The Sheikh Mansur movement, was a major war between the Russian Empire and the North Caucasians, caused by the Chechen religious and military leader Sheikh Mansur, who opposed the Russian expansionist policies and wanted to unite the North Caucasians under one, single, Islamic state.
Starting off as a failed Russian campaign to capture Sheikh Mansur, who had spread Islam among the Chechens, it quickly turned to a region-wide anti-Russian insurgency. Although victorious at first, brutal Russian tactics, among them burning and destruction of villages as well as repeating military losses of the mountaineers, led to the decline of the insurgency, which saw Mansur lose many of his supporters. He left for Circassia in July 1787, where he suffered his final defeat during the siege of Anapa of 1791. Regardless, he is honored as a national hero among the Chechens and Circassians in the current day.
