The nineteenth century marks the beginning of a new era in the history of Georgia’s relations with the Islamic world. These relations were shaped above all by Georgia’s incorporation into the Russian Empire, which gradually lead to a weakening of Ottoman and Iranian influence in western and eastern Georgia, respectively. In this essay I examine various aspects of imperial Russian policy in Georgia. In particular, I focus on Russian policy toward Georgia’s Muslim populations, as well as the political, social, and cultural activities of these populations. The following discussion and analysis is based on research conducted in Georgia’s state archives located in Tbilisi and Batumi, as well as on unpublished manuscript diaries, memoirs, statistical books, and newspaper articles published in the nineteenth century. I begin by briefly discussing the kind of archival materials that are relevant to my research, and follow with an analysis of the peculiarities of tsarist religious policy in Georgia.
The Central State Archive of the Ajarian Autonomous Republic (hereafter, CSAAAR) in Batumi is extremely rich in materials pertaining to Russian policy toward Georgia’s Muslims, particularly concerning the muhajiroba, that is, the emigration of the Muslim population of Ajaria to the Ottoman Empire following the incorporation of the region into the Russian Empire by the terms of the Treaty of Berlin of 1878. Also preserved in this archive are documents concerning Ottoman policy toward the region prior to and after the cession of Ajaria to Russia; the region’s economy and social situation; the degree of religiosity of the local population; and the efforts of the Russian government to convert the region’s Muslims.
In addition to these topics, there is a significant amount of interesting information on regional affairs. For example, I was surprised to find evidence of the existence of a Shiite mosque in Batumi; I even found a photograph of the imam of this mosque.^[1] Historians have tended to assume that Ajaria’s population was entirely Sunni, but the existence of this mosque in its major town suggests the presence of a Shiite community there. The existence of this mosque is best explained by the fact that in the second half of the nineteenth century Georgia’s territory was often a transit route for Persian subjects going on pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj. The route via Baku–Tbilisi–Batumi in this period was much safer for Iranians than the traditional routes across the Middle East. Several Iranian businessmen maintained residences in Batumi, which became increasingly important as a commercial center with the opening of the railway connecting Baku and Batumi in 1883. Indeed, the Transcaucasian Railway provided by far the least expensive means of transportation for Russia’s hajjis from Central Asia and the Caucasus. The advantages of this route and means of transportation became quickly apparent to hajjis from Iran, Afghanistan, and India as well.^[2] Also preserved in this archive are important materials concerning early Soviet policy toward Ajaria’s Muslims.^[3]
One document preserved at the CSAAAR throws light on the publication in 1909 of a Georgian translation of the Koran from French. On the one hand, it provides evidence that the publication was intended for distribution among Ajaria’s Georgian-speaking Muslim population. On the other hand, it suggests that the same population viewed the publication suspiciously, seeing in it an attempt by Orthodox officials to change the content of the central religious text of Islam with the aim of diminishing its role among Ajarian Muslims.^[4] Interestingly, Georgia’s Muslim populations today remain suspicious of central and regional authorities for similar reasons.
Statistical data concerning the Muslim population in Tbilisi gubernia are preserved in the Central State Historical Archive of Georgia (hereafter, CSHAG). For example, Dmitri Bakradze and Ekvtime Takhaishvili document the extent of Christian traditions in their descriptions of Ajaria and parts of the Ottoman Empire inhabited by Georgians. Their papers have been only partially published.^[5] Also preserved there are the papers of Mate Albutashvili, an Orthodox priest of Kist^[6] (i.e., Vainakh) origin who described different aspects of religion among the Kists, including attempts by imperial authorities to convert Muslim and pagan Kists. There are also some important materials concerning relations between Sunni and Shiite communities in Tbilisi; various aspects of Russian imperial policy toward the Muslims of eastern Georgia; the cultural and educational activities of the Muslim population (especially the Persian community of Tbilisi); and the activities of Persian editorial houses in Tbilisi.
