62 C h a p t e r Tw o
The catalyst for Ignatʹev’s proposal seems to have been no single event, but
rather a series of events, and a general sense that the situation was growing out
of control. The disappearance of a Circassian pilgrim named Tsuk Borenov in
Arabia in 1870, his presumed death, and Ignatʹev’s subsequent efforts to inves-
tigate his case and recover his property, had unearthed dreadful details about
the acute housing crisis in Constantinople during hajj season and the suffering
of Russia’s Muslim pilgrims while in transit in the city. In response to requests
from Borenov’s family in Ekaterinodar (Borenov’s home, just north of the Black
Sea)—which they made through their local Russian officials and the viceroy in
Tiflis—Ignatʹev sent consular agents out to Constantinople’s tekkes to investi-
gate the Borenov case, and track down his belongings. The agents returned to
Ignatʹev empty-handed, and with awful accounts of the dilapidated, squalid
lodging houses in which most of Russia’s hajj pilgrims stayed.^48
The Borenov case was not exceptional. By the early 1870s, Ignatʹev was inun-
dated with requests to investigate and resolve cases involving hajj pilgrims in
Figure 2.4. This shamail print, produced in Kazan in the early 1900s, shows Mecca and
Medina and major holy sites in and around the cities. (Tatarskii shamail: slovo i obraz [Mos-
cow: Mardzhani, 2009])