Baratachvili, Nina (Princess Nina Baratov): Born in 1837, niece of Grigol and Elico Orbeliani. In 1854, at age seventeen, she was taken hostage with the entire household of Sinandali in a raid by Shamil’s men.
Bariatinsky (Prince Alexander Ivanovitch): Caucasian viceroy who accepted the surrender of Shamil at Gunib in 1859.
Barti Khan: Shamil’s maternal uncle, assisted Shamil at Akulgo.
Bashlik-Atslikar: battle near Oguzlu in Turkey, where Varenka’s husband, Elico Orbeliani, was killed in 1854.
Buxhöwden, Count Sergei Petrovich (1828–1899): close friend of Jamal Eddin. They met in the First Cadet Corps. On January 15, 1855, Buxhöwden was among those who accompanied him to the Caucasus.
Burnaya: “The Stormy,” a Russian fort.
Chavchavadze, David Alexandrovitch (Tiflis, August 26, 1817–November 15, 1884): only son of Georgian poet Prince Alexander Garsevanovitch Chavchavadze and Princess Salomé Ivanova Orbeliani. His famous sister Ekaterina married Prince Dadiani and became sovereign of Mingrelia. His sister Nino married Griboledov, his sister Sonia, Baron Nicholas. David inherited the domain of Sinandali, from which his wife, Anna, and his entire family were kidnapped by Shamil July 4, 1854. He and Jamal Eddin became close friends during the few weeks they spent together at the Russian camp while negotiations for the exchange took place.
Chernychev, Alexander: became Nicholas I’s minister of war, after Czar Alexander died in his arms. All administrative questions concerning Jamal Eddin were addressed to him.
Chechnya: Caucasian region bordering on Dagestan.
Chirquata: Dagestani village, dependent upon Shamil.
Chuanete: Shamil’s fourth spouse, his favorite after Fatima’s death. Born in 1825, she died in 1876.
Constantine Nicolaïevitch (1827–1892): grand duke, second son of Nicholas I and younger brother of Alexander II.
Constantine Pavlovitch: grand duke, one of Nicholas I’s two older brothers, viceroy of Poland, who died of cholera during the Polish uprising of 1831. He should have succeeded Alexander I but abdicated the throne in favor of Nicholas I, a power vacuum that led to the Decembrist revolt.
Cooper, James Fenimore (1789–1851): one of Jamal Eddin’s two favorite novelists (the other being Sir Walter Scott).
Cadet Corps of Moscow (September–December 1839): after his abduction, Jamal Eddin was placed in the primary school division of the Cadet Corps of Moscow. He stayed there only three months, since there was no mullah to provide him with religious training.
Cottage of Peterhof-Alexandria: domain of the imperial family overlooking the Gulf of Finland, where Czarina Alexandra gathered her family and intimate friends. Jamal Eddin spent his summer vacations there from 1846 to 1850.
Dagestan: region of the Caucasus bordering on Chechnya.
Daniyal Bek: sultan of Elisou, one of the pillars of the Russian alliance, who rallied to Shamil in 1844. His daughter married Jamal Eddin’s younger brother, Mohammed Ghazi, in 1851.
Dargo-Veden: Shamil’s headquarters in Chechnya, where he held the princesses captive in 1854–1855.
Dengan: father of Shamil, free man of Ghimri, in Dagestan.
Dmitriev-Mamonov, Hippolite Alexandrovitch: widower of Praskovia Nevedomskaya in 1860, remarried Jamal Eddin’s former fiancée, Elizaveta Petrovna Olenina.
Engelhardt, Baron R. Antonovitch: married the widow of Dmitriev-Mamonov, Elizaveta Petrovna Olenina, former fiancée of Jamal Eddin.
Fézé, General Karl Karlovitch: butcher of Ashilta, Akulgo, and Tiliq in 1837.
Fatima: Jamal Eddin’s mother, first wife of Shamil, born at Untsukul in 1810, died at Alusind in 1845.
