Forging a Russian Hajj Route 117of the city, halfway between the train station and the port: the New York and
the Bellevue, the National and the Strasbourg.^88 In these hotels, the office’s two
doctors, Dr. Chorba and Dr. Balteron, visited pilgrims daily to examine them,
and wrote daily reports on pilgrims’ health.^89 Gurzhi organized a team of Mus-
lim guides to help pilgrims navigate the city and accompany them by ship to
Mecca.^90 He also wrote up a list of rules and instructions and sent them out to
local officials involved in hajj transport in Odessa: the Persian and Ottoman
consuls general; leading customs and port officials; police officials; the Odessa
mullah Safarov; and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs agent in Odessa.^91
At the end of December 1907, with the organization of hajj transport finished
for that year’s season, Gurzhi sent Tolmachev a final report on how things had
gone. He reported great success overall. The sanitary measures had been thor-
ough, and there had been no cholera outbreaks. His office had registered more
than 10,000 pilgrims, and transported nearly all of them on ROPiT and Volun-
teer Fleet ships (an overflow of 560 had been sent on a Greek ship). Russian
steamship companies had made nearly a million rubles in profits. His central
office in Odessa had set up outposts all over Central Asia, the Volga region, the
Caucasus, and Black Sea region. And with Safarov’s help, the office had orga-
nized proper burials of the dead in the city’s Muslim cemetery.^92
And yet, at the same time, Gurzhi noted that a great deal more needed to be done
to bring the hajj under state control and to solve the various problems and disor-
ders that surrounded it. There had not been enough Russian steamships or doctors
to accommodate the crowds that year. A centralized facility for hajj pilgrims was
desperately needed in Odessa, to make arrangements easier logistically and to con-
tain disease. Gurzhi proposed a “Pilgrimage-Sanitary Khadzhikhane (Lodging
House),” a 3,000-person facility he envisioned building down in the port, near the
standing point for steamships headed to the Red Sea.^93
By the end of the 1907–8 hajj season it was clear that the government had not
succeeded in forging an imperial hajj route or in organizing the hajj. The gov-
ernment had not achieved a monopoly on hajj transport or services, and many
pilgrims continued to travel alternate land routes. Disorder and problems per-
sisted along Russia’s railroads. Much to the embarrassment of the government,
Russian press coverage in early 1908 described the just-ended hajj season as
disastrous by many measures, including a cholera outbreak in Russia that
inspired more fear about the hajj. Officials in Russia’s Black Sea ports drafted
emergency rules for quarantining hajj pilgrims in the event of future outbreaks.