Mapping the Hajj, Integrating Muslims 79overland trek from Jeddah to Mecca, a distance of some fifty miles along a
well-worn desert path, as a “deadly slow and tiring journey” made by a huge
caravan of hundreds of people and camels—“desert ships”—across the desert,
and many poor pilgrims on foot. The heat was unbearable, and he was appalled
by the primitive conditions along the way. There were no caravanserais in
which to rest, only shabby huts called “coffeehouses” every several miles, where
pilgrims sat under awnings drinking overpriced tea and coffee, surrounded by
stinking piles of human and animal excrement.^104
Perhaps most useful to the tsarist government, Ishaev’s reports identified
existing networks in Arabia that Russia’s Muslims relied on in making the hajj.
He highlighted two above all. First, there was the tight-knit Turkestani émigré
community living and working in Jeddah, Mecca, and Medina. This commu-
nity was relatively small, but had grown a lot in recent years. It was a mix of
families that had fled the Russian invasion and resettled in Arabia, and those
who had stayed on after making the hajj because they had no money to get
home. Ishaev counted forty such people in Jeddah, working as shopkeepers or
peddling goods on the streets from trays and bins, and reported that many also
lived in Mecca, where they worked in different trades and seemed to have set-
tled permanently.^105 Many made their money off the hajj traffic from Turkestan.
Indeed, many of the worst “exploiters” of Turkestani pilgrims came from this
group, Ishaev noted, whose members used shared language and culture as a
way to earn the trust of fellow Turkestanis and cheat them. A standard ploy was
to agree to store money and valuables for pilgrims, and then disappear. Ishaev
reported that he had “made a lot of enemies” by warning Turkestanis not to
leave their valuables with these men, but to leave them instead with the Russian
consulate in Jeddah. He drew up a list of “the most dangerous Central Asians,”
three men he charged with stealing pilgrims’ money: Muhammadjan Mans-
urov, Kary Makhmut, and Zakir Effendi. He also accused them of working to
discredit the Jeddah consulate among Russia’s hajj pilgrims. He complained
that in 1895, in the wake of an attack by local Arabs on the Russian consul and
other European consuls, they had been spreading “false rumors” that pilgrims’
deposits had disappeared in the attacks and Ishaev had “deliberately deceived
t hem.”^106
The second network that Ishaev identified in his reports was the dalil system,
the ancient institution of guides that largely controlled the pilgrimage in Ara-
bia. He described in detail how this system worked. Appointed by the sharif of
Mecca, the dalil position was hereditary, and the job was highly coveted in a
region that had almost no industry besides the pilgrimage. The dalil system was