We publish here posthumously one of the last unpublished articles by the great historian of the Caucasus, Moshe Gammer (1950–2013). Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, Gammer specialized in the history of Muslim resistance to Russian rule in the Northern Caucasus, to which subject his best-known works, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan and The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule, were dedicated. The current article was originally written in 2010 for submission to Europe-Asia Studies, but could not be completed for health reasons. The text has been left unabridged, and the author’s original preferences in terminology and toponymic spellings have been retained. The editors thank Ruth Frankl-Gammer and Dr Chen Bram for their kind assistance in publishing this article.