From the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries, the forces unleashed by the age of European imperialism and its rapid encroachment on dār al-Islām increasingly brought the hajj under the scrutiny and regulation of non-Muslim powers. The driving force behind these dramatic changes in administration of the hajj was the expansion of the British Empire. As Britain's power in the Indian subcontinent grew, so too did its maritime supremacy throughout the Indian Ocean basin. Looking to secure its access to India, ward off its European competitors, and expand its commercial interests in southwestern Arabia, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden, Britain's role in the region was intensified by the transit opportunities that emerged with the development of regular steamship routes between the Mediterranean and India from the 1830s to the 1860s and the eventual opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. With the exponential growth of maritime traffic that accompanied these technological advances came a similarly dramatic rise in the oceangoing pilgrim traffic from and through British India. Owing to this expansion in the number of seaborne pilgrims, the hajj soon came to be recognized as the primary conduit for the globalization of epidemic diseases, such as cholera and plague.

Although the initial impetus for increased British surveillance in the Red Sea was largely the result of international sanitary and trade concerns generated by the outbreak of cholera during the 1865 pilgrimage season and the resultant call for quarantine measures at the 1866 international sanitary conference, such interests cannot be separated from more directly political considerations. In the decades following the Sepoy Mutiny (Great Rebellion) of 1857–58, British officials became increasingly concerned with monitoring international webs of anticolonial radicalism, both real and imagined, being forged among diasporic networks of Indian dissidents, pilgrims, and the Ottoman Empire. As elusive as these connections may have been during the 1850s and 1860s, it had become evident to British officials that by the 1870s and 1880s these linkages had given way to a more clearly defined Pan-Islamic ideology, sponsored in part by the Ottoman sultan ˓Abd al-Hamid II (r. 1876–1908). In the words of William Roff, the hajj came to represent a source of “twin infection.”Footnote ¹ As a result of this “twin infection” of sanitary and security concerns, the British and Ottoman empires engaged in a contestation of sacred space in which the stakes ranged from suzerainty over the Hijaz and administration of the hajj to even larger questions of hegemony in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and even dār al-Islām as a whole.

Freed from the rhythms of sailing in accordance with the monsoon cycle, the costs of transport and the length of passage for Indian pilgrims traveling after the introduction of the steamship were reduced drastically. Although previous generations of pilgrims were confined mainly to elite officials, wealthy merchants, and the ˓ulama˒, the “modern” hajj also became accessible to Muslims of modest means. However, the relative affordability of the steamship-era hajj also made the journey possible for a group identified by both Muslim and non-Muslim authorities as a “dangerous class” of “pauper pilgrims.”Footnote ² As the numbers of destitute pilgrims rose, so did the incidence of death and disease in the Hijaz. Much to the dismay of Turkish and Egyptian officials, and to the embarrassment of the British who vehemently denied that British India and its pilgrims were the source of epidemic cholera, by the 1860s the connection between India's pilgrim masses and the dissemination of epidemic disease was becoming all too clear.Footnote ³

The breaking point came in 1865, when a particularly virulent outbreak of cholera struck the Hijaz, killing some 15,000 pilgrims. To make matters worse, when ships of returning pilgrims arrived at Suez in May of the same year, it was falsely reported that no instances of disease had been detected despite the fact that over a hundred corpses had been tossed overboard during the voyage. By June, cholera had attacked Alexandria, killing 60,000 Egyptians, setting off a chain reaction that would eventually ravage the port of Marseilles and all of Europe. Finally, by November 1865, cholera had spread as far away as New York City. By the epidemic's end, over 200,000 lives had been lost in major cities alone.Footnote ⁴

Given the severity of the 1865 epidemic, international attention focused immediately on the role of the hajj in the dissemination of cholera. Dr. Achille Proust, a professor of hygiene at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris, expressed the terror felt throughout the Mediterranean, commenting that “Europe realized that it could not remain like this, every year, at the mercy of the pilgrimage to Mecca.”Footnote ⁵ Echoing Proust's anxiety, W. W. Hunter, director general of statistics to the government of India and a leading authority on Indian ethnography and history, noted with haughty contempt that although India's pilgrim masses might “care little for life or death,” their “carelessness imperils lives far more valuable than their own.”Footnote ⁶ Thus, for the remainder of the 19th century, European powers, acting upon the conclusions of the 1866 international sanitary conference held in Istanbul (Constantinople), embarked upon an ambitious and highly contentious program of sanitary reform and surveillance.Footnote ⁷

