x Preface
challenges of writing a history of human mobility is that sources tend to be
fragmented and scattered across great distances. In the case of the hajj, the story
is not inscribed in the Russian archival record. The tsarist state’s ambivalence
and secrecy about its involvement in the Meccan pilgrimage, together with
Soviet cataloguing conventions, conspire to bury the subject. And so, the story
must be uncovered by seeing beyond categories in archival registers and against
narratives that Soviet-era archivists sought to create, and by piecing together
documents from disparate places.
Having picked up the thread of the story in Moscow, I next investigated
archives and manuscript collections in Tbilisi, Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Istan-
bul. A network of Russian consulates in Ottoman lands anchored the tsarist
state’s hajj infrastructure, and I use the records of these institutions—mainly
those from Beirut, Damascus, and Constantinople (Istanbul)—to anchor my
study as well. The archives of tsarist Russia’s Jeddah consulate, arguably the most
important of the network, are missing. To fill the gap, I have pieced together
records of this consulate from other collections, including the Russian Interior
Ministry archives and especially the Ottoman Interior and Foreign Ministries
archives.
To access and represent Muslim experiences of the hajj and Russian involve-
ment in it, as well as to balance state and nonstate perspectives, I draw also on
sources produced by and for Muslims in Russia. These include articles, letters,
and advertisements from Turkic-language newspapers, as well as firsthand
accounts of the hajj written in Old Tatar. I found hajj memoirs from the late
imperial period (1880s–1910s) to be particularly valuable as geographical
sources. Often dry and boring reads, these were intended not to entertain with
tales of exotic places, but as practical guidebooks for would-be pilgrims. As
such, they contain rich and precise data on pilgrims’ routes and itineraries
between Russia and Mecca. Few scholars have studied these sources; they are
poorly catalogued in collections across the former Soviet Union, where they
await discovery and study by scholars of history, religion, and migration in
Russia’s vast imperial expanses.
The maps of hajj routes I include in this book are original. I made them
using GIS (geographic information system) software, by plotting textual geo-
graphic data, gathered from both hajj memoirs and state sources, onto a visual
map. Each of these sources has its flaws. Hajj memoirs tend to reflect the routes
and experiences of elites, rather than the more numerous poor. And state
reports on the hajj can be of questionable accuracy. Written by Russian officials