“Prince of Circassia”: Sefer Bey Zanuko and the Circassian Struggle for Independence

Prince Sefer Bey Zanuko (d. 1860) was probably the most famous and well documented Circassian leader during the war against Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, no thorough research has been carried out to date on him in English. This article deals with Sefer Bey's crucial role in guiding, assisting and leading the Circassian resistance to the Russian conquest of the Northwest Caucasus in the nineteenth century and sheds new light on a topic that has been almost completely neglected in Western research so far.