10 Introduction
Unlike France and especially Britain, Russia had no entrenched trade interests
or extensive consular presence in the Ottoman Arab provinces, which had be -
come a focus of European imperial rivalries by the mid-nineteenth century. This
region encompassed the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, together with
other important Islamic shrines and sites in Jerusalem and Damascus, which
many Muslims visited as part of multi-site hajj itineraries in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Not surprisingly, then, Russia embraced hajj patronage also for strategic rea-
sons, as a means to extend influence into Ottoman Syria, Arabia, and other areas
of imperial interest and rivalries abroad, where it had few or no interests to claim
besides the hajj. In strategic terms, then, Russia’s embrace of hajj patronage was less
about protecting established interests forged over centuries of overseas colonial-
ism, and more about extending Russia’s imperial reach into new parts of the world.
Figure I.4. Shamail print depicting the newly built Hejaz railway, which connected Damas-
cus and Medina. The Ottoman government built the railroad with money gathered from
Muslims worldwide. Russia’s Muslims were among the donors, and the Russian consul gen-
eral in Constantinople helped to deliver donations to the Ottomans. Kazan, 1909. (Tatarskii
shamail: slovo i obraz [Moscow: Mardzhani, 2009])