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Authors: Oliver Bullough
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themselves.â
The next weekend, she was due to attend a meeting of a thousand or so elders from the region, where they would discuss, according to the invitation, âkeeping the culture alive, making sure shooting in the air at weddings is stopped, and that no alcohol is consumedâ.
âThey have tried to do this outside the official societies, so that no politics is involved. The problem is though that everyone likes to speak, and if you give them the time, then all thousand people will speak,â she said.
The Circassiansâ tradition of natural democracy, of allowing anyone to speak who felt he had something to say, was remarked on wonderingly in the nineteenth century, and has survived over the centuries. Although the Circassians might bemoan the decline of habze and their traditions, they are clearly still alive in the modern world.
âPeople from Dubze are very brave, very brave. Some people think this is mafia but it is not, we are just brave. If I have a problem on the street, then it can be solved by the family but that does not mean we are mafia. If there are problems the elders will say, âYou are Circassian, how can you do this?â We solve most problems without the police. It is the same if you are poor, you will not ask for money but people will help you, we help each other,â said Altan.
What she told me reminded me of something, but it was only later I remembered a story I had heard in Israel, when I had asked why there was no theft in the Circassian villages.
It turned out that there had been a spate of thefts in Kfar-Kama some fifteen or twenty years before, which had initially confused a community where people leave their doors open and are not used to things going missing. After two weeks, the villagers realized what was happening and caught the thief, who was a Bedouin.
âThey did not involve the police. No, he got what he deserved. After he was released, his mouth was the only bit of him still working. We have not had a theft since,â I was told.
Circassians, I thought, are wonderful people to be friends with. But I would not like to fall out with them.
3.
I Give Thee That Little Bird
Some 170 years before me, two other British men were wandering wide-eyed through the Circassian world, trying to make sense of the strange culture that surrounded them. These were John Longworth and James Bell, and they had come on a mission.
A friend of theirs and a minor British diplomat, David Urquhart, had formulated his own foreign policy and, with great self-confidence, had set out to implement it by trying to provoke a war between London and St Petersburg. The plan involved entrapping the Russians into seizing a British ship (the Vixen ) trading with the Circassians, and thus forcing London to intervene to secure Circassian independence. Circassian freedom would ensure the Ottoman Empire would be safe from Russian expansion, which would in turn guarantee the British hold on India.
The strategic clash created by the contradictions between Ottoman weakness, British imperialism and Russian expansion was the same one that would spark the Crimean War a couple of decades later, but that does not mean the plan was sensible. It was barmy and years ahead of its time. That did not bother Urquhart, however.
The Scot was a strangely persuasive man, and his position in the British embassy in Istanbul allowed him to come dangerously close to succeeding in his warmongering. Notes of protest were exchanged between the British and Russians over the ship. But sense prevailed, the war was avoided, and Urquhart was left as a footnote to history, rather than as the great strategic visionary that he believed himself to be.
But that was not before he had sent his two friends to Circassia to be ready to welcome the British troops when they came, and thanks to them we have a clear description of what Circassia was like before the disaster of 1864 scattered the nation across the Middle
The next weekend, she was due to attend a meeting of a thousand or so elders from the region, where they would discuss, according to the invitation, âkeeping the culture alive, making sure shooting in the air at weddings is stopped, and that no alcohol is consumedâ.
âThey have tried to do this outside the official societies, so that no politics is involved. The problem is though that everyone likes to speak, and if you give them the time, then all thousand people will speak,â she said.
The Circassiansâ tradition of natural democracy, of allowing anyone to speak who felt he had something to say, was remarked on wonderingly in the nineteenth century, and has survived over the centuries. Although the Circassians might bemoan the decline of habze and their traditions, they are clearly still alive in the modern world.
âPeople from Dubze are very brave, very brave. Some people think this is mafia but it is not, we are just brave. If I have a problem on the street, then it can be solved by the family but that does not mean we are mafia. If there are problems the elders will say, âYou are Circassian, how can you do this?â We solve most problems without the police. It is the same if you are poor, you will not ask for money but people will help you, we help each other,â said Altan.
What she told me reminded me of something, but it was only later I remembered a story I had heard in Israel, when I had asked why there was no theft in the Circassian villages.
It turned out that there had been a spate of thefts in Kfar-Kama some fifteen or twenty years before, which had initially confused a community where people leave their doors open and are not used to things going missing. After two weeks, the villagers realized what was happening and caught the thief, who was a Bedouin.
âThey did not involve the police. No, he got what he deserved. After he was released, his mouth was the only bit of him still working. We have not had a theft since,â I was told.
Circassians, I thought, are wonderful people to be friends with. But I would not like to fall out with them.
3.
I Give Thee That Little Bird
Some 170 years before me, two other British men were wandering wide-eyed through the Circassian world, trying to make sense of the strange culture that surrounded them. These were John Longworth and James Bell, and they had come on a mission.
A friend of theirs and a minor British diplomat, David Urquhart, had formulated his own foreign policy and, with great self-confidence, had set out to implement it by trying to provoke a war between London and St Petersburg. The plan involved entrapping the Russians into seizing a British ship (the Vixen ) trading with the Circassians, and thus forcing London to intervene to secure Circassian independence. Circassian freedom would ensure the Ottoman Empire would be safe from Russian expansion, which would in turn guarantee the British hold on India.
The strategic clash created by the contradictions between Ottoman weakness, British imperialism and Russian expansion was the same one that would spark the Crimean War a couple of decades later, but that does not mean the plan was sensible. It was barmy and years ahead of its time. That did not bother Urquhart, however.
The Scot was a strangely persuasive man, and his position in the British embassy in Istanbul allowed him to come dangerously close to succeeding in his warmongering. Notes of protest were exchanged between the British and Russians over the ship. But sense prevailed, the war was avoided, and Urquhart was left as a footnote to history, rather than as the great strategic visionary that he believed himself to be.
But that was not before he had sent his two friends to Circassia to be ready to welcome the British troops when they came, and thanks to them we have a clear description of what Circassia was like before the disaster of 1864 scattered the nation across the Middle
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