Other documents throw light onto hitherto unknown aspects of life in Tbilisi. In one document concerning the death of the head of the Shiite community in Tbilisi, Sheikh ul-Islam Akhund-Zadeh, we learn that his authority extended beyond the city’s Muslim community to the entire population of Tbilisi, and that he did much to prevent bloodshed between Armenians and “Tatars” (read: Muslims) in the early 1890s. This information opened my eyes to the existence of tension between Tbilisi’s Armenian and Muslim communities, a reality I had not previously encountered in the city’s archives, and this is the first documentary indication of tensions between Armenians and Muslims in Tbilisi.^[7]
The National Library of Georgia houses many important collections related to these themes, including such publications as Obzor deiatel’nosti obshchestva vosstanovleniia pravoslavnogo khristianstva na Kavkavze za 1860-1910 gg. [Survey of Activity of the Society for Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus 1860-1910], Sbornik svedenii o kavkazskikh gortsakh [Collection of Information Concerning Caucasian Highlanders], Vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rosiiskoi imperii [General Census of the Population of the Russian Empire], to name only a few. Also published in nineteenth-century Tbilisi were journal and newspaper articles printed not only in Georgian and Russian but also in Persian and Azeri.

MUSLIM POPULATION OF GEORGIA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The contours of tsarist religious policy in nineteenth-century Georgia become apparent under the light of these materials. Mostly for strategic reasons, the tsarist authorities attempted to change the demographic balance in some of Georgia’s borderlands by encouraging the emigration of Christians (as they did from the Russian interior and the Ottoman Empire as well). The attempt was only partially successful, however, and was soon abandoned. By and large, the Russian imperial authorities were tolerant of Georgia’s Muslims. By the end of the imperial period, Muslims accounted for approximately 20 percent of Georgia’s population.^[8]
Historians face several challenges in studying Georgia’s Muslim populations in the nineteenth century. First, it is sometimes practically impossible to distinguish among Persians, Azeris, Turks, and other Muslims based on contemporary records. At the beginning of the century, Muslims are primarily referred to as “Tatars.” Sometimes reference is made to the “Turkish-Tatar” population.^[9] Following the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Persian wars of the nineteenth century, which resulted in the territorial expansion of the Russian Empire at the expense of its rivals and, consequently, an increase in its Muslim population, tsarist officials increasingly distinguished among Russia’s subject Muslim populations. The appellation “Tatar” in reference to Azeris was retained (Alexander Pushkin, for example, notes that the owner of Tbilisi’s famous Persian bathhouse was Persian, while the bathhouse attendant was Tatar).^[10] Also, the Russian government carried out separate censuses for Shiites and Sunnis in the second half of the nineteenth century.
What was the size of Georgia’s Muslim population in the nineteenth century? The surviving evidence makes it impossible to answer this question with absolutely certainty. It is possible to state with confidence, however, that this population grew over the course of the century. According to Konstantin Antadze’s study of Georgia’s population in the nineteenth century, the country’s Muslim population grew in relation to its total population roughly as follows: in 1801, 40,000 out of 670,000; in 1832, 36,300 out of 702,000; in 1864, 51,300 out of 1.3 million; in 1873, 54,800 out of 1.4 million; in 1886, 68,800 out of 1.6 million; and in 1897, 81,700 out of 1.8 million.^[11] According to data for 1886, Georgia’s “Tatar-Turkish” population consisted of 72.49 percent Sunnis and 27.51 percent Shiites. The Shiites primarily lived in eastern Georgia – in Tbilisi, Borchalo, Sighnaghi, and Telavi districts.^[12] Again, these are only approximate figures as censuses did not count Russia’s subjects precisely. For example, the 1832 census omitted Muslim women entirely, while later censuses undercounted them to varying degrees. There were other difficulties as well. We know that “residing without registration in Tbilisi was commonplace.”^[13] It was practically impossible to define the exact number of seasonal workers, migrant-laborers, peasants, merchants, and others, as well as members of their families, who lived on an almost permanent basis in Tbilisi but who were nonetheless considered as inhabitants of other places.
