Letters from the Ottoman Empire: Migration from the Caucasus and Russia's Pan-Islamic Panic
Journal: Slavic Review
Year: 2023

This article explores the exchange of letters by Caucasus Muslims across the Russo-Ottoman border and the tsarist government's reactions to it. Between the 1850s and World War I, about a million Muslims left the Caucasus for the Ottoman empire. Many of them, especially Circassians, were expelled by the Russian army, and others, including Chechens, Abkhazians, and Daghestanis, were pushed out or emigrated under tsarist rule. Private letters sustained the Russo-Ottoman Muslim world, which included