Mapping the Hajj, Integrating Muslims 81Tatar merchants in Russia by name, and even knew the Tatar community in
Turkestan better than Ishaev, who had been a part of it for years. Ishaev reported
that Srudzhi had “entire volumes of lists of Russian Muslims,” with whom he
corresponded regularly, and he often sent students back to Russia with return-
ing pilgrims to collect donations.^111
Ishaev’s reports confirmed that, four years after the founding of the Jeddah
consulate, Russia still had much work to do in bringing the hajj traffic under
Russian influence and control. He noted in particular the prevalence of “secret
pilgrimage” by Russia’s Muslims from Turkestan. By this, he meant the large
numbers of pilgrims making the hajj without passports, along unsupervised
land routes, and largely beyond the detection of Russian officials inside or out-
side the empire. He noted a recent “flood” of pilgrims from Turkestan into Ara-
bia by “secret” routes, and attributed it to a lack of local oversight and control
by the Russian authorities in the region, and ineffective passport registration.
Through interviews with pilgrims, he learned that local Muslim spiritual
authorities in Turkestan largely controlled the hajj. Generally, he reported,
Turkestani Muslims did not leave on the hajj without the permission and bless-
ing of these authorities. They gave departing pilgrims signed certificates to
authorize their hajj, or sent them without any documents at all. And departing
pilgrims honored these authorities before leaving for Mecca, inviting them into
their homes and serving them a feast. Many were poor and ended up stranded
and penniless in Arabia, leading a “pitiful existence.”^112
The archival trail suggests that Ishaev’s reports were commissioned with a
specific purpose in mind—namely, to help the newly established Russian
administration in Turkestan understand and develop a policy toward the hajj.
Russian ambassador Ivanov in Constantinople read Ishaev’s reports closely,
and forwarded them on to the Russian governor-general of Turkestan, A. B.
Vrevskii, during the 1890s. They contained not only information and data on
the Turkestani hajj traffic, but also recommendations for the governor-general
on how best to control it and stop the problem of “secret pilgrimage.” To rem-
edy “secret” hajj departures, Ivanov in 1895 conveyed Ishaev’s recommendation
that Turkestanis without passports be sent home by steamship through Batumi,
and the costs for travel paid by the state be collected from their home
community.^113
Muslim agents staffing the consulate, like Ishaev, studied the hajj and wrote
reports, and the consulate hosted spies and agents sent into Arabia by the tsa-
rist government on research missions. Like the British, Russia also sent in phy-
sicians to assess the sanitary situation in and around Mecca, and write reports.^114