With respect to Tbilisi, as discussed above, it occupied a special place in relations between Georgia and Iran. In the nineteenth century Persians comprised the largest Muslim group in Tbilisi.^[14] Tbilisi at the beginning of the century was a relatively small town compared to what it had been in the seventeenth century (its population had declined rapidly as a result of the invasion of Agha Mohammad Khan in 1796).^[15] According to the data of 1803, “Tatars” (that is, Muslims) accounted for only 2 percent of Tbilisi’s population.^[16] A few years later, however, that number grew to 11 percent.^[17]
In 1825, Jean Françoise Gamba, the French consul in Tbilisi, estimated the city’s population to be at least 33,000. “Among them,” he writes, “500 families are Tatar and Persian; each family has at least six members.”^[18] The 1835 census, however, counted only those Muslims (still referred to as “Tatars”) who were officially registered as residing in Tbilisi, finding some 723 Muslims, or approximately 2.7 percent of the population.^[19]
By 1864, census takers were distinguishing between Persians and “Tatars,” or Azeris. Whereas Persians constituted less than 1 percent (529 individuals) of Tbilisi’s population in 1864, they accounted for some 10 percent (7,153 individuals) in 1865, according to data for that year. At the time, there were approximately 1,500 “Tatars” officially residing in Tbilisi, or just over 2 percent of its total population.^[20] The Persians had increased overall by 6,624 individuals. Among them the number of women had increased by only eight individuals, for a total of 29 women. On the one hand, these numbers testify to the limitations of census data, but on the other hand they provide sufficient basis to conjecture that Muslims temporarily residing in the city as migrant laborers and traders often married local women. This assumption is supported by the fact that later, in 1876, only 1,700 Muslim residents were recorded, while in 1899, that number climbed to over 6,000. The number of temporary Persian residents swelled in summer in connection with seasonal labor and commercial patterns.^[21] The observations of the French traveler Ernest Orsolle on the Persian population of Tbilisi in the 1880s probably reflects more accurately the reality of the city’s demographic situation: “In Tbilisi there live ten or twelve thousand Persians; part of the population might have settled here at the time of Iran’s domination over Georgia, but … it is continually renewed and enlarged by numerous Persians who come to seek their fortune in the Caucasus.”^[22]
As for the religious makeup of the city, according to official records, Muslims comprised 3.6 percent of Tbilisi’s population in 1876. Shiites accounted for 3,700 out of a total of 4,300 Muslims.^[23]
For the most part, the Persian population retained Iranian subjecthood. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine the number of Iranian subjects in the Russian Empire according to statistical data. Orsolle provides valuable information concerning Russia’s Persian subjects. “As for the Persians of Erevan province who have been the tsar’s subjects since 1828,” he notes, “they have joined the Russian army and administration voluntarily; knowledge of eastern languages makes them very useful in the Asian provinces; being adroit and intelligent the majority of them have become completely European by their habits and ideas and sometimes they reach high posts [in the tsarist military and civil administrations]; above all they are remarkable gentlemen; many of them speak French fluently.”^[24]

ACTIVITIES OF THE MUSLIM POPULATION OF TBILISI IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

As noted earlier, the Muslim population of Tbilisi in the nineteenth century was substantial.^[25] It was also ethnically quite diverse, consisting of Persians, Turkic speakers (referred to later as Azeris), Dagestanis, and Volga Tatars, among others. Of these, the most numerous were the Persians, followed by Azeris. Both were Shiites, whereas the other Muslims in Tbilisi at the time were Sunnis, and relations between the two communities were tense.^[26] They attended separate mosques, occupied separate sections in the Muslim cemetery, and avoided contact with each other.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Russian imperial authorities tried to win the confidence of Georgia’s Muslims, which led them to cultivate relations with the Muslim clergy in particular. An Islamic seminary for the preparation of mullahs was opened in Tbilisi with state support, and mullahs educated at the seminary tended to support the state.^[27] By the time Soviet authority was established in Georgia, there were 59 mosques serving the Azeri community in the country, with some 500 mullahs conducting religious services in one district alone (Borchalo district, which was populated mostly by Azeris). By then, muridism^[28] had become widespread among Georgia’s Azeris due to the influence of North Caucasian Muslims. There were also numerous madrasas serving the Azeri community, although they provided only a very rudimentary education; at the beginning of the Soviet era, 96.3 percent of the Azeris in Georgia were illiterate.^[29]
The Iranians represented the most numerous Muslim community of Tbilisi. Among Iranian subjects, merchants enjoyed the highest social status, followed by artisans and laborers. Of the Iranians in Tbilisi, Orsolle writes “the majority of these Iranians are businessmen and they are distinguished by their intelligence. We should trust the saying: ‘it takes two Jews to rob one Armenian, and it takes two Armenians to rob one Persian’.”^[30] Important for this community was the “Blue” mosque, a superb example of Muslim architecture, which was built by order of Shah Abbas I (Shah Ismail I, according to other data). Unfortunately, it was demolished during the Communist rule in 1951.