As F. E. Peters observes, “the threat of devastating cholera epidemics invading Europe” resulted in a “concerted politique sanitaire whose objective was the regulation of the life of Western Arabia and, no less, of the most sacred ritual of Islam, the hajj.”Footnote ⁸ For British officialdom, however, this situation was further complicated by the looming anxieties of Muslim-inspired political subversion that haunted colonial authorities in the wake of the Sepoy Mutiny. On the one hand, despite British claims to the contrary, India's Ganges valley was established as the source of cholera. On at least forty occasions between 1831 and 1912, cholera spread from either Bombay or Calcutta to the Hijaz and was then dispersed far and wide by returning hajjīs, ensuring that global outbreaks of cholera were a perennial threat.Footnote ⁹ On the other hand, contact with Arabia was widely considered by British officials to be the primary source of religio-political fanaticism among Indian Muslims. First referred to as “Wahhabism” and later as Pan-Islam, Arabian influences were blamed for spreading unrest and rebellion in India, the Straits Settlements, and the Dutch East Indies.

Although the British certainly understood the risk of political subversion that the hajj entailed, they feared that direct interference with this fundamental Islamic practice would incite a backlash in India. During the height of the cholera era, from the 1860s to the 1890s, these considerations placed Britain in direct confrontation with the reform-minded politique sanitaire being imposed by the rest of Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Britain's concerns were threefold. First and foremost, Britain worried that restricting access to the hajj would agitate its Muslim subjects. Second, Britain feared that strict quarantine measures would threaten the free flow of trade between India and Europe. As a result, British officials obstinately denied a mounting body of scientific evidence and international consensus that cholera was a contagious disease.Footnote ¹⁰ Thus, for three decades Britain obstructed international efforts to impose quarantine restrictions designed to limit the number of indigent and infected pilgrims. Third and finally, Britain was hesitant to submit to any international agreements that would have enhanced the Ottoman Empire's ability to govern the hajj effectively, enforce its sovereignty in Arabia, or exert more Pan-Islamic influence over Britain's Muslim colonial subjects.

A HISTORIOGRAPHY IN FRAGMENTS: REFRAMING THE HAJJ AS INDIAN OCEAN HISTORY

Owing in part to its unwieldy transregional scope, the hajj has often been treated as an orphan by scholars trained to write histories of particular linguistic groups, nations, regions, or empires. As a result of this sometimes stubborn insularity, there is as of yet no cohesive historiography of the hajj. By transcending the metageographical boundaries between the Middle East and South Asia, this study utilizes the colonial-era hajj as a tool to recover dimensions of both dār al-Islām and the British Empire that traditional historiographies have left inchoate. Although one might expect the vanguard of scholarship on the hajj to have emerged from among specialists of Middle Eastern history, a survey of the existing historiography on the 19th-century hajj suggests otherwise. In many respects, specialists of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and a coterie of historians interested in questions of British imperialism in the Indian Ocean world have begun to lead the way.

William Ochsenwald's valuable works on the Ottoman Hijaz, The Hijaz Railroad (1982) and Religion Society and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz Under Ottoman Control, 1840–1908 (1984), are notable exceptions. Both contain critical insights into the relationship between pilgrimage and ˓Abd al-Hamid II's larger Pan-Islamic project, the Ottoman response to cholera in the Hijaz, and local resistance to European sanitary interventions in Jidda. However, although Ochsenwald's research deals obliquely with the encroachment of British surveillance upon the hajj, it cannot fully explain the triangular relationship among the Ottoman Hijaz, Indian Muslims, and British colonial authority.Footnote ¹¹

By far the most valuable investigation of this subject has been William Roff's seminal 1982 article, “Sanitation and Security: The Imperial Powers and the Nineteenth Century Hajj.” Roff, a specialist of Southeast Asia, was the first scholar to make use of the voluminous British colonial archives. More importantly, he was the first to explore the confluence of medical and political concerns shared by colonial administrators in India, Malaysia, and the Dutch East Indies. Even F. E. Peters, author of the most comprehensive history of pilgrimage to date, The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places (1994), adds very little to Roff's earlier account of the colonial-era hajj. Despite having ushered forth an impressive and extremely useful collection of pilgrimage narratives and colonial documents, Peters's chapter on the sanitary crises plaguing the 19th-century hajj offers little in terms of fresh analysis; his use of lengthy block quotations from primary sources often overshadows his own conclusions. As in the case of Ochsenwald's work, Peters focuses much more narrowly on the Hijaz than Roff's Indian Ocean approach.Footnote ¹²

Although this study owes much to Roff's groundbreaking research, the two differ in several important respects. Roff's study is now twenty-five years old and is therefore in need of an update to reflect more recent research. Wherever possible, this study also attempts to expand upon Roff's use of British archival sources by including previously unused selections from the voluminous Foreign Office correspondence related to the hajj. Finally, despite his claim to cover both “sanitation and security,” the vast majority of Roff's essay is dedicated to issues of sanitary surveillance, but specific threats posed by Pan-Islam and other forms of anticolonial radicalism are only briefly suggested in the article's concluding paragraphs.Footnote ¹³ In light of this lacuna, this article will demonstrate that British responses to the international sanitary crises of the 19th century cannot be understood without further contextualization of the hajj's crucial role in Pan-Islamic and anticolonial ties between India and the Ottoman Empire.

