Jembulat Boletoqo

The princely family Boletoqo inherited its last name and the title of “Prince of Princes” from its legendary ancestor, Boletoqo, who was famous for his “wisdom and strictness”.[3][4][5]

At the beginning of the 19th Century, the population of the Temirgoi principality was about 30,000 people.[3][6][7] The eldest prince of the Boletoqo family inherited the title of the Great Prince. Since the birth of Jembulat, the political situation inside the Temirgoy principality was highly unstable because it was situated between two great powers in the region, the Russian and Ottoman Empires.[3][4][8]

Jembulat Boletoqo led an 800 strong cavalry force into Russian territory. Half of the detachment was of Hajjrets under the command of 18 year old Kabardian prince Ismail Kasei. Only one Cossack regiment decided to fight the rising Circassian army on October 23 at the village of Sabl on the Barsukly River. Jembulat's forces surrounded the Cossacks and killed all of them in a saber attack.[3][9]

In the summer of 1825, Russian forces carried out several military operations. On August 18, General Veliaminov burned the residency of Hajji Tlam, one of the leaders of the Circassian resistance in Abadzekh, and killed his entire family. On January 31, Jembulat burned down the fortress of Marevskoye as revenge.[4][10]

On June 4, 1828, Jembulat Boletoqo started his campaign into Russian lands with 2,000 cavalry under five flags of different Circassian principalities, as well as a Turkish flag as a symbol of their loyalty to Islam. On June 6, at the fortress Batalpashinsk, Jembulat attacked the Khopyor Cossack regiment, one of the biggest on the Kuban Military Line.[3]

Jembulat left the local Russian forces behind him and moved forward. The Russians concluded that he intended to go to Kabarda in the middle of the Russian-Turkish war, and open a second front on the Terek and Sunja Rivers. Magomed-Aga, a high ranking Turk, was present in the Circassian army.

Earl Paskevich, the Russian commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, ordered the 2nd Ulan division, returning from the Russia-Iran war, to move along the Georgian Military Road to cut off the route of the Circassians toward Kabarda. The 40th Eger battalion marched from Kabarda toward Jembulat. Yet, Jembulat suddenly changed his direction and headed toward the town of Georgievsk, the Russian administrative center in the Caucasus.

The Circassian army stopped on a high hill at a distance from the Marinskaya fortress. Jembulat menaced the Volzhskiy regiment’s left flank with all his forces, and won the battle.[4][11]

Circassian political analyst Khan-Girei observed that the situation changed for Great-Prince Jembulat “after the field marshal Paskevich left the region”.[12] The new commander-in-chief, Baron Rosen, did not believe in human rights of the indigenous Circassians.[3][13]

In 1833, Colonel Grigory Zass was appointed commander of a part of the Kuban Military Line with headquarters in the Batalpashinsk fortress. Colonel Zass received wide authority to act as he saw fit. Grigory Zass had racist views and regarded the Circassians as a lower race than the Russians and other civilized Europeans. In his view, the only way to deal with the Circassians was to scare them. From that concept, Zass developed new military methods – burning people alive, and cutting off the heads of corpses.[3][14]

In October 1836, General Zass sent Great Prince Jembulat word that he would like to make peace. If he came to a Russian fortress for explanation, he would be assassinated; in case he did not come, the Russians would claim that he was a warmonger who did not want peace.[4]

Great Prince Boletoqo came to Zass’ residency. The general was not there for his first visit, but Zass told him to come at an exact date when he would certainly be in his residency. On his way to the Prochnyi Okop fortress, Great Prince Jembulat was killed by a sniper who was hiding in the forest on the Russian bank of the Kuban River at the intersection with the Urup River. According to Russian historians, upon his death, Jembulat said the name of Zass’ sniper who alone was capable of shooting him from such a long distance from the forest.[3]