Apart from this mosque there was a Sunni mosque as well (however, the data of 1803 record a single Shiite mosque). According to the German author Johann Anton Güldenstädt, who traveled in Georgia in the early 1770s, the city’s “Tatar” Muslims had three mosques.^[31] According to Julius von Klaproth, who sojourned in Georgia in 1807-1808, there were two mosques in Tbilisi: one for the Persian Shiites and another for the “Tatar” Sunnis. The latter had been largely destroyed by Agha Mohammad Khan, but its beautiful minaret survived intact. It was built on the orders of the commander-in-chief of the Ottoman army, Ishak-Pasha, in 1710.^[32] According to the French Commercial Commissar in Baghdad Jean-François Rousseau, Agha Mohammad Khan destroyed two Sunni mosques in Tbilisi.^[33]
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the architecture of Tbilisi remained strongly influenced by Persian traditions. According to one traveler at the time, “For the most part, houses have the same structure as in Persia. The local houses represent more or less a quadrangle with a few built-in windows.”^[34] It is also worth noting that Persians were reputed to be the best builders in the Caucasus. For this reason, many Persian construction workers settled in Tbilisi on a temporary basis.
The residence of the Shiite leader of Transcaucasia, or Sheikh ul-Islam, was located in Tbilisi. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Sheikh ul-Islam was Abd al-Salam Akhund-Zade. His authority extended beyond Tbilisi’s Muslim community and was recognized by various segments of the city’s population. Valuable information concerning his activities is preserved in the CSAAAR: “In Tbilisi that year (1891) died the Persian clerical leader, Sheikh ul-Islam Akhund-Zade of the Caucasus, who commanded well-deserved respect not only among Muslims but also among the entire population of the city. Probably everyone remembers the effective participation of the deceased in calming down the opposing sides during the Armenian-Tatar confrontation in the city. By his preaching and his personal influence, he had helped to avert bloodshed.”^[35]
The information of the French traveler Le Baron de Baye on Akhund-Zade is also noteworthy, as it attests to his great authority with the city population on the one hand, and to a strong Persian influence on the other. He writes:

“…a visit to the spiritual leader of Transcaucasian Shiites Sheikh ul-Islam was very interesting. His name is Akhund-Zadeh. He is from Tartar [sic] Azerbaijan and is about 60 years old. He was born in Elizavetpol where he learned the Persian language, the spoken language of the educated elite of this city. He comes from a mullah family. He must be grateful to the Caucasus administrators for his appointment; therefore he can be regarded as a functionary, and he makes use of his strong influence over his coreligionists. The average income from furnished houses is twelve thousand rubles and is spent on his church and charity. Guided by the Shiites’ leader and Mr. Velichko, who had introduced me to him, I visited a Muslim cemetery (Gabristan). After showing me a house in which the dead are embalmed, I was shown some of the oldest graves. Over one of these is placed a dome inlaid with enamel. Under the dome rests Seyed, Mohamed’s descendant. The earth in front of the mausoleum was red with blood. Sheep had been sacrificed in memory of the holy man. This custom is widespread, as is lighting candles over the graves.”^[36]

Tbilisi’s Muslim community consisted of both Shiites and Sunnis. Both groups were greatly influenced by Persian culture. The Sunni leader bears a title of the mufti of Transcaucasia.
Tbilisi became increasingly Europeanized after Georgia’s incorporation into the Russian Empire. This attracted a number of Persian intellectuals. Among nineteenth-century Persian intellectuals involved in public work in Tbilisi, Fazel Khan Garusi, also known by the names of Ravi and Shaida, is worth noting. He spent the later part of his life (1838-1852) in Tbilisi and taught at Tbilisi’s first music school. In 1847 the Russian newspaper Kavkaz published his khutba, or sermon, on the occasion of the official opening of the school.^[37] Garusi, who was a well-known poet, also published school primers, including Persian and Arabic grammars, Koran commentary, and compilations of basic dogmas of the faith.
In 1821, an Iranian painter named Alaverdi arrived in Tbilisi to study lithography at the request of the heir to the Qajar throne, Abbas Mirza. It was Abbas Mirza who suggested he study the subject and sent books with lithographs from Tbilisi to Tabriz with this end in mind.^[38]
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Tbilisi became a major center of publishing Persian-language literature. There were two Persian publishing houses in the city, the “Gheirat” and “Aigrepin.” These houses published textbooks, fiction, and historical literature. There were also Iranian charity organizations: for example, the Charity of Muslim Women of the Caucasus and the Iranian Charity Organization.^[39] The Iranian traveler Iahia Doulatabad recorded that Tbilisi also played an important role as a sociopolitical center for free-thinking Iranians.^[40]
A trilingual (Azeri, Persian, and Arab) newspaper was published in Tbilisi between 1883 and 1890. And in 1903, the Azeri-language newspaper Sharqi rus began publication. As a political periodical, it can be considered second in importance after Baku’s Ekinchi.

