"Of what use," said finally Hadis-Ismail to Mahomet-Mollah, "is our going through the prescribed routine of prayers, our exact performance of ablutions, our adherence to the letter of the Scharyat, while the Sufis daily curse the followers of Omar? Let all true believers no longer contend against each other, but against the infidels. Campaigns to drive back the Muscovite are better than pilgrimages to worship at Kerbelah, and prayers to Allah are an abomination unless followed by a call to arms."
These were the words which Mahomet-Mollah had been waiting for years to hear spoken; and returning to Jarach he openly preached a crusade in behalf of freedom and the true faith. Immediately the report of this calling of all believers to arms against the Giaours spread like wildfire through Daghestan and the country of the Lesghians. Disciples came from afar to hear the new doctrine; and catching a portion of the fanatical zeal of the murschid, who enforced his views by depicting the barbarities then recently committed by the Russians in the neighboring district of Kara-Kaitach, they carried his burning words from aoul to aoul until the fury of the people burst out in a general rising to repel the advance of the invaders.
At this period the greater part of Daghestan, a territory lying on the Caspian, and eastward from the Lesghian highlands, had been brought under the yoke of the Russians. General Jermoloff, then governor-general of the Caucasus, had been very successful in extending the imperial dominion and influence, being himself no less a hero than the Circassian chieftains, possessing a noble form, a soul of bravery, hardy, persevering, and chivalrous. He secured by his gentle treatment the respect of those tribes which submitted to his rule, and by his ruthless severity made a terrible example of those who refused to do so. Going in advance of his arms, his intrigue penetrated into the fastnesses of the mountaineers, and taking advantage of the mutual jealousy of the tribes, fanning the hate of private feuds, widening the breach between the two hostile religious sects, and tempting all the chiefs by the promise of imperial honors, the people by the offer of free trade at the forts and market towns, it succeeded in gradually preparing the way for the advent of Russian intervention and authority with force of arms throughout all the less mountainous portions of Daghestan.
When, then, the active and sagacious governor heard that Mahomet-Mollah was preaching in Jarach a holy war against the Muscovites, and that he had erected in his house an altar before which the murids who came in from all the neighboring parts hourly prayed and said, "Moslem war against the infidel! war against the infidel! death to the Giaour!" he sent a request to Arslan, khan of the Kasi-Kumucks, in whose territory was Jarach, that he should seize upon the person of the mollah. But Arslan, fearing to lay violent hands upon a teacher so venerated by the people, suffered him to escape into the adjacent territory of Avaria. There he lived until the recall of General Jermoloff permitted him to return to his native district; having meanwhile diligently called upon all believers to forget their sectarian differences, upon the members of the different tribes to lay aside their animosities, and upon all lovers of their country to rise in arms and drive back the infidel dogs who had dared invade the sanctity of the mountains.
"The first great law of our prophet," said he to the people, "is a law of freedom. No Moslem shall be a slave, much less shall he acknowledge the rule of the foreigner and the unbeliever. And the second law is like unto the first. The Moslem shall be a soldier of Allah and his prophet, an enemy in arms of all infidels. For whosoever will not leave house, wife, and child, yea all that he hath or hopeth for to draw the sword for his faith, he shall not pass over the bridge El-Sirat into paradise. The Moslem shall keep the scharyat; but all his giving of alms to the poor, all his prayers and ablutions, all his pilgrimages to Mecca are nothing so long as the eye of a Muscovite looks upon them. Yea, your marriages are unlawful and your children bastards while there is a Muscovite in your midst. For who can serve both Allah and the Russian!"
XXVI.
KHASI-MOLLAH.
Among the murids of Mahomet-Mollah the foremost was Khasi-Mahomet, better known as Khasi-Mollah. After having spent much time sitting at the feet of the patriotic and fanatical murschid, he returned to his native aoul of Himri, and began his career as leader of the popular movement against Russia by sending to the neighboring tribes missives full of such reproof and exhortation as he had been in the habit of hearing at Jarach. This he continued to do until it became manifest that the time for decisive action had arrived, when accompanied by a considerable body of disciples, among whom was Schamyl, he sallied forth on an expedition of proselytism, and made his way first to the powerful aoul of Tcherkei, situated lower down on the Koissu, and in the territory of the Tchetchenians.