The ancient tradition of the abrek (bandit) was developed into a political institution during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century by Chechen and other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus as a strategy for dealing with the overwhelming military force of Russia's imperial army. During the Soviet period, the abrek became a locus for oppositional politics and arguably influenced the representations of violence and anti-colonial resistance during the recent Chechen Wars. This article is one of the first works of English-language scholarship to historicize this institution. It also marks the beginning of a book project entitled A Post-Secular Modernity: Sanctifying Transgression in the Caucasus.