Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca

256 Pages·2015·25.58 MB·English

by  Eileen Kane

Russian 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)
St. Petersburg
BALTIC S
SEA MMoossccooww NNiozvhgnoiiroKKdaazzaann L N
WWaarrssaaww A
Penza SSaammaarraa
Orenburg
KKuurrsskk R QQIINNGG
VViieennnnaa KKiieevv SSaarraattoovv EEMMPPIIRREE
KKhhaarrkkoovv
BBuuddaappeesstt U
RR UU SS SS II AA NN EE MM PP II RR EE
BBeellggrraaddee OOddeessssaa
AAssttrraakkhhaann BishkekN S H A N
SSooffiiaa Sevastopol Feodosiia TIA
BLACK SEA TTaasshhkkeenntt AAnnddiijjaann
Constantinople Sinop Poti CASPIAN KHIVA Urgench KKaasshhggaarr
Batumi CA Tiflis SEA Khiva SSaammaarrkkaanndd
Ankara Trabzon UKCarAsSUS Baku KrasnovodskBBuukkhhaarraa
Izmir OOTTTTOOMMAANN EEEErrMMzzuuPPrrIIuuRRmmEETTaabbrriizz Enzeli Ashkhabad MervBHUIKNHADRUA KUS H
AAlleeppppoo MMoossuull RRaasshhtt Mashhad Kabul PPeesshhaawwaarr
MEDITERRANEAN SEA Homs Teheran KushkaAAFFGGHHAANNIISSTTAANN
KermanshahPPEERRSSIIAA Herat
Beirut DDaammaassccuuss
BBaagghhddaadd
Port Said Jaffa KKaarrbbaallaa
Alexandria JJeerruussaalleemm NNaajjaaff
CCaaiirroo SSuueezz BBaassrraa BBRRIITTIISSHH IINNDDIIAA
EEll–-TToorr
PERSIAN
GULF
MMeeddiinnaa
Yanbu
Jeddah Mecca Bombay
RED
SEA
ARABIAN SEA
Kamaran Island
Hodeidah
0 100200300400 500 mi
0 200 400 600 800 km
Border of Russian Empire, c. 1900
Map 1. The Russian Empire and neighboring lands, ca. 1900
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
vii
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
viii
:
preface sources and maps
T
his 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
ix