ABSTRACT
Evgenii Aleksandrovich Golovin, a graduate of the University of Moscow, had had varied experience in both fighting and administrative capacities since entering the service in 1797. Past his prime physically and intellectually, but in general possession of his faculties, Golovin spent more than three months in the Archives in St. Petersburg to study all the files on the Caucasus. 1 Arriving in Tiflis on 31 March 1838, he soon found out that in the entire country ‘the internal security was undisturbed only in the Christian parts’. 2 Among the main problems in the eastern Caucasus were the continuing state of warfare in Southern Daghestan, following the revolt in Qubāh in 1837; 3 the ongoing tension following an outbreak in 1836 of hostilities between Muslim Ossets and their neighbours who had converted to Orthodox Christianity; 4 and the consequences of the shāʾā uprising in 1837 led by a certain Muhammad Sādiq [Mamed Sadyk], who had claimed to be the wālī of the hidden imām, and proclaimed jihād on the Russians. 5