First Cadet Corps of Saint Petersburg: military school where Jamal Eddin spent eight years, from August 25, 1841 to June 9, 1849. The school is located on Vassilievsky Island in Saint Petersburg, a short distance from Alexey Olenin’s world at the Beaux-Arts Academy.
Garashkiti: village in greater Chechnya where Shamil and his family found refuge after their flight from Akulgo in 1839.
Ghimri: native town of Shamil and Jamal Eddin, besieged and razed in October 1832, then razed a second time after Shamil’s election to imam in 1834, and a third time by Shamil himself, in reprisal for the complicity of the inhabitants during the siege of Akulgo in 1839.
Glinka, Mikhaïl Ivanovitch (1804–1857): composer whose operas glorified Nicholas I, in particular A Life for the Czar, written in 1836, and Ruslan and Ludmilla (Pushkin’s heroes), in 1842.
Grabbe, Count Pavel Khristoforovitch (1789–1875): commander-in-chief of troops in the Caucasus in 1838, responsible for the abduction of Jamal Eddin at Akulgo in late August 1839. Recalled from the Caucasus, he was without a command for six years, then returned to service for the Hungarian uprising of 1849. He received a diamond-studded saber for his actions and ultimately became a member of the State Council.
Gramov, Isaac: Isaï Bey, Armenian, member of the general staff of Prince Grigol Orbeliani of Georgia. He served as interpreter during the exchange negotiations in 1855 and would again serve as Shamil’s interpreter at Kaluga.
Griboyedov, Alexander Sergueïevitch (Moscow 1795–Tehran 1829): In 1824 he wrote his play The Woes of Wit, which was performed in 1831. He married Georgian Princess Nino Chavchavadze (1812–1857), Prince David’s youngest sister, August 22, 1828, and was appointed Russian ambassador to Tehran, where he was subsequently assassinated.
Grosny: “The Terrifying,” Russian fort built by General Yermolov in 1819, at the same time as the famous military road to Georgia.
Gruzinskaya, Anna Ilyinitchna (Anna Chavchavadze) (1828–1905): eldest daughter of Ilya Grigoriyevitch Gruzinsky and Anastasia Grigoryevna, née Obolensky. In 1848, she married Prince David Chavchavadze, eleven years her senior, in Moscow. On July 4, 1854, she was abducted by Shamil at her home of Sinandali.
Gruzinskaya, Varenka Ilyinitchna (Varenka Orbeliani) (1831–1884): second daughter of Ilya Grigoriyevitch Gruzinsky and Anastasia Grigoryevna, née Obolensky. In May 1852, she married Prince Elico Orbeliani. He was thirty-six, she just twenty-one. In 1853 she gave birth to twins, only one of whom, George, survived. Her husband was killed at Oguzlu December 8, 1853. Shamil kidnapped her, with George, July 4, 1854. She remained in his custody until March 10, 1855. She died March 30, 1884. George was her only child.
Gruzinski (of Georgia): family of the direct descendants of the last king of Georgia, George XII (born 1746, died 1800), who sought Russia’s protection from Turkish and Persian invaders. Disregarding their pact, Russia simply annexed Georgia. His second wife, his widow Mariam Tsitsishvili (1768–1850), assassinated General Lazarev who had come to arrest her, in 1802. She was deported to Russia, then pardoned. She died at the age of eighty in 1850 and was buried at Tiflis with all the honors due her station.
Gruzinski, Colonel-Prince Elizbar (Ilya) (1790–1854): youngest son of George XII, last king of Georgia, and Queen Mariam. In 1827, at the age of thirty-seven, he married the daughter of Prince Gregory Petrovitch Obolensky, Princess Anastasia Grigoryevna Petrovitch Obolenskaya, who was born in Moscow September 25, 1805. The couple had five sons and eight daughters, including Anna Chavchavadze and Varenka Orbeliani.