(Parallel-posted at soc.history.what-if.)
This is more of a seed than a proper WI. The title says it: what if the Chechens -- the warlike people of the North Caucasus who've been giving the Russians headaches for 200 years -- were Christian rather than Muslim?
Certainly it's possible. OTL the Chechens seem to have stayed mostly pagan until the 15th (!) century. This may have been partly due to isolation, but perhaps also because of resistance to Persian imperialism; medieval Persia kept pushing into the Caucasus, they converted the Chechen's Azeri neighbors to the south, and the Chechens didn't care for them much. When the Chechens finally were converted, it was by missionaires from Persia's rivals, the Ottoman Turks -- which is why today the Chechens are Sunni, not Shi'ite.
So, let's handwave in a Christian saint who can carry the good word to the Chechens sometime in the medieval period. At this time, the Chechens were still pretty backward -- they lived at high altitudes, had no towns of any size, were entirely illiterate, and pretty much kept to themselves. Still, stranger things have happened.
(The provenance of our saint is an interesting question. Too late for a Byzantine, too early for a Russian. Armenian? Georgian? I could see either. The Ossetians, just next door to the Chechens, were proselytised by Georgians, though they don't like to admit it.)
I suspect that the Chechen version of the faith would be rather heterodox, if not actually heretical -- their Islam didn't get regularized for a couple of hundred years. Still, by the time the Ottomans show up, the Chechens are pretty firmly Christian.
Now what?
Broadly speaking, I think we see somewhat worse relations with the Ottomans, and then -- a couple of centuries later -- better ones with Russia. The Chechens may occupy less territory than iOTL, since they're more likely to be constantly at war with their neighbors, especially the Azeris and Ingush. Or maybe not, since they were often at war with the Ingush anyway, and most of the territory they held OTL was not exactly desirable.
I doubt Chechen culture will change much. They'll still be poor, clannish, warlike and backwards, very fond of epic poetry and the blood feud.
I could see lots of butterflies in the 17th and 18th centuries... but where this really jumps the tracks, I think, is in the 1800s. TTL, there probably won't be a Shamil War, and the Russians won't have to spend over a decade and vast amounts of blood and treasure suppressing the Chechens and their allies. There probably will be uprisings, but nothing like OTL's.
This puts the Russians in a much better position in the 19th century Caucasus, which could lead to interesting knock-on effects all over.
Thoughts?
Doug M.