Russia as a Crossroads of the Global Hajj 5how Russia governed its Muslim populations, as well as Muslim experiences of
tsarist rule. These new studies go some way toward integrating Muslims into
broader narratives of Russian, Soviet, and global Islamic history.^9 Recent works
have also sparked debates among scholars about how best to characterize rela-
tions between Muslims and the state in imperial Russia. Challenging standard
“conflict-driven” approaches, the historian Robert Crews has argued that Rus-
sia ruled Muslims with relative success in the modern era not by “ignoring” or
repressing Islam, but by sponsoring it. In the late eighteenth century, inspired
by Enlightenment thinking about religion as a useful tool of governance,
Russian tsarina Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796) announced official toleration
of Islam and created for the empire a domestic Islamic hierarchy (the Orenburg
Muhammadan Ecclesiastical Assembly) headed by state-sanctioned clerics.^10
Through this hierarchy, Crews argues, the state effectively instrumentalized
and institutionalized Islam, facilitating the state’s direct involvement in Mus-
lim religious affairs, and integration of Muslims into the empire. By institu-
tionalizing Islam, Crews argues, Russia ultimately sought to “seal off the
borders of the empire,” and isolate the empire’s Muslims from foreign Muslims
and spiritual leaders.^11 Scholars may disagree over the results of the Islamic
Figure I.1. Central Asian hajj
pilgrims on board the Hejaz railway in
Ottoman Arabia. Note the samovar at
the man’s feet, with tea brewing. 1909.
(Library of Congress, Prints and
Photographs Division,
LC-M32-A-357)