Word: dhagestan
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...proper courting gift for a Dhagestan maiden was a dozen or so severed male right hands, strung on a thong. Imaginative bloodletting was much admired; Afghanistan's rulers executed prisoners by tying them across the muzzles of cannon (until Western diplomats complained of flying flesh) and the Shah of Persia delightedly invented another sort of extinction: extracting the teeth and hammering them into the skull...
Hurled Heads. The leaping apparition was Shamyl the Avar. He was one of two fighting men to escape the ruins of the aoul. Two years later, in 1834, he was elected Imam of Dhagestan-the absolute spiritual and temporal ruler of most of the tribesmen in the Caucasus. He fired his subjects with a fanatic brand of Mohammedanism, and his dedicated Murids, or holy warriors, kept the armies of Czar Nicholas at bay for the next 25 years. As the years passed and the Czar's frustration continued, Shamyl became a European hero. Russophobic Britons forgave the raider...
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