Another noteworthy contribution comes from Mark Harrison, an expert in the history of medicine in colonial India, whose 1992 article, “Quarantine, Pilgrimage, and Colonial Trade: India 1866–1900,” deals extensively with British sanitary policies related to the containment of both cholera and plague, as well as with British objections to international quarantine procedures. Whereas outbreaks of cholera and plague within colonial India have been well documented, Harrison's article is still the only study to address specifically the relationship among cholera and plague in India, the quarantine of pilgrims en route to Mecca, and the quarantine controversy's effect on Britain's maritime trade. Yet as in the case of Roff's research, Harrison is virtually silent on the Pan-Islamic pressures informing much of Britain's pilgrimage policy.Footnote ¹⁴

By piecing together the disparate historiographical fragments that have been produced from both within and without the field of Middle East studies, a fuller appreciation of the pilgrimage's transregional, even global, dimensions can be exposed. On a broader level, the reframing of the hajj from an Indian Ocean perspective also articulates a critical plane of analysis flexible enough to allow for greater dialogue among scholars of the Middle East, South Asia, and the British Empire.Footnote ¹⁵

THE RISE OF BRITISH SURVEILLANCE IN THE RED SEA AND THE MUSLIM HOLY LAND, 1830–78

British India extended well beyond the national boundaries that constitute present-day India; its western frontiers stretched into the Persian Gulf, Arabia, the Red Sea, and the coasts of East Africa. Far from being confined to a contiguous land mass, British India was actually an Indian Ocean empire, which safeguarded British India's regional interests through an archipelago of scattered dependencies, consulates, and agencies. These agencies, writes Robert Blyth, “met India's strategic needs, served commercial interests, dealt with the consequences of the Indian diaspora, facilitated pilgrimage to Arabia and acted as listening posts across much of the Islamic world.”Footnote ¹⁶ These outposts originally developed around the commercial needs of the East India Company and India's native merchant diaspora. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the company was already active in the Red Sea, particularly in Jidda and Mocha. It seems probable that company residents, particularly Muslims, became involved in preexisting pilgrimage networks of shipping, lodging, and financial transactions. As a result, large communities of Indian Muslims could be found in Mecca, Jidda, Mocha, and Aden.Footnote ¹⁷

After the Sepoy Mutiny and parliament's transfer of East India Company possessions to the Crown in 1858, new security needs led the imperial state to project its power throughout the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. However, even before 1858, a more aggressively imperial mode of operations was already emerging. The intensification of British interests in the region began in earnest with the voyage of the steamship Hugh Lindsay on 20 March 1830. Aggressively backed by the Bombay Presidency, even when plans for the ship and its proposed Red Sea route had been discarded by the East India Company's court of directors, the Hugh Lindsay quickly proved its worth, reducing the journey from Bombay to Suez to a mere twenty-one days. Seeing the potential benefits of this new steam technology, the Bombay Presidency and the government of India both looked to the Red Sea with renewed interest.Footnote ¹⁸

The opening of the Red Sea to regular steamship services, however, still depended on military support from British India to ensure its success. In order to provide a coaling station for its ships, the Bombay Presidency forcibly seized the island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa, in 1835. Britain's escapade in Socotra ultimately proved disastrous, and four years later, when the port of Aden was found to offer a better harbor and climate than that of Socotra, Aden's ruler, like Socotra’s, was intimidated, bribed, and ultimately overpowered.Footnote ¹⁹ This aggressive stance in the Gulf of Aden rapidly intensified the activities of British agents in the region. By the 1830s agents were given greater political responsibilities and upgraded titles.

