Mapping the Hajj, Integrating Muslims 85concerns played a crucial role in setting state policies, which, as this example
illustrates, were not simply imposed from the center on the periphery. Some-
times they emerged from concerns about local traditions, the issues important
to peripheral natural environments, and patterns of human movement.^122
Historians of Russia are divided in their view of how the late imperial state
managed Islam, whether it generally tried “ignoring” Islam, or in fact institu-
tionalized and sponsored it. What scholars do agree on, however, is that the
state worried about and tried to cut cross-border ties between its Muslims and
their coreligionists abroad. But in the case of the hajj—by far the main conduit
of transimperial Muslim movement and communication—Russia did not ulti-
mately try to block cross-border Muslim mobility, or cut Muslim ties to foreign
lands and peoples, although its first impulse was indeed to restrict the hajj.
Instead, it tried to govern its Muslims through this mobility network, using it
as an instrument of external surveillance as well as imperial integration. It
institutionalized and began to sponsor the hajj, in the process facilitating
movement and making the hajj more central to the practice of Islam than it had
ever been before for Muslims in this part of the world.
As we have seen, Russia gathered enough data from its new consulates to
compile a map of sorts, a description of Russia’s hajj pilgrims’ main itineraries,
which would serve as a blueprint for further involvement in the hajj. No less
significantly, by following Russia’s hajj pilgrims into foreign lands, and creating
an infrastructure along their routes to Mecca, tsarist officials effectively
expanded the arena of Russian imperialism, and with it Russia’s presence in the
world.