36 Chapter One
support for hajj pilgrims central to Russia’s mission and policy in Syria. These
consulates and the services they offered were something new for Russia: they
were the start of systematic efforts to coordinate cross-border hajj patronage, the
use of passports to map and regulate hajj traffic between the Caucasus and
Mecca, and a new policy of co-opting the hajj to integrate Muslims into the
empire and extend Russian influence abroad. They also marked a turning point
in the history of the hajj in Damascus. For the first time, a non-Muslim power
was asserting itself as patron and protector of hajj pilgrims in Syria, involving
itself directly in the hajj caravan and in the estate cases of deceased pilgrims.
Damascus was a city sacred to and visited by both Orthodox Christians and
Muslims, but Russia opened its vice-consulate there with its hajj pilgrims in
mind. This is clear from Bazili’s orders to Telatinidis upon his formal appoint-
ment as vice-consul. In an 1846 document, “Instructions,” Bazili told Telatinidis
that his “main job” was to protect Russian subjects who passed through Damas-
cus to perform pilgrimages to holy places, the majority of whom were “Muslims
from the Sunni and Shiʿi rites” from the Caucasus. As Russian vice-consul, Tela-
tinidis was supposed to greet and receive these Muslims pilgrims when they
arrived in the city, register their passports, and take a list of their names to the
Damascus caravan commander so they could receive his “effective protection”
during their “punishing journey.”^57
The decision to open a Russian vice-consulate in Damascus was not the result
of a sudden surge of hajj pilgrims from the Caucasus into Syria. It is impossible to
know exactly how many Russian-subject hajj pilgrims were moving between
these two regions in this period. Some show up in the records of the Beirut con-
sulate, and yet many others surely evaded the consulate and traveled, undetected
by Russian authorities, their old routes and with the support of long-standing
Muslim networks. Scholars often argue that in the era before railroads and steam-
ships, mainly elite Muslims made the hajj. But this is debatable. The development
of a modern government administrative network in Russia by the mid-nineteenth
century, and increased data on population movements, revealed, among other
things, more complex and apparently long-standing patterns of Muslim pilgrim-
age to Mecca. In the North Caucasus, for instance, officials noted that many from
the Dagestan region who made the hajj were poor, traveled by foot along
well-known land routes, and supported themselves along the long and arduous
journey by hiring themselves out as servants to wealthier pilgrims.^58 Still, if any-
thing, the numbers of pilgrims from the Caucasus taking the Syrian route to
Mecca were probably in decline, as word spread about dangerous conditions