Forging a Russian Hajj Route 87Russia was not the only European power to do so. By the late nineteenth cen-
tury the majority of the world’s Muslims lived under colonial rule, and Eu-
rope’s leading imperial powers all actively supported the hajj. Around the world
colonial governments set up support systems for their hajj pilgrims along the
major routes that connected their colonies to Arabia, complete with consulates,
provision stations, lodging houses, and medical posts, and seasonal, subsidized
transport on railroads and steamships. Russian patronage of the hajj was mod-
eled in large part on the examples of other colonial powers. Tsarist officials fre-
quently looked to other colonial settings for ideas and policies to copy, and the
Foreign Ministry sometimes asked its consular officials posted in French Alge-
ria and elsewhere to investigate colonial hajj policies, and submit detailed re-
ports on them.^3 At the same time, Russia also clearly borrowed ideas and
models from the Ottomans.
Much like the Ottomans, Russia attempted to streamline its hajj traffic along
a state-sanctioned route, largely for economic reasons. At a time when Russia
was rapidly modernizing and seeking to increase passenger traffic along its new
and expensive railroad and steamship lines, many tsarist officials began to see
economic opportunity in the hajj. They saw in the mass, circular movement of
hajj pilgrims between Russia and Arabia not just potential threats to public
health and imperial stability, but also passengers for Russia’s railroads and
steamships, and thus a source of state revenues.^4
To organize the hajj, Russia could have simply adopted the model it had de-
veloped in 1889 for the Russian Orthodox pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as a leading
official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs indeed proposed.^5 Tsar Alexander III
officially endorsed the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS) to support
the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. With state funding and the public support of the
royal family, the IOPS established a network of services and facilities for Ortho-
dox pilgrims along their routes through Russian and Ottoman lands, including
hostels in Odessa and IOPS branch offices in regions across the Russian Em-
pire. The centerpiece of this Russian Orthodox pilgrimage infrastructure was
the complex of buildings that the IOPS built in Jerusalem, just outside the old
city walls. Still standing today and called the Russian Compound, this complex
included barracks to house pilgrims, a hospital, a refectory, a small church, and
an ecclesiastical mission to house Russian Orthodox clergy.^6
But Russia did not do this. Many officials strongly resisted the idea of treat-
ing the hajj like Orthodox pilgrimage. By offering the same support to Muslim
and Orthodox pilgrims, they warned, the government would send a dangerous
message—that Russia was trying to encourage the hajj, or, even worse, that it
was starting to privilege Islam over Orthodoxy.^7 They feared a backlash from