The Letters Sent to and Made Written by Sheikh Shamil

Sheikh Shamil is one of the most important people of Caucasus in the XIX century. Sheikh Shamil, who fought against to Russia with Ottoman State nearly thirty years, wrote numerous lettes to Russian generals and his own regents during this period. Of the estimated -around- three hundred letters, only one hundred have been published in Turkish. Except this work, there is no other works in Turkish language about Sheikh Shamil’s original letters. Altough the original language of the letters is Arabic, there is no other study on this issue in Arabic, except an article. In this article, there are totally fourteen letters indicated, from them seven have been sent by Sheik Shamil to his regents, four have been sent to Russian generals and two have been sent to Sheikh Shamil. In the introduction of the article information is given about tradition of the mektubat (exchanging letters) in the Caucasus and there is some brief mentioning about some works which have been done in this area and after this, information is given about Sheikh Shamil’s letters. Also, together with the transcriptions and translations information is given –as much as possible- about names of the regions and people mentioned in the letters