The Hajj and Religious Politics after 1905 147British in India a decade or so earlier, the Russian government abandoned its
efforts to organize the hajj under centralized leadership.
Saidazimbaev left behind a mixed legacy. His failed plan to organize the hajj
had created a new set of problems around the pilgrimage, arguably worsening
the situation the government faced, and making the task of organization even
more difficult. His exclusive deal with the Volunteer Fleet had created a bitter
rivalry between the fleet and ROPiT. In 1908 and early 1909 the Ministries of
Internal Affairs and Trade would convene a series of emergency conferences to
resolve tensions and repair relations between the two fleets, and get them to
cooperate in organizing hajj transport moving forward. Saidazimbaev’s
heavy-handed attempts to force pilgrims to travel through Odessa and use the
hajj complex had not streamlined the hajj traffic, as he had projected, but had
produced the opposite effect. At these planning conferences, tsarist officials
nervously reported that Muslim pilgrims were reverting to their old land routes
through Afghanistan, and some worried that they had been scared away from
the route through Odessa for good.^114
Perhaps most worrisome for the regime, at a time of heightened fears of
unrest and increased government rhetoric about equality to promote imperial
unity and stability, Saidazimbaev’s plan had helped expose the unequal treat-
ment of Muslim and Orthodox pilgrims, and generated an empire-wide discus-
sion in the press about the abusive, racialized treatment of hajj pilgrims in
Russia’s Black Sea ports. This, in turn, exacerbated concerns in the government
about the hajj as a source of Muslim unrest in the empire, and reopened debates
about how and to what extent the government ought to involve itself in the pil-
grimage. And yet Saidazimbaev also left behind a clear blueprint for organizing
the hajj, and a transimperial infrastructure, which was staffed in part by Mus-
lim intermediaries he had identified and recruited from Turkestan and else-
where. Apart from the hajj complex in Odessa, he had also built facilities for
hajj pilgrims in Kharkov (a major transit point along pilgrims’ railroad routes)
and Tashkent, and had opened a network of ticket offices across Muslim regions
of the empire.
Over the next several years, the tsarist government would co-opt and build
upon Saidazimbaev’s plan. Now more then ever before, officials agreed on the
need and desirability for organizing the hajj, not only for sanitary concerns, but
also for political, strategic, and economic reasons. This is clear from the flurry of
articles at this time that reflected robust discussions and debates about the hajj.