This another not-exactly-a-book-review. The book is Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Blanch, and it is also Dune by Frank Herbert, because I'm interested in the relationship between the two.

Dune and I go way back. The original story was first published as a serial in Analog magazine in 1965. A couple of years after that some adult my mum knew was clearing out his science fiction collection and I got two boxes of old magazines, including the Dune serial, or most of it. There were missing magazines. Of all the stuff in that collection, and there were lots of writers who got their start in Astounding Science Fiction and later Analog, it was Dune that got me trying to hunt down the rest of the story. Back then I lived in a small town with, obviously, no internet. I found out the story had been published as a book and I wrote to the publishers. I never heard back. But I did find it in a book shop in 1975. I was at university then and living in a city. So I had a full copy at last.

I'm going to assume everyone has read Dune and not worry about spoilers but as a reminder: the Dune in the story is a planet, also called Arrakis, which is part of an empire. It is mostly covered by a harsh desert which is only just survivable for humans, and the humans that live in the desert are called Fremen. They are hunted and oppressed by their local rulers, the Harkonnens, who mostly keep to the more hospitable parts of the planet. All this is turned upside down when the emperor decides to appoint the Atreides to rule Dune rather than the Harkonnens. There is a war, there is double crossing, and the Atreides heir, Paul, ends up hiding in the desert with the Fremen. At this point Paul becomes both a war leader and a religious figure, unites the Fremen tribes and defeats not only the Harkonnens but the emperor himself. That's the first book. There are five more that follow on dealing with what happens to Paul and his descendants.

Herbert's world building was influenced by his experience on the Oregon dunes, which seems to have kicked off his ecology interest, and there is a lot about ecology in the book. The Dune climate is like a major character in that it influences everything. But where did he get the Fremen from? These people are impossibly tough. They have to be to survive the desert, and their whole culture is focused on desert survival. But the desert is not their only problem. They also have to fight the Harkonnens who, because of some technology quirks, they fight hand to hand with knives rather than guns.

And this is where Sabres of Paradise comes in. Sabres of Paradise is about the 'Murid Wars' that took place in the Caucasus Mountains in the 19th century. It was written by Lesley Blanch and published in 1960. It was not Blanch's most famous work but it was popular. Blanch traveled widely and spoke to the descendants of the people involved in the conflict, read through dusty archives and so on. It must have taken years of research and she writes very well. There are a lot of people in this book, often with similar names, sometimes with the very same name, and most of the time I could keep them all straight and follow what happened.

Herbert definitely read Sabres of Paradise. Like Dune the Caucasus is a harsh place, though not a desert. High mountains, deep gorges, burning summers and freezing winters. The people there, like the Fremen, were bred for fighting among themselves with feuds lasting generations. Murder was frequent and casual. They fought mostly with knives and swords among themselves. Then the Russians invaded.

The Russians wanted to expand the empire and possibly find a route to India through Persia where they could make problems for the British. But mostly they wanted to expand. They spent thirty years fighting the local Caucasians, throwing everything they had at them. It should have been over in a few months, but the Caucasians knew how to fight in the mountains, the Russians didn't. And the Caucasians had Shamyl.

Unlike Paul Atreides, Shamyl was a local man, specifically an Avar, not an outsider. But he did have an impressive fighting record, a mystic bent, charisma, and he knew how to use a theatrical moment. His people regarded him as a prophet second only to Muhammad and, since he was among them giving orders, his word was law. The Caucasians lived in grim mountain fortresses, and Shamyl's religion was austere. Worldly pleasure was to be denied, except that he did like to play with the children. Executions were commonplace. Shamyl usually traveled with an executioner. He used to say things like 'the world is a carcass', and Herbert has a Fremen use the same expression in a chant when Paul is waiting to ride his first sand worm. Like the Fremen the Caucasians would throw everything into a battle, even their women and children fought and frequently died. Shamyl's response to the Russians was Holy War against the Infidel. Jihad.

