114 Chapter Three
visiting Constantinople and interfering with their religious rituals. The group
wrote that in order to “increase their devotion and loyalty to the caliphate,” they
wanted to visit Constantinople on their way to Mecca via the Black Sea. But Rus-
sian officials were very careful about taking pilgrims from Odessa, Sevastopol,
and other Russian ports and sending them on steamships straight to Jeddah.
And on the return they stopped only in Yanbu, Jeddah, and Jaffa, where they
met guides who were interested in them only as passengers, not as religious pil-
grims. Russian steamship company agents in these ports were also doing the
same, using force to send pilgrims directly to Sevastopol, for the sake of order.
The Kashgar pilgrims also complained that the agents did not allow them to rest,
and that people had been complaining about this for a long time. The pilgrims
objected that without any formal political relations, the Russian consul was put-
ting visas in their passports and holding onto them for weeks, leaving the pil-
grims begging outside of the embassy gates for the return of their passports.^78
The full effects of Russia’s organizational efforts were apparent during the hajj
season of 1907–8. In Sevastopol a Russian-language newspaper captured a cer-
emony on the pier to send off the first of that year’s Hejaz steamships. ROPiT’s
Sevastopol agent, A. I. Mlinarich, had organized the ceremony. It began with a
Muslim prayer service led by a naval akhund (Islamic official) by the name of
Zamaletinovyi, and held just outside the khadzhilar-sarai.^79 Attending the cer-
emony, in addition to Mlinarich and Zamaletinovyi, were Muslims and non-
Muslims involved in various aspects of the hajj: the Ottoman consul to Sevasto-
pol, local police and officials from the city-governor’s office, and a large group
of hajj pilgrims. Afterward, Mlinarich invited his fellow officials to breakfast at
a local hotel, while Zamaletinovyi ushered pilgrims into the lodging house for
a ceremonial meal. Several days earlier, with the help of ROPiT and local sani-
tary officials, these pilgrims had undergone “disinfection” in preparation for
the pilgrimage to Mecca, and in line with new international sanitary rules.
Now they ate and relaxed in the lodging house, waiting to board the next
steamship bound for Jeddah.^80
In Odessa the effects were particularly visible and dramatic. Thanks to the
opening of the Orenburg-Tashkent railroad line in 1906, which connected
Tashkent directly by rail to Odessa, the city saw the largest hajj crowds ever in
- More than 10,000 hajj pilgrims arrived in Odessa over a period of three
months, most of them from Central Asia.^81 Their numbers may well have been
increased by the Volunteer Fleet’s advertising efforts. In June 1907, just ahead of