Mapping the Hajj, Integrating Muslims 55creation of centralized, sustained rule over colonial populations.^23 Ru ssia’s
efforts to map the hajj routes and itineraries of its Muslims should be seen as
part of this larger phenomenon of creating “colonial knowledge” as a means to
capture, control, and govern conquered territories and peoples. And yet, these
efforts were also different in important ways from conventional colonial map-
ping and knowledge-production projects, as described in previous studies.
First, they did not aim to understand and control peoples rooted in particular
locales, but instead their processes of movement, and the infrastructures that
supported that movement. And second, the goal of this hajj mapping project
was not primarily to gather information to project onto a Cartesian map, but
rather to reconstruct the cross-border system of nodes, or the main itineraries
of the hajj from Russian lands. Put simply, this project was about mapping
movement through space rather than the absolute space of a discrete territory. It
was an attempt by Russia to conceptually capture and control human move-
ment, rather than the physical landscape through which it crossed.^24
Russia would begin its project of mapping the hajj only after first trying to
restrict it. Twice in the late 1860s the Ministry of Internal Affairs ordered gov-
ernors across the empire to limit the number of foreign passports to Muslims
going to Mecca. Passports, first introduced in Russia in the early eighteenth
century, had acquired new meaning in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. In this era of Great Reforms, Russia was rapidly modernizing its transport
networks and Russian subjects had new opportunities for foreign travel, not-
withstanding the regime’s fears about its implications for the empire. In 1856
Tsar Alexander II had removed the hefty 250-ruble fee for foreign passports,
and lifted the ban on travel to western Europe, with an eye toward encouraging
economic and intellectual development, and fostering foreign trade. The tsar
did this reluctantly. He shared with many other tsarist officials a fear that
increased travel to western Europe would drain money from the empire, and
introduce subversive political ideas to it, but opted to loosen travel restrictions
all the same.^25 The hajj inspired similar worries, especially in the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, but in this case the ministry attempted to restrict pilgrims’
access to passports, even at the risk of upsetting Muslims and appearing to
interfere in their religious practice.
Sanitary concerns played a large part in this decision. The ministry’s first
order to restrict the hajj in Russia came in 1865, the same year that a massive
cholera outbreak that began in Mecca became a global epidemic, spread far and
wide by dispersing crowds of pilgrims.^26 Within six months, the disease had
spread to Europe and New York City, and more than 200,000 people had died