Nikolai Ignat’ev, and by the chief of staff of the Caucasus Army, Aleksei Kartsov; and Chechen migrant leader Jantemir’s 1870 petition in Arabic to the Ottoman Interior Ministry. These documents offer insights into how officials in the two empires negotiated the resettlement of Chechens and the migrants’ experience of being moved.