Another sign of change came in 1837, when the East India Company began to appoint “English” (i.e., non-Muslim, non-Indian) agents to Red Sea posts, such as Jidda, Mocha, Suez, and Qusayr. By August 1838 these same agents were recognized by the Foreign Office as vice-consuls. As Alexander Ogilvie, the first British vice-consul at Jidda, reported to his new post, his French counterpart, Fulgence Fresnel, described the scene: “Jeddah, that old concierge of the Holy City, received within its walls, stupefied, a European consul arrayed in the European fashion and the cannon of the Muslim fortress saluted with 21 guns the English flag as it was hoisted over the consular residence.”Footnote ²⁰ To underscore the significance of this shift in the Red Sea's balance of power, only sixty years earlier the Ottoman sultan had considered “the sea of Suez” and the “noble pilgrimage to Meccah” to be wholly Muslim affairs. In fact, the sultan had warned his viceroy in Egypt that “to suffer Frankish [non-Muslim, European] ships to navigate therein, or to neglect opposing it, is betraying your Sovereign, your religion, and every Mahometan.”Footnote ²¹

Despite such resentment, no Muslim power, not even the Ottoman sultan, was in a position to halt Britain's expansion into the Red Sea during the first forty years of the 19th century. The following two decades, however, revealed that Britain's steam-powered imperialism had spawned a number of unintended consequences. Chief among them were growing numbers of Indian pilgrims traveling to Mecca, including rising populations of indigent pilgrims and Indian Muslims living and working throughout the region, which arguably culminated in the development of a nascent Pan-Islamic bond between Mecca and Muslim resisters to British imperialism in India. Around the mid-19th century the annual flow of ocean-going pilgrims from the subcontinent is estimated to have hovered between 5,000 and 7,000 participants.Footnote ²² By the 1880s, however, average numbers rose to around 10,000.Footnote ²³ Doubling again during the pilgrimage season of 1893, the number of Indian pilgrims was reported to have exceeded 20,000.Footnote ²⁴ Although Indians usually accounted for the largest proportion of pilgrims arriving by sea each year, the growth of the steamship-era hajj was not confined to this one group. The total number of pilgrims rose from an estimated 112,000 participants in 1831 to some 300,000 in 1910.Footnote ²⁵

By the 1850s British observers began to note the potential dangers and embarrassments presented by the rising tide of Indian pilgrims in the Hijaz. It is not surprising that their principal concern was with the high proportion of destitute pilgrims. As early as 1814, the explorer John Lewis Burkchardt had commented on the wretched state of Indian pilgrims, but little urgency was attached to these observations before the Sepoy Mutiny and the international cholera crisis of 1865–66.Footnote ²⁶ Prior to these events, British officialdom had not yet considered the potential link between the hajj and its capacity to spread disease and political subversion. As a consequence, no passports or travel documents were required of pilgrims from British territories, despite Turkish proposals from as early as the late 1840s.Footnote ²⁷ Likewise, no real effort was made to document the numbers of pilgrims traveling, nor was there much that British officials thought they could do to protect the pilgrims. As the vice-consul in Jidda commented in 1853, “I am directed to afford relief to all destitute British subjects and to enable them to return to their own country.” However, he lamented that little could be done to curb the proliferation of indigent pilgrims because the government felt strongly that it had “no right to prevent any person who desires to do so, from proceeding on pilgrimage.”Footnote ²⁸

In sharp contrast to this laissez-faire attitude, Sir Richard F. Burton's experiences during his famous pilgrimage in disguise in 1853 convinced him that the problem of indigent pilgrims would eventually have much wider political implications. In his famous pilgrimage narrative, Burton related the tale of a Punjabi who, “finding life unendurable at home,” sold his possessions, gathered his family, and set out for Mecca. As with many poor pilgrims of the period, it was very likely that this family would either fall victim to physical privations or settle in the Hijaz, never to return to India again. Using this example, Burton described a dangerous pattern of Muslim emigration and radicalization in the Muslim Holy Land. He warned:

Burton's “cure” prescribed that pilgrims should be made to prove their solvency before being permitted to embark from Indian ports. He further recommended that pilgrims be made to register with the vice-consul upon their arrival in Jidda. Burton also pointed to the need for a stronger British presence in the region. In short, Burton forecast that the hajj would become an outlet for Muslim radicalism and anti-British sentiment. Moreover, he understood how easily negative opinions about British rule could be spread to other parts of dār al-Islām via the hajj and the diaspora of Indian exiles who were beginning to circulate around it. In retrospect, the aggressive steps recommended by Burton were at least ten or twenty years ahead of their time.

Only two years after the publication of Burton's hajj account, the Sepoy Mutiny shook British India to its very core. For the most part, British officials labeled the mutiny an example of Muslim fanaticism. Despite the oversimplified assumptions behind such views, much of the symbolism of the rebellion was undeniably Islamic. Upon capturing the Mughal capital of Delhi and collecting their would-be emperor, the mutineers fashioned the elderly Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah, as leader of the revolt. Uprisings followed in predominantly Muslim areas, such as the North-West Frontier and the recently annexed province of Awadh. Therefore, it is not surprising that contemporary British observers tended to conflate the mutiny with previous frontier jihads in India.

