156 Chapter Four
And yet, this does not mean that Russia’s efforts to organize the hajj were a
complete failure. Recall that the government had multifaceted goals for its
involvement in the hajj, related to both internal and external processes. These
were not limited to sanitary concerns, nor were they singularly focused on con-
trolling the traffic, but were also related to strategic agendas. While Russia did
not, in the end, achieve the hoped-for government “monopoly” of the hajj, the
transimperial infrastructure that it built in pursuit of this goal was an achieve-
ment in its own right. And it served a crucial strategic purpose. In the context
of global imperial rivalries, particularly between Russia and the British in Cen-
tral Asia, Russia’s hajj infrastructure extended Russia’s presence and influence
deeper into Ottoman, Persian, and Central Asian lands, and essentially func-
tioned as a mechanism of Russian imperial expansion.