14 0 Chapter Four
Important aspects of the hajj complex were not captured in the Odesskii lis-
tok photos, however. Surrounding the entire complex were high iron gates, and
the sole entrance was locked and manned by round-the-clock guards. And
many, if not most, of those pictured were probably not there of their own voli-
tion. This was because Tolmachev had made it mandatory for all hajj pilgrims
to stay in the complex. In August 1908, he had issued “Instructions for Hajj
Pilgrims,” which was published in Muslim newspapers across the empire. Cit-
ing the need to “prevent a cholera epidemic,” Tolmachev outlined a nine-point
procedure for hajj pilgrims during their time in Odessa. Punitive and threaten-
ing, these instructions were supposed to apply only when cases of cholera had
been reported in the city, as an emergency, preventive health measure. They
stipulated that Muslim pilgrims were allowed to arrive only at Odessa’s main
railroad station (the city had two others), where police officers would be waiting
on the platform to escort them directly to the hajj complex. Hajj pilgrims were
permitted to stay only in the complex, where they would undergo “disinfec-
tion,” and would remain there until their steamships departed. No outsiders or
unauthorized brokers were allowed inside the complex, and pilgrims were not
allowed to walk around the city. The penalty for violating the instructions was
severe: up to three months in jail or a 3,000-ruble fine.^80
Whereas Stolypin viewed the hajj principally through the lens of religious
reform and imperial politics, Tolmachev viewed it through the lens of disease,
as his instructions demonstrate. From the vantage point of Odessa, Tolmachev’s
view made some sense. Cholera and other infectious diseases were a perennial
threat to the city, whose bustling trade port exposed it to Near Eastern and
Asian countries where these diseases were commonly thought to originate. By
the early twentieth century, several global cholera epidemics had been traced
back to crowds dispersing from Mecca, which created widespread fear of hajj
pilgrims as carriers of disease.^81 Tolmachev had become worried enough that
the hajj traffic might cause a cholera epidemic in the city to ask the Ministry of
Internal Affairs in early 1908 to close the city to pilgrims. When the ministry
rejected his request, he sought instead to contain the traffic, apparently seeing
Saidazimbaev’s plan as the best way to do this.^82
There was yet another reason for Tolmachev’s determination to centralize hajj
pilgrims in a single complex, and isolate them from the city. On the issue of the
hajj, Tolmachev’s fear of disease converged with his anti-Semitic views. Odessa
was one of the most Jewish cities in the Russian Empire. In the early twentieth
century, Jews comprised one-third of the city’s population of 400,000.^83 Scholars