Such responses are best exemplified by the life and work of Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi (1786–1831). Like many Indian ˓ulama˒ dislocated by rapid changes in India's legal and educational systems, he took refuge in Mecca. During the 1820s, he twice performed the hajj and resided in Mecca from 1821 to 1824, where he is purported to have come under the influence of the militant Arabian reform movement of Muhammad ibn ˓Abd al-Wahhab (1703–92). In his semiofficial history, The Indian Musalmans (1871), W. W. Hunter explicitly blamed Barelwi's religiopolitical activism in North India as the inspiration behind the Sepoy Mutiny. Lacing his analysis with stereotypes and exaggerations, Hunter vividly described “Wahhabi” influence as a “chronic conspiracy” and a “standing rebel camp” threatening both India's frontiers and its internal security.Footnote ³⁰ Although subsequent scholarship has proven that Wahhabism and the numerous 19th-century renewal and reform movements of India do not share a common ancestry, the terminology used to describe these groups was interchangeable from the perspective of colonial officials and thus an essential element of British fears concerning Indian contacts with the broader Islamic world.Footnote ³¹ As a consequence, Hunter's readership was left to assume that external influences, rather than heavy-handed British policies, were the primary source for Muslim radicalism in India.

If, as Hunter suggested, Muslim anticolonialism in India was subject to external influences from Arabia and the rest of dār al-Islām, was it not also reasonable to assume that events in India might have had a similar impact on public opinion in Arabia and other parts of dār al-Islām? Just as Burton had predicted, intersecting networks of pilgrims, merchants, and exiles could easily send tremors of anti-British sentiment throughout dār al-Islām. The first evidence confirming this theory seems to have been the outbreak of anti-Christian violence in Jidda on 15 June 1858. On that evening the British and French consulates were ransacked and their respective flags pulled down. Among the victims was the British vice-consul, who was reported to have been cut into pieces and thrown from a window of his residence. The French consul and his wife were also murdered. In all, more than twenty Europeans were slain, and another twenty-six were later rescued by the steam frigate The Cyclops. Footnote ³²

Although the exact causes for this violent outburst remain obscure, a variety of commercial, political, and religious variables were colliding in Jidda. Ottoman authorities argued that the massacre arose from a dispute over a vessel confiscated by British authorities. This explanation did not, however, satisfy European observers, who rightly argued that such a matter could not have precipitated a general slaughter of Jidda's European population. Although Foreign Office correspondence acknowledged that the most probable cause for the violence was Muslim bitterness over the increasing presence of Christians in the Islamic holy land, noting that such an uprising had long been expected, British officials also feared that the violence was related to the ongoing mutiny in India. Despite initial reports suggesting that a shaykh from Delhi and sixty of his followers in Mecca may have incited the violence, in reality the violence originated with the Hadrami mercantile community, whose grievances extended beyond the problem of Christians in the Hijaz.Footnote ³³

The primary source of Hadrami displeasure stemmed from their opposition to Anglo-Ottoman efforts to abolish the slave trade. The Hadrami colony in Jidda, numbering some 2,000 around 1850, was, like their compatriots in other Red Sea and East African ports, heavily involved in that lucrative trade. More generally speaking, Hadramis resented the damage being done to their share of the shipping and pilgrimage trades as a result of European steampower in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.Footnote ³⁴ Hadrami merchants and boatmen also had close cultural and commercial contacts with India, which would have facilitated their interactions with radical Indian exiles, ex-mutineers, and pilgrims traveling through the Red Sea region.Footnote ³⁵ In fact, corroborating reports suggest that Hadrami sailors enthusiastically spread news of the Jidda outbreak in an attempt to foment a similar rebellion at the Suez port.Footnote ³⁶

Fearing that similar attacks might be in store for Europeans stationed in Cairo and Suez, Alfred Walne, the British consul at Cairo, remarked that “from the breaking out of the revolt in India, in which Moslems have taken such a prominent part, there has been reason to suppose that Indian and Persian partisans have done their best to increase, if not to excite, that sympathy.”Footnote ³⁷ Viewed in isolation, Walne's analysis might be dismissed as panicky insinuation. However, seemingly unrelated anti-European or anti-Christian disturbances in one corner of dār al-Islām often formed the background events for subsequent outbreaks of violence in other areas. Unfortunately, the processes of resistance to imperialism are all too often handled by historians as part of discrete colonial, national, or regional histories, thereby occluding the interregional connections among various locales within dār al-Islām. By contrast, Juan Cole describes a period of generalized Muslim resistance to European, especially British, expansion from the Sepoy Mutiny (1857–58) to the ˓Urabi Revolt in Egypt (1881–82). He connects episodes of urban violence, such as those in Lucknow and Delhi (1857–58), Jidda (1858), Damascus (1860), and Alexandria (1882), as well as wider events like the Russo–Turkish War (1877–78), to reveal a larger pattern of conflict.Footnote ³⁸

