52 C h a p t e r Tw o
Ismail’s account is not typical. Many Muslims from Russian-ruled lands
were surely able to make the round-trip journey within a year’s time, particu-
larly those who joined one of the Ottoman imperial caravans leaving from
Cairo and Damascus. And there are fantastic and terrifying aspects to Ismail’s
account that strain credulity and have prompted some scholars to suggest that
he made it up.^15 For instance, he describes his visit to a forest in India filled with
“monkeys as big as horses” that were “bearded and mustachioed like men,” and
had human-looking hands and feet.^16 Yet Ismail’s account is also consistent
with patterns of the premodern hajj corroborated by other sources. His
long-distance voyage was not singularly about the pilgrimage, but also about
trade. And his itinerary involved visits to multiple holy sites, Mecca and Medina
Figure 2.2. First pages of a hajj memoir written by Muslim Tatars from the Volga-Ural
region. In these opening pages they describe their departure, in 1886, from their home vil-
lage near the Volga River, and travel by steamship and railroad to Odessa and on to Istanbul,
where they stopped off for several days to visit Islamic tombs and shrines, and marvel at the
magnificent Aya Sofya mosque (Haghia Sofia). (A1522, Manuscript Division, Institute of
Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg)