Table Of ContentRussian Hajj
Russian Hajj
EMPIRE AND THE
PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA
Eileen Kane
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges receipt of a subvention from
the Research Matters program of Connecticut College which assisted in the
publication of this book.
Copyright © 2015 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof,
must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street,
Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2015 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kane, Eileen M., 1972– author.
Russian hajj : empire and the pilgrimage to Mecca / Eileen Kane.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8014-5423-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Muslim pilgrims and pilgrimages—Russia—History. 2. Islam and state—
Russia—History. 3. Muslim pilgrims and pilgrimages—Saudi Arabia—Mecca—
History. I. Title.
BP187.3.K266 2015
297.3'52—dc23
2015010887
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and
materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials
include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally
chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit
our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.
Cloth printing
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother and father
and in memory of my brother Matthew (1978–1998)
Map 1. The Russian Empire and neighboring lands, ca. 1900
BLACK SEA
RED
SEA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
ARABIAN SEA
PERSIAN
GULF
BALTIC
SEA
N
0
0
400
600
200
800 km
300 400
200
100
500 mi
Kamaran Island
R
U
S
S
I
A
N
E
M
P
I
R
E
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
P E R S I A
AFGHANISTAN
QING
EMPIRE
BRITISH INDIA
R
U
S
S
I
A
N
E
M
P
I
R
E
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
P E R S I A
AFGHANISTAN
QING
EMPIRE
BRITISH INDIA
Border of Russian Empire, c. 1900
U
R
A
L
S
C
A
U
C
A
S
U
S
HI
ND
U
KU
S
H
T I A
N S
H A
N
Mashhad
Kushka
Poti
Samarkand
Bukhara
Andijan
Tashkent
Constantinople
Sinop
Enzeli
Alexandria
Beirut
Jaffa
Jeddah
Port Said
Bombay
Baku
Batumi
Feodosiia
Sevastopol
Samarkand
Bukhara
Andijan
Tashkent
Orenburg
Kars
Merv
Ashkhabad
Kermanshah
Khiva
Urgench
Bishkek
Aleppo
Mosul
Tabriz
Basra
Rasht
Baghdad
Karbala
Najaf
Cairo
El–Tor
Jerusalem
Damascus
Medina
Suez
Erzurum
Peshawar
Astrakhan
Saratov
Sofia
Belgrade
Budapest
Vienna
Odessa
Kharkov
Kursk
Kiev
Moscow
Kazan
Samara
Warsaw
Trabzon
Aleppo
Mosul
Tabriz
Basra
Teheran
Rasht
Baghdad
Karbala
Najaf
Cairo
El-Tor
Jerusalem
Damascus
Medina
Mecca
Yanbu
Suez
Homs
Erzurum
Ankara
Izmir
Herat
Kabul
Peshawar
Hodeidah
Krasnovodsk
Tiflis
Kashgar
Kashgar
Astrakhan
Saratov
Sofia
Belgrade
Budapest
Vienna
Odessa
Kharkov
Kursk
Kiev
Moscow
Kazan
Samara
Penza
Nizhnii
Novgorod
St. Petersburg
Warsaw
CASPIAN
SEA
BUKHARA
KHIVA
vii
contents
List of Maps
viii
Preface: Sources and Maps
ix
Introduction: Russia as a Crossroads of the Global Hajj
1
1 Imperialism through Islamic Networks
17
2 Mapping the Hajj, Integrating Muslims
47
3 Forging a Russian Hajj Route
86
4 The Hajj and Religious Politics after 1905
120
5 The Hajj and Socialist Revolution
157
Conclusion: Russian Hajj in the Twenty-First Century
183
Acknowledgments
187
Abbreviations
191
Notes
193
Bibliography
219
Index
233
viii
maps
1. The Russian Empire and neighboring lands, ca. 1900
vi
2. Main Russian hajj routes, late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries
xii–xiii
3. Hajj route followed by caravan from Kazikumukh in the
North Caucasus, 1839–1841
32
4. Changing Central Asian hajj routes, 1880s–1910s
71
5. Hajj route through Russian lands followed by Persian subject Farahani,
1885–1886
96
6. Hajj routes through Central Europe followed by Russian subjects
Al΄mushev (1899) and Akchura (1911)
155
ix
preface: sources and maps
This study was made possible by an accidental discovery in the Russian impe-
rial foreign policy archives in Moscow (AVPRI). Looking for material on Rus-
sian Orthodox pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I found folders of correspondence
about Muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca, most of them with blank
tags, indicating that they had never been read by researchers. AVPRI, I later
discovered through a more deliberate search, is a trove of documents on the
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century hajj, as understood by Russian con-
sular officials posted along routes to Mecca in Ottoman, Persian, and Indian
lands. Reading through these sources, I was struck by the confounding image
of the Russian Empire they conjured—seemingly disparate regions of the
empire were revealed to be closely connected; imperial populations appeared
out of place; and Russian officials operated in parts of the world and in ways not
captured by standard narratives. Gradually, these sources revealed to me a sys-
tem: a cross-border hajj infrastructure that the tsarist state built to support the
movement of Muslims between Russian-ruled lands and Arabia. This infra-
structure had administrative and political coherence of its own, and it seemed
ideally suited to study, given the abundance and accessibility of material.
I wrote this book to document a fascinating and virtually unknown chapter
of Russian history, and in the hope that a history of Russia told through a focus
on human mobility might illuminate how rapid changes sweeping the globe in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped Russia’s history in
ways that conventional domestic frameworks have so far obscured. One of the