Taking this model into account, it appears that the polarizing effect of India's many frontier jihads, particularly the First Anglo–Afghan War of 1839, and then the mutiny, were relayed through international networks of Muslim activists, merchants, and radicalized members of the ˓ulama˒, many of whom had been displaced by the advance of European interests in India, had gone on pilgrimage to Mecca, and had subsequently settled in Aden, the Hijaz, Egypt, Syria, and Istanbul. Population statistics also support this claim. By the 1860s the British consul in Jidda estimated that there were at least 10,000 Indians living in the Arabian peninsula, up significantly from Richard Burton's estimates during the previous decade. Among these immigrants to Arabia were growing numbers of Afghans and Indians with bitter experiences forged by years of fighting against the British. Intermingling with the Hadrami trading communities of the Red Sea ports, these immigrants provided a volatile anti-imperialist and anti-Christian element that contributed to the massacres in Jidda and later episodes in Damascus and Alexandria. Even beyond the Red Sea ports, Egypt and the rest of the Middle East experienced a similar increase in South Asian Muslim sojourners and exiles. Although fewer than a thousand British subjects registered with authorities in Egypt, one British consul suggested that their actual numbers were probably closer to 10,000. The bulk of Egypt's Indian community lived in Cairo, but even in the more remote towns of Upper Egypt there were reports as late as 1865 of fugitive holy men cum revolutionaries provoking peasant rebellions.Footnote ³⁹

Noting these disturbing developments in 1873, British officials began to sense the far-reaching dimensions of the Indian Muslim diaspora in Mecca and the Red Sea region and its potential as a conduit for radicalism that would eventually fall under the term “Pan-Islam.” As Sir Bartle Frere, a former governor of the Bombay Presidency, observed, “the Hedja[z] is the natural asylum for fanatical Moslem exiles from India.” He added that even though many of these exiles “pass their lives in a congenial atmosphere of fanaticism,” their strong influence “cannot be safely disregarded either in Aden or in India.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Perhaps even more worrisome was the elite group of Indian exiles who took up residence in Istanbul alongside Pan-Islamic activists like Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838/9–97) and began to lobby for an Ottoman-supported jihad against European imperialism.Footnote ⁴¹ Thus, in the decades that followed the mutiny and the Jidda massacre, British officialdom became increasingly sensitive to the transimperial networks being forged between Indian dissidents and the Porte. However diffuse these connections may have been during the 1850s and 1860s, by the reign of sultan ˓Abd al-Hamid II, such sentiments had matured into a more robust Pan-Islamic movement.

SULTAN ˓ABD AL-HAMID II AND THE HOLY PLACES AS PAN-ISLAMIC PROPAGANDA, 1876–1908

Following the psychological watershed of the mutiny, Indian Muslims were forced to come to terms with the loss of a Muslim state and the consequences of foreign domination. Even after the mutiny, there were still those Muslim leaders who called for either jihad or hijra, citing Shah ˓Abd al-˓Aziz's famous fatwa of 1803, which declared British-controlled India to be dār al-ḥarb. However, British repression in the wake of the mutiny made it clear to most that jihad was at best futile and at worst suicidal. Defeated and deprived of Mughal power and prestige, Indian Muslims turned increasingly toward the Ottoman caliphate “in search for an alternative psychological and spiritual center.”Footnote ⁴² The Ottoman sultan was the only remaining independent Sunni power and the protector of the holy places of Mecca and Medina. He embodied not only the survival and supremacy of Islamic law, but also a living link to the temporal power and glory of the Islamic past.

This acknowledgment of the Ottoman caliphate was a major change. During their prime, from roughly 1526 to 1707, the Mughals had regarded themselves as “caliphs India,” citing Jalal al-Din al-Dawwani's (1427–1501) fatwa legitimizing the simultaneous presence of multiple caliphs.Footnote ⁴³ However, Indian Muslims rapidly responded to the destruction of Mughal power by engaging in “the invention of tradition,” a process of legitimizing change through references to the past, which usually occurs “when a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys the social patterns for which ‘old’ traditions had been designed.”Footnote ⁴⁴

Indian Muslims were not the only Islamic society to engage in this kind of “invention of tradition.” The social and political fabric of dār al-Islām as a whole came under increasing pressure from the imperial powers of Europe, especially Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Russia. In response to these encroachments, disparate groups of Muslims from Central Asia to Indonesia rallied around the Ottoman caliphate. The Ottomans were inundated with pleas for military, political, and spiritual support from conquered territories throughout dār al-Islām. Out of these diffuse efforts to protect the Islamic world against Western domination, a broad-based religiopolitical movement, otherwise known as Pan-Islam (ittihād-i Islām), eventually coalesced under the auspices of loyalty to the Ottoman sultan-caliph.

The Pan-Islamic response to imperialism did not become a conscious, focused movement until the mid-1870s, however. During this period the Ottomans began to assert aggressively the sultan's ecumenical claim of jurisdiction over Muslims living under the rule of non-Ottoman governments. These claims rested on extremely tenuous foundations. According to the official myth, the title of caliph had devolved from the last Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil, to the Ottoman blood line as a result of the conquest of Egypt by Selim I in 1517.Footnote ⁴⁵

From the late 18th century onward, but especially during the reign of ˓Abd al-Hamid II, the caliphate gained new importance. However, due to the shaky grounds upon which the sultan's caliphal claims were based, a secondary “basis for the Sultan's legitimating ideology was his position as defender of the Holy Places in Mecca and Medina.”Footnote ⁴⁶ By accentuating these roles, ˓Abd al-Hamid hoped to bolster the international position of the Ottoman Empire, which had been reduced to a “tributary state” by Western powers through war and the economic and political coercion of the Capitulations.

The new Pan-Islamic orientation of ˓Abd al-Hamid's reign was also designed to capitalize on the sultan-caliph's increasing status in the eyes of non-Ottoman Muslims. It is not surprising that the Porte was eager to harness the rising Indian enthusiasm for the sultan-caliph that had developed during the Russo–Turkish War. Although the rapid growth in Pan-Islamic sentiment in India and beyond has often been attributed to Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, under whose influence the development of a mass movement advocating the political, social, and intellectual rejuvenation of the Islamic world began to take shape, a parallel, yet often overlooked, factor in this process was the growth of India's vernacular press, particularly in Urdu. Whereas in 1835 only six vernacular newspapers were publishing in India, by 1850 the number was up to twenty-eight, and by 1878 northern India alone had as many as ninety-seven vernacular papers with a total circulation of some 150,000. By 1880, the number of vernacular journals had risen to 330. The explosion of publications around the time of the Russo–Turkish War provided Indian Muslims with greater access to news from around the Islamic world, much of which was translated from Turkish and Arabic newspapers, such as al-Jawaib, Tercuman-i Rum, Akhbar dar al-Khilafat, and Tercuman-i Mashriq. However, the most influential publication of all was Paik-i Islam, an Istanbul-based journal written in Turkish and Urdu and edited by an Indian Muslim. Designed as an official organ of the Porte, it raised the sultan-caliph's profile and promoted closer ties between Indian Muslims and the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ⁴⁷

As a result of the proliferation of pro-Ottoman newspapers and journals, numerous voluntary organizations sprang to life, decrying the Turkish plight and urging Indian Muslims to give financial aid to the Ottomans in their time of need. According to Ottoman registers, Indian efforts to support the Ottoman war effort were an overwhelming success. Over 124,840 Ottoman liras, equal to over one million (10 lakhs) Indian rupees, were collected. More importantly, organizations like Anjuman-i Islam, Anjuman-i Teyyid-i Turkiye, and Meclis-i Mueyyid-i Islamiyye drew this financial support from diverse quarters of the Indian community. As a result, normally divergent Indian Muslim groups like Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan's Aligarhi loyalists, Deobandis, and Shi˓a—and even Hindus—joined in this overwhelming financial response.Footnote ⁴⁸

In recognition of this almost unanimous wave of support, the Ottomans constructed an elaborate system of consulates, missions, and emissaries in India. Based in Bombay and Calcutta, officials were charged with stimulating interest in the fortunes of the Ottoman Empire. They encouraged Indians to invoke the sultan-caliph's name during the Friday khuṭba. They bestowed honorific titles or imperial decorations upon elite Indian benefactors. They even urged average Indians to write to the sultan. These letters varied from expressions of moral support to demands for more Ottoman consulates in India to protect Muslim rights. Many of these letters were also used as propaganda in the Turkish press to emphasize the sultan-caliph's ecumenical authority at home and abroad. Similarly, Ottoman press agencies circulated news and appeals for financial support in India's vernacular press. Turkish press extracts, republished in India, included glowing accounts of the sultan-caliph's good deeds and the need for strengthening the bonds of religion. Clearly, these journalistic efforts served as an important medium for the transmission of Pan-Islamic thought to distant Muslim communities. However, British officials from Calcutta to London became increasingly suspicious. Ottoman representatives were kept under close surveillance and their access to the vernacular press circumscribed; their requests for opening new consulates were rejected. Although intelligence inquiries into Indo-Turkish activities often failed to yield any firm conclusions as to whether the Porte's activities were part of a systematic political plot, the British remained perpetually concerned about Ottoman activities in Bombay, the North-West Frontier, and Afghanistan. The British particularly feared the possibility that ˓Abd al-Hamid was engaging in the kind of wild Turco–Indo–Afghan jihadist schemes advocated by al-Afghani.Footnote ⁴⁹

