Russian conquest of Chechnya and Dagestan

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Russian conquest of Chechnya and Dagestan
Part of the Caucasian War
The Battle of Akhatle in Dagestan, 8 May 1841
Date 1817 – 25 August 1859 Location North Caucasus Result Russian victory Posterior initiaton of Circassian genocide Territorial changes Annexation of Dagestan and Chechnya into the Russian Empire
Belligerents
Russian Empire	Caucasian Imamate
Commanders and leaders
Alexander I Nicholas I Alexander II Aleksey Yermolov Mikhail Vorontsov Aleksandr Baryatinskiy	Ghazi Mollah † Hamzat Bek Imam Shamil  Shuaib-Mulla of Tsentara Hadji Murad Talkhig of Shali  Baysangur of Benoy

The Russian conquest of Chechnya and Dagestan (1817 – 25 August 1859), between 1829 and 1859 also called the Murid War,^[1] was the eastern component of the Caucasian War of 1817–1864. In the Murid War, the Russian Empire conquered the independent peoples of the eastern Ciscaucasus.

When Russia annexed Georgia in 1801, it needed to control the Georgian Military Road in the central Caucasus – the only practical north–south route across the mountains. Russian control of the road meant the division of the fighting in the Caucasian War into two theatres. West of the road, in the Russo-Circassian War, the tribes did not unite and the war became very complex. In the east the tribes joined in the Caucasian Imamate, a military-theocratic state which held out for thirty years. This state, established by Ghazi Muhammad in 1829–1832, came under the rule of Imam Shamil from 1834 until his surrender in 1859.