92 Chapter Three
to use Russian transport to organize the hajj, but it seems likely that he would
have supported it. Not only did this plan fit his vision of mobility as essential to
economic growth for the empire, it was also consistent with his view of Russia’s
non-Orthodox peoples as economic resources, and the need to selectively
push—most notably in the case of Russia’s Jewish populations—to lift restric-
tions on their mobility, social and otherwise, so that they could contribute to
the empire’s economic development. Witte’s support for the rights of Russia’s
non-Orthodox peoples often put him at odds with other officials within the
government, many of whom were committed to preserving Orthodox privilege
in the empire and suspicious of non-Orthodox political loyalties.^21
In the end the tsarist government embraced Levitskii’s proposal to streamline
the hajj along the Black Sea route. Starting in the 1890s officials in the Ministries
of Internal Affairs, Trade, and Transport began to draft plans to get more Mus-
lims to take Russian railroads and steamships in making the hajj. But how could
Russia, an Orthodox Christian state, persuade its Muslim subjects to adhere to
state-sanctioned routes in making the hajj, and abandon their traditional land
routes? As Russian officials saw it, they had two options. One was to essentially
force pilgrims onto the Black Sea routes by blocking access to the alternate land
routes. Many officials in the Ministry of Internal Affairs liked this idea as an
efficient way to curb the spread of cholera and other infectious diseases into the
empire. But Russia’s foreign consuls strongly advised against this approach. They
warned that it would not work and might even provoke a Muslim backlash. Hajj
pilgrims’ land routes crossed a wide open Russian southern border that was
thousands of miles long. The Russian consul in Baghdad made the important
point that Russia was in many ways at a disadvantage in terms of knowledge of
the terrain, and would therefore have to tread carefully. Although they were not
known to Russian officials, the secret land routes that pilgrims used to get to
Mecca were varied and well known among Muslims through word of mouth.
The informal Muslim guides (cavus) who led caravans of hajj pilgrims from the
Caucasus and Central Asia knew the terrain intimately, and were always able to
forge new routes in response to prohibitions or contingencies, such as political
unrest or war. Russia’s Baghdad consul had seen evidence of this from his post-
ing: hajj pilgrims continued to stream through the city in spite of government
bans in years of cholera epidemics, and often without passports.^22
The second option was to attract pilgrims to the Black Sea routes by improv-
ing travel conditions along the railroads and aboard Russian steamships, and