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Khanates of 18th and early 19th centuries and Iran's forced cession to Russia
The Russo-Persian War of 1804-1813 lead to significant losses of life and property in Dagestan and the South Caucasus which disrupted trade and agriculture. However, for the most part, the region was spared during the War of 1826-1828, as the majority of fighting took place in Iranian territory. As a consequence of the wars, long standing ties between Iran and the region were severed during the course of the 19th century as Russia incorporated territory in the region.

Transition from Iranian rule to Russian rule
From the time of the Russian conquests through to the 1840's, Azerbaijan was governed by the Tsar’s military forces. Russia reorganized the region’s khanates into new provinces, each presided over by an army officer. The officers governed through a combination of local and Russian law. However due to the officers general unfamiliarity with local customs, Russian imperial law was increasingly applied, this lead to discontent among the local populace.

In the late 1830's plans were made to replace the military rule by officers with a civil administration. When the new legal system came into effect in January 1841, Transcaucasia was divided into a Georgian-Imeretian province, and a Caspian oblast centered in Shemakhi. New administrative borders were later drawn that ignored historical borders or ethnic composition.By the end of military rule in Azerbaijan, Russian imperial law achieved hegemony in all criminal and most civil matters. The jurisdiction of traditional religious courts and qadis were reduced to family law. The Azerbaijani Turks were affected by Russian restrictions against non-Christians.The Russian state made concerted efforts to control the application of Islamic law in the empire. Two Ecclesiastical Boards were created to oversee all religious Islamic activity. The state appointed a mufti for a Sunni board and a sheikh al-Islam for a Shia board. In 1857 Georgian and Armenian religious authorities were given oversight in censoring their respective communities, however, all Muslim religious works and books had to be approved by a censorship board in Odessa. Additionally Azerbaijani Turks were subject to intense Russian proselytization.

The years after the Russian conquest saw significant economic development in Azerbaijan. The separate currencies of the former khanates were replaced by the ruble and the tariffs between them were abolished. These reforms encouraged further investment in the region. Russia started investing joint-stock companies in the region and by the 1840's the steamships first sailed on the Caspian. The port of Baku saw an increase from an average of 400,000 rubles of trade in the 1830's to an average of 500,000 in the 1840's and between 700,000-900,000 rubles in the wake of the Crimean War.

Starting in the 1870's Baku experienced an era of rapid industrial growth as a result of an oil boom. Azerbaijan's first oil refinery was established near Baku in 1859, and the region’s first kerosene plant was erected in 1863. Wells built in 1870's sparked the boom. Oil bearing lands were soon auctioned off to bidders. This system secured investors’ property and encouraged further investment in their holdings’ operations. Most of the people to acquire oil lands were elite Russians and Armenians, by contrast of 51 plots sold at the first auction only 5 were bought by Azerbaijani Turks. Additionally of 54 oil extraction firms in Baku in 1888, only 2 notable companies were owned by Azerbaijanis. Azerbaijani Turks participated in greater numbers among small-scale extraction and refining operations. 73 of 162 oil refineries were Azerbaijani owned, but all but 7 of them were employed less than 15 people. In the decades following the oil rush and foreign investment other industries grew in Azerbaijan.The banking system was one of the first to react to the oil industry In 1880 an offshoot of the state bank opened in Baku, in the first year of operation it issued 438,000 rubles, in 1899 all Baku banking institutions had issued 11.4 million rubles in all interest bearing securities. Transportation and shipping industries also grew as a of the expanding oil market. The number of vessels on the Caspian quadrupled between 1887 and 1899. Additionally a railroad, completed in 1884, connected Baku on the Caspian to Batum on the Black Sea via Ganje and Tbilisi.

Imam Shamil
Under the command of General Pavel Grabbe, the Russian army trekked through lands devoid of supplies because of Shamil’s scorched-earth strategy. The geography of the stronghold protected it from three sides, adding to the difficulty of conducting the siege. Eventually the two sides agreed to negotiate. Complying with Grabbe’s demands, Shamil gave his son, Jamaldin in a sign of good faith, as a hostage. Shamil rejected Grabbe’s proposal, in which Shamil would command his forces to surrender and he would accept exile from the region. The Russian army attacked the stronghold, after 2 days of fighting, the Russian troops had secured it. Shamil escaped the siege during the first night of the attack. Shamil’s forces, however, had been broken and many Dagestani and Chechen chieftains proclaimed loyalty to the Tsar. In what many of his followers would later compared to Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina, Shamil fled Dagestan for Chechnya. There he made quick work of extending his influence over the territory's clans.

Against the large regular Russian military, Shamil made effective use of irregular and guerrilla tactics. In 1845 an 8-10,000 strong column under the command of Count Michael Vorontsov followed the Imamate’s forces into the forests of Chechnya. The Imamte’s forces surround the Russian column, decimating it.

Though Shamil hoped that Britain, France, or the Ottoman Empire would come to his aid to drive Russia from the Caucasus, these plans never came to fruition. After the Crimean War, Russia redoubled its efforts against the Imamate. Now successful, Russian forces severely reduced the Imamates territory, by September 1859 Shamil had surrendered. Though Imamte was defeated, conflict in the eastern Caucasus would continue for several more years.

Legacy
In the 1990’s Chechen leaders used the memory of Imam Shamil and Sheikh Mansur for nationalistic purposes. These reimaginings of Shamil often overlook the ambiguity of his identity and anachronistically establish clear nationalities when nationality may not have been well defined in the region. Shamil is consider to be Avar because he was born in an area of Dagestan controlled by the Avaristani khan. However, Shamil used Arabic in his correspondences and he likely used Turkish in his everyday speech. Though he did find success in Chechnya, he relocated there out of necessity as a result of his cruel policies alienating Dagestanis. In his correspondences, Shamil rarely referred to his enemies as Russian, instead he portrayed them as either “unbelievers,” or as “hypocrites.” The former referred to non-Muslims who opposed Shamil and the later referred to Muslims who aided the unbelievers. Despite his religious motivations, there were many Muslims in the region that consistently opposed Shamil.