68 C h a p t e r Tw o
subjects of the tsar. This perception, he argued, was only heightened by the par-
allel flow of Russian Orthodox pilgrims through Constantinople, who also
stopped in the city to rest, sightsee, and visit the patriarchate before continuing
on to Mt. Athos and Jerusalem. Muslim and Orthodox pilgrims often arrived
in Constantinople from Russia on the same steamships, but they had starkly
different experiences in the city after disembarking. “Well-known” and
“trusted” Russians were there to greet the Orthodox on the quay, and whisk
them away to comfortable accommodations to rest and pray. Muslims, by con-
trast, were left at the mercy of “shady brokers” and con men, most of them Mus-
lim émigrés from the Caucasus, who robbed, cheated, and abused them. One
common trick was to sell unsuspecting pilgrims a ticket on a nonexistent
steamer; another was to take their passports for “processing,” and then charge
them exorbitant fees for meaningless stamps. The result, Nelidov warned the
Foreign Ministry, was the appearance of a double standard, that Russia was
supporting its Orthodox pilgrims but neglecting its Muslim ones.^63
Nelidov had touched on a sensitive issue. Russian officials, like their Euro-
pean counterparts in other colonial contexts, worried a great deal about the
hajj’s potentially subversive political effects on Muslims. Specifically, many
worried that the hajj, as a meeting of Muslims from all corners of the globe,
would heighten Muslims’ sense of solidarity as part of the wider Islamic com-
munity (umma) and undermine efforts to cultivate imperial identities and loy-
alties. A number of scholars have argued that in fact the opposite happened:
that the mass hajj exposed Muslims for the first time to the diversity within
their community, and in many cases heightened their sense of locality and
national identity.^64 Nevertheless, fear of the hajj as a political threat was wide-
spread among European colonial officials, and contributed to a large degree to
Russia’s efforts to bring it under government control.
To shield Russia’s hajj pilgrims from foreign influences abroad, reinforce their
identity as Russian subjects, and gain a better sense of their itineraries and
activities abroad, Nelidov urged the Foreign Ministry to increase support and
services for hajj pilgrims abroad. To add yet another reason for doing so, he
noted that the Ottoman sultan had begun to take advantage of Russia’s neglect
of its Muslims, and was trying to cultivate their loyalties by offering free-of-
charge steamships to Mecca.^65 “If we accept the hajj as something Russia cannot
avoid,” Nelidov wrote, “and that obstructing it or stopping it is out of the
question—and not in our interests—then we can agree that sponsoring it is an
opportunity to cultivate Muslim loyalties.” Among other measures, he proposed
opening a new Russian consulate in Jeddah, where the majority of pilgrims