CHAPTER XIX
SHORTLY after Hadji Murad’s surrender to the Russians his family was taken to the village of Vedeno and kept there under guard waiting for Shamil to decide their fate. The women — Hadji Murad_s old mother Patimat and his two wives — together with their five small children lived under guard in the house of Ibrahim Rashid, one of Shamil’s captains; Yusuf, his eighteen-year-old son, was kept in a dungeon, a deep pit dug eight or nine feet into the ground, with four criminals who, like him, were awaiting Shamil’s decision on their fate.
But no decision came, because Shamil was away campaigning against the Russians.
On 6 January 1852, Shamil returned home to Vedeno after a battle with the Russians in which, according to the Russians, he had been beaten and fled to Vedeno, but in
