84 C h a p t e r Tw o
pilgrims endured were becoming an embarrassment for the government, and
seemed to call into question Russia’s professed toleration for its Muslim
populations.
Standard narratives emphasize how Russia ruled Muslims through violence,
repression, and restrictions, and by trying to isolate them from contacts with
foreign coreligionists. Here we see efforts to achieve this same goal through a
different, ostensibly more positive exercise of power, by mapping patterns of
Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, as a way to expand the surveillance and regula-
tory capacity of the regime over its Muslims, and bring them more firmly
within the Russian imperial orbit, even while abroad. After trying and failing
to block the hajj, Russia tried a new tack, seeking instead to control and co-opt
it as a mechanism of imperial integration. This strategy grew out of trial and
error, and a general acceptance of the hajj as part of the Islamic inheritances
that came with its conquests of Muslim lands, and as a network upon which to
build new imperial pathways and agendas.
The mass movement of Muslim pilgrims between the empire and foreign
lands, and tsarist officials’ perceptions of this movement and its implications
for the state and the empire, had dramatic consequences for Russia. As a phe-
nomenon that lay at the intersection of Russia’s foreign and domestic policy, the
hajj demanded and produced new collaborations between officials in the Min-
istries of Foreign and Internal Affairs to draft policies and imperial agendas.
Mass migrations reshaped and expanded Russia’s territorial attachments
worldwide, opening up new arenas of Russian imperial activity and space that
extended well beyond the empire’s formal borders, and brought Russia into
parts of the world where it had no prior history of involvement. By opening
consulates to serve its hajj pilgrims, Russia was building upon the global net-
works of its Muslim populations, and quietly expanding its influence and insti-
tutional presence in the world. Mass migrations also restructured Russia’s
project of imperial governance, transforming it into a cross-border enterprise
that in some cases required cooperation and collaboration between tsarist offi-
cials inside and outside the empire.
A focus on the hajj, furthermore, illuminates how empire building tran-
scended Russia’s formal imperial borders in the nineteenth century. Migrations
effectively reorganized Russian state structures in this period, connected previ-
ously disparate places, and expanded and emboldened the imperial imaginings
of tsarist officials. The hajj migration also shows how local and peripheral