The House of Shamil is located in the historical center of Kaluga at the intersection of Pushkin Street and Bauman Street. This three-story mansion was built by the merchant Ivan Bilibin at the end of the 18th century. On some maps it is called "Bilibin`s House", but it is better known as the House of Imam Shamil.
In 1848, Lieutenant Colonel A. Sukhotin bought the house from his son Ivan Bilibin, but a decade later he sold it to the treasury. Imam Shamil, the most famous prisoner of Kaluga of that time, who led the highlanders during the 40-year Caucasian war, settled here.
The Caspian coast of Dagestan and the city of Derbent became part of Russia in 1722. Crimea became part of Russia in 1784, but the mountainous regions of the Caucasus, inhabited by warlike highlanders, did not submit to the Russian tsar even a century later.
In 1816, General Alexei Yermolov was appointed governor of the Caucasus. Arriving in the Caucasus, he immediately began a war with the highlanders. In 1834, Shamil was elected imam of Dagestan, who united the disparate tribes. Under him, the Caucasian war became fierce, especially when the so-called murids appeared. They renounced their families and were ready to fanatically fight the Russians without fear of death.
A few decades later, most of the mountain tribes turned away from the despotic Shamil and his murids. They just wanted a peaceful life. In 1858, after bloody battles, Shamil with the remnants of his army took refuge on the Gunib plateau. There were less than a thousand of them left. It was possible to leave the plateau only through Gunib Village. Duke Baryatinsky, at the head of a 16,000-strong army, laid siege to the village on August 9, 1859, and on August 24 took it by storm. 50 people remained alive in Shamil`s detachment, and further resistance no longer made sense. Imam Shamil accepted the offer of honorable captivity.
For Emperor Alexander II, it was very important not only to capture Imam Shamil, but to force him to accept Russian citizenship. The tsar received Shamil in St. Petersburg, and for an honorary exile he was assigned the city of Kaluga, where he settled in the Bilibin House at public expense.
Shamil arrived in Kaluga on October 10, 1859. Seven years later, in 1866, he took an oath of allegiance to the Russian emperor in the noble assembly of Kaluga. By that time, the war in the Caucasus had not been fought for more than a decade, but the tsar wanted the highlanders to become loyal citizens of the Russian Empire for many years, and the oath of Imam Shamil was very important for this.
Shamil lived in Kaluga until 1868. He asked to move to a city with a warmer climate, and the tsar allowed him to settle in Kyiv. However, he did not stay there. In 1869, the tsar allowed Imam Shamil to make a hajj to Mecca. In 1871 Shamil died in Medina and was buried there.
In Soviet times, the Shamil House housed secondary school No. 13, but then the city authorities decided to create a museum there. Part of the exposition is dedicated to Imam Shamil and the events of the Caucasian War. Also, here you can see an interesting collection of weapons and an exposition dedicated to the WWI. Of the old interiors in Shamil`s house, an iron forged staircase has been preserved.
