The Hajj and Religious Politics after 1905 151“Hejaz steamships,” ticket sales in Odessa and places across the empire, and
lodging in designated Odessa hotels at set prices. Gurzhi also had plans to open
a Tashkent office. But he, too, was tainted from working with Saidazimbaev: in
1909 a group of Tashkent Muslims complained about his society to the Tashkent
military governor and the Odessa city-governor, describing him and his associ-
ates as “famously shady,” and having “exploited hajj crowds in the past.”^122
Russian officials also preserved and developed Saidazimbaev’s model for
coordinating round-trip, railroad-to-steamship travel on Russian modes of
transport. During the next several hajj seasons, the Ministry of Transport coor-
dinated with Russia’s various railroads to arrange for extra rolling stock and
direct service during hajj season, and special “hajj cars,” which had plaques
with the word “Hejaz” written in large, green letters fastened to their exterior,
and inside a list of station stops where pilgrims could find free hot water.^123
This development of Saidazimabev’s plan would not be easy, not least of all
because it was decentralized. And pilgrims complained that they continued to
be subjected to force and coercion along their routes. To keep pilgrims taking
routes through the Black Sea, and to its waiting ships, the Volunteer Fleet’s
agents employed a number of shady tricks. The fleet closed down rival compa-
nies, many of them opened by Muslim entrepreneurs along Russian hajj routes,
when they seemed to threaten the fleet’s business.^124 And its agents continued to
pressure pilgrims to buy its tickets. One Turkestani hajj pilgrim, traveling in
1908–9, complained of the awful harassment he experienced at the hands of
Volunteer Fleet agents, both inside and outside the empire—he described pred-
atory agents swarming crowds of pilgrims in Odessa, Constantinople, and even
Damascus.^125 It is unclear whether agents engaged in these activities on orders
from the fleet, or whether they did so on their own initiative, for their own
enrichment.
Whatever the case, it is clear that Russia’s efforts to organize the hajj contin-
ued in a decentralized manner, and had many unintended effects. It is also clear
that not all Russian officials thought it was the best idea to organize the hajj
traffic through the empire. At least one official, M. E. Nikolʹskii, a former Rus-
sian consul in Jeddah, raised the important question of what it meant for Rus-
sian and foreign Muslims to be rerouted through Russian lands, and to make
their sacred pilgrimage through this officially non-Muslim empire. In a report
written in 1911, Nikolʹskii made clear his concerns about the long-term effects
of Russia’s hajj organization on the empire, and Muslims’ perceptions of their
place within it. What did they see along the way, what impressions did they
gain of Russia, and how did they compare Russia in their mind to what they saw