Imampasha Vakharbiyevich Alimsultanov (Chechen: Алимсултанов Вахарбин кӏант Имампаша; Russian: Имампаша Вахарбиевич Алимсултанов) (June 22, 1957 – November 10, 1996) was a popular Chechen bard and folk singer.

Contents

• 1 Biography
• 2 Death
• 3 Memory
• 4 References
• 5 External links

Biography

Imam was born in the Kyrgyz SSR in 1957 to Chechen parents, who had been relocated as a result of the forced deportations of most Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia on February 23, 1944. He was born to a family belonging to the Zogoy teip. In 1958, as a one-year-old child, he returned to Chechnya. He completed secondary school in the Chechen capital Grozny. Alimsultanov later graduated from the Polytechnic Ins*ute in Rostov-on-Don and worked as a land reclamation expert.

Alimsultanov started his musical career in the mid-1980s after having started to study music. He studied illi, a traditional Chechen genre, the main components of which are recitatives, legends, and tales about heroes accompanied by a three-stringed instrument called the phandar. Instead of a phandar, however, Alimsultanov used a guitar. In addition to performing folk songs and his own lyrics, he also wrote songs based on the poems of Umar Yarychev, Musa Geshaev, and other prominent Chechen poets. Unlike fellow Chechen bard Timur Mutsurayev's songs, Imam's music tended to be closer to traditional Chechen music. Some of his most popular songs include "Gazavat", "Dagestan", "Joƶalla ya marşo" (Anthem of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria), and "Gunib".

With the start of the First Chechen War in December 1994, Alimsultanov was briefly detained after a performance and sent to a Russian filtration camp in Khankala. Even though he only stayed there for one night, he was humiliated and beaten. During the war, he performed for Chechen fighters, and at the request of Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev, accompanied injured fighters to Turkey. He performed extensively in Istanbul, collecting money for injured Chechen fighters.

After returning to Chechnya, Alimsultanov helped to secure the release of 25 Ukrainian builders from Kirovohrad who were being held hostage. After securing their release, he decided to go to Istanbul through the city of Odessa. The mayor of Odessa at the time, Eduard Gurwits, provided Alimsultanov with a musical theater hall where he performed five times.

Alimsultanov has been praised for his unique voice.

Death

On the night of November 10, (according to other sources, November 8) 1996, three men in police uniforms burst into the inconspicuous Odessa house where Alimsultanov and his artistic team were settled by local Chechens in order to protect them. After the intruders made sure that they were in the right place, they shot Alimsultanov and two colleagues at point-blank range. All three died, but one witness, who was in the bathroom at the time of the murder, survived. The case remains unresolved. Аn investigation by Chechen special services implicated the Russian FSB for the murder.

Memory

Aslan Maskhadov, Shamil Basayev, Ruslan Gelayev, and many others attended Imam Alimsultanov's funeral. Maskhadov remarked that "Imam alone was worth ten Russian divisions." Alimsultanov was buried in the village of Novolakskoye near his hometown of Khasavyurt, Dagestan. On December 6th, 1996, a street on the west side of the city of Khasavyurt was renamed in his honor. In Novolakskoye, a memorial plaque commemorating him was installed.His songs remain popular to this day amongst Chechens.

References

External links

• Kavkaz Chat page on Imam Alimsultanov (in Russian)
• Chechnya Free.ru article on Imam Alimsultanov
• Chechenpress article by Alexander Litvinenko