Mapping the Hajj, Integrating Muslims 83including the vibrant informal networks that many Muslims from Russia contin-
ued to rely on in getting to Mecca, and that would thrive well into the twentieth
century. These networks fell outside the view of most tsarist officials doing the
mapping.
In 1896 the Ministry of Internal Affairs produced a thirty-two-page compos-
ite document titled “On the Hajj, Its Meanings, and Measures for Organizing
It,” based primarily on reports from Russia’s consulates in Jeddah, Baghdad,
and Mashhad. The ministry sent it out to all of Russia’s governors across the
empire, and asked them to respond to the report and its proposed measures.^118
The 1896 report, for the first time, mapped out the basic geography of Rus-
sia’s hajj traffic. It identified three main routes that an estimated 18,000 to
25 ,000 Sunnis and Shiʿis took as they made the hajj from Russia to Arabia.
First, there was a land route from the Caucasus that traversed northern Persia
and Mesopotamia, across the desert to Arabia. Shiʿis in the South Caucasus
preferred this route, as it allowed them to visit Shiʿi holy sites in Karbala and
Najaf on their way to Mecca. The second main route went by land from Turke-
stan, through Afghan and Indian lands down to Bombay, where pilgrims
boarded ships to cross the Indian Ocean. Pilgrims made “secret” undetected
pilgrimages along this route, as it passed through places where Russia had no
consular outposts and pilgrims traveled undetected. The report showed how
criminal rings operating in Black Sea ports facilitated these “secret pilgrim-
ages.” The third and most modern route was by railroad through Russian
lands to the Black Sea, and onward by steamship through Constantinople and
the Suez Canal to Jeddah.^119
In addition to taking secret routes through Afghan and Indian lands, pil-
grims routinely left without receiving passports. This posed public health risks
for the empire. At a time of recurring global cholera epidemics, mostly related
to the Meccan pilgrimage, the unregulated hajj traffic, largely beyond the view
or authority of Russian officials, was dangerous.^120
Echoing Ambassador Nelidov’s idea from a decade earlier, the report pro-
posed a pragmatic approach to the hajj, while also revealing a negative attitude.
“We must agree that the hajj is harmful and undesirable,” it concluded, “but it
is also inevitable and a ‘tolerated evil’; it must be limited and organized and the
awful state of affairs for our pilgrims must be addressed.”^121 Russia had to do
something about the hajj. The volume of hajj traffic moving through the empire
was increasing every year, and the unregulated and disorganized crowds were
causing disorders along Russia’s railways and in its Black Sea ports. There were
political and security concerns as well. The awful conditions that Muslim