28 Chapter One
For security, pilgrims taking land routes to Mecca tried to join one of these
hajj caravans. The Damascus caravan was arguably the more prestigious of the
two. It began in Istanbul, where the Ottoman sultan performed public investi-
ture ceremonies to send it off. It carried a ceremonial palanquin (mahmal)—an
empty wooden chair mounted on a camel’s back, cloaked in silk brocaded with
Koranic verse, a symbol of the sultan’s authority—as well as the “imperial
purses” (surre). The surre contained generous subsidies and gifts from the sul-
tan for the people and officials of Damascus, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina,
and Bedouin tribes along the desert route.^32
To make the hajj caravan into an imperial institution and a “centerpiece of
Ottoman rule” in Damascus, the Ottomans built an extensive infrastructure to
support it beginning in the sixteenth century. This included the construction of
a majestic pilgrimage complex in the center of Damascus, the Tekkiya, with a
mosque and soup kitchen; shops stocked with supplies for the road, such as
riding gear, blankets, and grain; and an enclosed campground reserved for pil-
grims in the courtyard of the complex.^33
To fortify the caravan’s desert route between Damascus and Mecca, the
Ottomans built a string of fortresses, wells, and cisterns that reached deep into
the Hejaz region. To secure the route, they stationed troops along it, and paid
off nomadic Bedouin tribes with generous grain subsidies to prevent them from
attacking the caravan. They named the governor of Damascus the caravan
commander (amir al-hajj), and put him in charge of annual preparations for
the caravan, and for leading it to Mecca and back. They also organized new
ceremonies in Damascus to mark the caravan’s departure. This involved a sol-
emn procession through the city with Ottoman troops and musicians, and the
delivery of the mahmal and surre to the caravan by an official from Istanbul.^34
The result of these efforts was an enormous caravan of people and animals,
described by one eyewitness as a “walking administration.”^35 In addition to many
thousands of pilgrims speaking different languages, with the caravan com-
mander at its head, the caravan consisted of a military escort, its own court and
treasury, merchants, Ottoman officials responsible for running the complex
logistics of the caravan, and a fleet of service people, including the “torchbear-
ers” who took shifts walking ahead of the caravan at night with a hand-held
lantern.^36
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Damascus caravan
included as many as 50,000 pilgrims a year, hailing from surrounding Arab
lands, Anatolia, Persia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.^37 In good years, it pro-
vided pilgrims with safe passage across the desert to Mecca and back. But in