MUSLIMS OF THE PANKISI GORGE

Georgia’s Kists (or Vainakhs) have historically lived mostly in and around the Pankisi Gorge in the northeastern part of the country. The Kists are descendants of Chechens and Ingushes who migrated to the region from the northern side of the Caucasus Mountains beginning in the 1830s.^[41] After arriving in Georgia, many Kists began acculturating to their Georgian surroundings, as suggested by the fact that many added Georgian endings to their family names (e.g., -shvili, which in Georgian means “son or daughter of”). Examples include Qavtarashvili (of Qavtar), Musashvili (of Musa), and Bakhashvili (of Bakha).^[42]
Most of the original migrants were pagan, although there were also Christian elements in their practices. Since the early Middle Ages, Georgian Christian missionaries had been disseminating both Christianity and Georgian culture among the Vainakhs, and Christian faith helps explain the close ties between Vainakhs and Georgians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^[43]
Beginning with Catherine II (r. 1762-1796), Russian imperial authorities also began actively promoting the Christianization of North Caucasian highlanders, using both financial incentives and political privileges to encourage conversion. Once in Georgia, the Kists were again pressured by state authorities to embrace Christianity – indeed in some cases to the point of coerced conversion.^[44]
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the propagation of Orthodox Christianity and Georgian culture among Kists was associated with the activities of the Society for the Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus. The Society built St. George Church in Jokolo, a Kist village, and opened several elementary schools in other Kist villages. Georgian was the language of religious service and instruction in these schools. In 1866, religious authorities in Georgia carried out a mass baptism of pagan and Muslim Kists, resulting in the majority of villagers in Jokolo and Omalo being converted to Christianity in that year. According to the Society’s own data, there were numerous baptisms of Kists between 1864 and 1910.^[45] As a result, the Islamic faith was less prevalent in Pankisi than among Chechens and Ingushes in the North Caucasus.
Nevertheless, in 1902 local Muslims began construction of a mosque in the village of Duisi, using their own money to finance the project. The imperial Russian government refused to register the mosque, however, because it was concerned about the political implications of recently converted Christian Kists returning to Islam. The village of Duisi has historically been considered an Islamic center of the Kists. M. Albutashvili, the Orthodox priest of Kist origin, considered the founders of Duisi to be Muslim “fanatics.” At the same time, he noted that despite their Muslim faith, many Kists observed Christian rites, which he believed was the religion of their ancestors.^[46]
It must also be noted that there were no traces of muridism among the Kists, which means that in contrast to the situation in Chechnya and Dagestan, the Kists in the area of the Pankisi Gorge had nothing to do with Shamil’s Caucasian Islamic Umma and the process of the introduction of “pure Islam” (or “common Islam”) into the North Caucasian region. The leader of the highlanders in the Caucasus War, Imam Shamil, strictly enforced Islamic observance in areas under his control, which some Chechens and Ingushes found oppressive and as a result fled south.^[47]
There was a kind of hybrid consciousness among the Kists: on the one hand, they had always belonged to a common Vainakh culture (in terms of their social structure, system of beliefs, rites, and common homeland); on the other, the influence of the Georgian culture (language and elements of Orthodox Christianity) had long been apparent among Kist communities.
As with Chechens and Ingushes, the religious practices of Kists were eclectic. As one authority has observed, “The Ingushes were Christians in the past. After the weakening of Christianity in the region, they revived their pagan religion and later adopted Islam, then once again Christianity, and at the end, Islam again, while at the same time preserving pagan and Christian traditions – they eat pork, celebrate holy Sundays, respect Christian churches.”^[48] The first Chechen ethnologist and historian Umalat Laudaev concluded: “As we have seen, many Chechens were Christians (kheristanash) before embracing Islam in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and they incorporated not only pagan but also Christian traditions into their Islamic practices.”^[49]
There was no tension between Georgians, Ossetians, and Kists over religion. In Pankisi, religious differences did not prevent these communities from maintaining common sacred places and following common rites and traditions. Even today, old Muslim Kists visit Christian holy places. “These places protect our country; how we can ignore them? ... We sacrifice animals and switch candles for them,” explained a Kist elder.^[50]
To summarize, it must be said that imperial Russian and early Soviet policy toward Georgia’s substantial Muslim minority was not static and changed depending on circumstances. On the one hand Russian authorities tried to convert Muslims and to change the demographic situation in favor of Orthodox Christianity. On the other hand, these same authorities later tried to win the loyalty of the Muslim religious leaders and their flock.