The Caucasian tribes are Muslim, and the Fremen are not exactly Muslim. Herbert uses the term Zensunni, which must mean some Buddhist influence mixed with Sunni Islam. I'm not qualified to go into all the Muslim references in the book, but this guy seems to know all about it. The takeway is that the Fremen 'Muslimness' is not just a veneer, it goes deep. Their vocabulary, their thought patterns and their history are all steeped in Islam, or Islam as it might look like after ten thousand years of interplanetary wandering.

In the Caucasus they were not only Muslim, they were Caucasians and, as I said, bred for fighting. They had a secret 'battle language' called Chakobsa. It was something they could speak among themselves without others, such as the Russians, being able to understand. Herbert uses the same word, Chakobsa, for the Fremen battle language. Each Caucasus village, by which we should understand 'mountain fortress', was ruled by a Naib. This is a word from Arabic and in Shamyl's time it meant not just village representative but someone who had pledged to die rather than be captured alive. Lots of Shamyl's warriors took the 'Murid Vow' which was a ten-part promise, and it included being prepared to die in the service of Shamyl's Jihad, often on suicide missions. Once, long after the war was ended, Shamyl grew angry when someone tried to claim one of his naibs was taken prisoner. It turned out to be untrue. However this was after Shayml himself and fifty of his naibs surrendered to the Russians, so he could not say it never happened.

Surprisingly, Shamyl's power was less than absolute. They would follow him into battle and die for him, but the naibs would also argue with him at least on some subjects. Everyone was too terrified of him to discuss surrender, but during an important hostage exchange the naibs insisted on the Russians paying a vast amount of money as well as handing over a hostage. Shamyl wanted to settle for less money because the hostage was his eldest son, Djemmal-Eddin. He had to negotiate with the naibs on that point.

Paul launched his own jihad, and Herbert uses the word a lot in Dune. But here the fact that Paul is an outsider may make a difference. Paul has prescient dreams and is horrified by the scale of the jihad he is unleashing. He is not just preserving his adopted homeland, Paul's jihad will conquer a good deal of the galaxy. The Padishah Emperor, who is reminiscent of the Russian Tsar in some respects, including that the Causcasians called him 'padishah', is defeated and Paul himself becomes emperor. Shamyl may have dreamed of such an outcome, but driving the infidel Russians from his territory was his main concern.

It isn't obvious at the end of Dune, but it is in the sequel Dune Messiah, that Paul's empire has not done the Fremen much good. The old Fremen values have gone sour away from the desert discipline, and Paul is not a good ruler, partly because he insists on his own absolute power. Ultimately this ends in disaster for Paul. In 1985 Herbert wrote in the introduction to Eye, a book of short stories, that his intention was always to portray a flawed hero. The first book ends with Paul's victory because the editor of Analog, John W. Campbell, wanted that in the serialisation. But Herbert's inclination was to go on to show what happened next.

Shamyl had, perhaps, a better end. He fought on until he had about 50 men, then he surrendered. He lived out the rest of his days peacefully in Russia, then Ukraine (which was part of the Russian Empire at that time). He was looked after quite well: installed in a large house with his family and retainers and paid an allowance. In his old age he asked to go on pilgrimage to Mecca and he died in Medina before he could return. The Caucasus was left in the hands of the Russians. Today it is divided between Russia and Georgia. Much of the Russian part is Chechnya, still a source of unrest for the Russians.

So there are clear similarities, but I would not want to suggest Dune is a rewrite of Shamyl's history. Herbert used it as an influence and integrated some of those ideas with countless others. Still, it is interesting to see that influence and a little spine tingling to recognise words I have only seen in Dune show up elsewhere. Chakobsa I already mentioned. The Fremen live in cave dwellings called sietches, always somewhat temporary because they are always hunted. Sietch is a Cossack word for camp. The Cossacks also use the word Tabr. The most important Fremen settlement is Sietch Tabr. In the Caucasus the feuds and vendettas were so common they were formalised under the term kanly, Herbert uses the same word to describe the formal conflict between the Atreides and the Harkonnens. He does not, however, use it to describe the guerilla war between the Fremen and the Harkonnens.

