118 Chapter Three
Some petitioned the Ministry of Internal Affairs, asking that their port be
closed to hajj traffic.^94 Newspaper articles especially detailed the problems Rus-
sia’s Muslims faced along the new Tashkent-Orenburg rail line.^95
The government was well aware of the persistent problems of the hajj. In
1907, while hajj season was still ongoing, Russia’s minister of internal affairs,
P. A. Stolypin, oversaw the creation of new rules to govern the transport of hajj
pilgrims between the empire and Arabia. Now more than ever the government
was determined to organize the hajj. A revolution had broken out in the empire
in 1905, set off by widespread, if uncoordinated, uprisings against the govern-
ment. Tsar Nicholas II had been forced to issue the October Manifesto, which
promised broad civil liberties and a constitution for Russia, and marked the
end of absolute monarchy. In spite of these concessions, revolutionary activity
and upheaval persisted, and the regime worried about the stability of the em-
pire in the face of growing resistance. It also worried more than ever before
about the hajj as an unregulated phenomenon, and focused with renewed en-
ergy on streamlining the traffic along the Black Sea routes.
Figure 3.9. Samarkand railway station, end of hajj season, c. 1900. Crowds of relatives and
friends gathered on the platform to greet a train carrying hajjis returned from Mecca. (Hac,
Kutsal Yolculuk [Istanbul: Denizler Kitabevi 2014])