Russia as a Crossroads of the Global Hajj 13and fuzzy in the minds of imperial officials, many of whom saw them as imper-
manent. And so the geographic shape that the Russian Empire took in the nine-
teenth century was not foreordained, nor can empire simply be reduced in
spatial terms to its familiar rendering on a map, as a clearly defined and self-
contained unit.
Muslim responses to Russian involvement in the hajj were mixed. Glancing
through the pages of hajj memoirs, one can find both praise and harsh criti-
cisms. Not surprisingly, praise often came from Muslim elites, whose privileged
status derived from their service to the Russian state, and who thus had good
reason to voice approval for Russian involvement. Such elites included people
such as Mufti Sultanov, the head of the Orenburg Assembly, who made the hajj
in 1893 and stayed at the Russian consulate in Jeddah for three days on his way
back from Mecca. Sultanov gushed in his account about the Russian consul,
A. D. Levitskii, who was “so friendly and hospitable” to welcome him into his
home, in spite of a raging cholera outbreak in Jeddah and the risk of infection.^24
But others complained about invasive policies and rough treatment, and being
gouged by predatory agents who worked on behalf of the state. In one account
from 1909 by a Muslim Tatar from Astrakhan, the author warned readers to
avoid the “dishonest” mullah in Odessa, Sabirzhan Safarov, who worked as an
agent for Russian steamship companies, and made a killing preying on poor
hajj pilgrims.^25
And yet it would be wrong to conclude that Muslims simply resented Russian
efforts to sponsor the hajj, or avidly sought to avoid the hajj infrastructure that
Russia built. By and large, most Muslims from Russia relied to some extent on
tsarist support in making the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Russian consular
archives are stuffed with correspondence between hajj pilgrims and consular
officials that reveals that Muslims regularly turned to consular officials for help
making the hajj: asking for money, directions, a place to stay, to mail a letter
back home to relatives, medical care, and so on. The list of requests and
demands is long, reflecting pilgrims’ great needs during the long and arduous
travel between Russia and Arabia. And many pilgrims wrote to Russian consuls
to thank them for their help, promising to pray for them and the tsar, and
expressing their gratitude to be subjects of the tsar and to receive diplomatic
protection abroad.
Russian consular officials often took these letters at face value, as evidence
that support for the hajj was working to instill in Russia’s Muslims pride in