I mentioned earlier an incident with hostages. This is an important part of Sabres of Paradise. Several Georgian princesses were captured by Shamyl's men, along with their entire households, and carried off to the mountains. These ladies were high up in the pecking order. They had been ladies-in-waiting at the court at St Petersburg, which meant they knew the Tsar personally. Shamyl was prepared to exchange them for his son, Djemmal-Eddin, who the Tsar already had as a hostage. The situation for Djemmal-Eddin was very different from the princesses. He was taken seventeen years before at eight years old and brought up in the Winter Palace. He had, by this time, been educated as a Russian and was willingly serving as an officer in the army. He was not allowed to go and fight in the Caucasus, but he was stationed in Poland for a time and had thoroughly absorbed Russian and European culture. Think grand balls, fancy uniforms, Chopin music etc. The princesses were kept in Shamyl's mountain fortress which was a good deal less comfortable than the fine country house they had been taken from. Apart from their being terrified of being executed at any moment, they had about 20 of them in a small room, unable to leave, not enough ventilation and bad food. Shamyl was, in fact, trying to be kind most of the time. But the people he left in charge of the prisoners were not always aligned to his thinking, and his resources were limited. There was an exchange. Djemmal-Eddin was given the option by the Tsar, he could remain in Russia if he wanted, and continue with the life he knew, or he could return to his father. He chose to return because that would release the princesses.

But Shamyl would not release all the hostages. The princesses and their more important staff, and their children, yes. But the others, well, their relatives would have to pay, if they could. So as the lucky hostages left their prison they heard the wailing of their friends calling, "Oh you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers." Does this sound familiar? "Over the exit of the Arrakeen landing field... there was an inscription that Muad'Dib was to repeat many times. The words of the inscription were a plea to those leaving Arrakis... They said 'Oh you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.'"

What happened to Djemmal-Eddin? He basically pined away and died in the mountains. Tuberculosis finished him off. He had been a strong young man in his mid twenties but he only lasted two years after returning to his home or, as he likely thought of it, his exile.

And what happened afterwards to Shamyl's surviving descendants? Was there a God-Emperor? No, of course not. In the Caucasus there were no equivalent of sand worms, melange or prescience. Those were Herbert's inventions, examples of things he did not get from Sabres of Paradise. One of Shamyl's sons stayed in Russia and became a Major General in the army, two others went to Turkey and were important in the army there. One of those was part of a movement to establish a republic in the northern Caucasus in the 1920s and was defeated by the Red Army. As Blanch was writing in the 1950s a grandson was still trying to keep the dream of an independent Caucasus alive from Turkey.

What about Baron Harkonnen? Was there an equivalent in Sabres of Paradise? I have seen others speculate that he was derived from one or more of the Russian leaders who attacked Shamyl's forces. I don't think so. Herbert needed a villain and the obvious choice was the emperor. But the emperor is partly modeled on the Russian Tsar who, apart from launching all these wars in the first place, was generally quite kind to Shamyl's son and eventually to Shamyl himself. We are talking more than one Tsar, of course, because the war went on so long. But having decided to make the Padishah Emperor not such a bad character, Herbert wanted a villain we could really dislike and came up with the evil baron on his own.

Finally, Blanch introduces each chapter with a quote from someone who wrote about the Caucasus, or one of the participants in the struggle, or sometimes the Bible. Herbert does not exactly do chapters, but when he changes scene he does add a quote. In the first book these are always from the Princess Irulan, who is not mentioned in the main narrative until near the end. All we know of her until then is that she wrote all kinds of books about Paul. We are finally told that she is part of the bargain Paul makes with the emperor when he seizes the throne. Irulan is to be Paul's wife, but in name only. Jessica, Paul's mother, remarks that she has a literary bent, suggesting she will have time to exercise it. It is possible Herbert noticed Blanch's quotes and adapted the idea for his own needs.

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