Much of ˓Abd al-Hamid's propaganda effort was not undertaken on Indian soil. The uncolonized space provided by Mecca represented a perfect opportunity to solidify the bond between non-Ottoman Muslims and their caliph. This “sacred” bond also involved the profane business of propaganda distribution. Great care was taken to draft propaganda materials that would appeal to each language and nationality. Some pamphlets called for Central Asian Muslims to rise against their Russian masters, and others called upon Indians for financial support. These materials urged Indian Muslims to send their zakat to the Ottomans. Such pamphlets even declared that by doing so, “God would reward them, otherwise they would be punished and disgraced both now and in the hereafter.” As if God's wrath were not enough, such tracts even included disclaimers for loyalist Indian Muslims, reminding them that Anglo–Ottoman relations were friendly and that “the British Government would not object to support given by the Indian Muslims.”Footnote ⁵⁰

Aside from ˓Abd al-Hamid's propaganda and financial appeals, the holy places became a major part of the sultan-caliph's public image. Embarrassed by complaints from European officials regarding the mistreatment or cheating of their colonial subjects in Jidda, Mecca, and the quarantine stations of the Red Sea, the sultan-caliph went to great lengths to demonstrate not only his spiritual importance but also his temporal power and competence as protector of the holy places. By raising the visibility of his good works in the Hijaz, increasing the official Ottoman presence at the holy places and along the caravan routes, imposing passport fees and regulations, and policing hajj-related territories and commerce, he endeavored to make a better showing in this critical area of Ottoman foreign policy.Footnote ⁵¹

Although such reforms were meant to underscore the sultan-caliph's competence and beneficence as protector of the holy places, the most compelling example of this public-image campaign was the monumental Hijaz Railway project. On 2 May 1900, ˓Abd al-Hamid announced the construction of a railway linking the Syrian coast with the Hijaz. As William Ochsenwald explains, “This railroad was to be the single physical embodiment of the Pan-Islamic movement. If the Empire could handle the project using only Ottoman sources of supply and personnel it would indicate to Europeans and Ottomans alike that technical and economic independence was possible.”Footnote ⁵² This project would also make extensive use of the modern propaganda and fundraising methods that had developed from the Russo–Turkish War onward in order to signal to Muslims and non-Muslims alike that the sultan-caliph was capable of properly organizing the hajj, maintaining the holy places of Islam, and protecting Arabia from foreign attack. Thus, even though construction started without any accumulated capital, it was hoped that Muslims would rally together to raise the necessary funds. The sultan made the first donation, setting an example for other Muslims. In India, the central committee for the Hijaz Railway was soon founded in Hyderabad. Following the sultan's lead, Indian organizers persuaded donors to give liberally by stressing how the plight of suffering pilgrims had spurred the sultan-caliph to act for the sake of religion. As a result of this Indo–Turkish press blitz, 50 percent of the total bill was raised through subscriptions. In 1908, just before the end of ˓Abd al-Hamid's reign, the line finally reached Medina. For Indian Muslims, the railway's completion was the physical embodiment of Pan-Islam: the success of the project signaled that dār al-Islām was still capable of protecting itself. Of more importance, the Hijaz Railway project and others like it provided an alternative symbolic structure of financial and political links among India, the caliphate, and the holy places, providing a model for the later development of Muslim anticolonialism, particularly during the Khilafat movement of 1918–24.Footnote ⁵³

EPIDEMICS AND ESPIONAGE: DR. ABDUR RAZZACK AND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE IN THE HIJAZ, 1878–96

Despite many warning signs, British policymakers did not immediately recognize Pan-Islamic sentiment as a major threat to British India. In fact, from the Crimean War (1853–56) until the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), the British were more concerned with Russian expansion in Central Asia. During these decades, Anglo–Ottoman relations were strongly aligned against Russia. On multiple occasions the British actually encouraged pro-Ottoman sympathies in order to either bolster their own legitimacy or check Russian advances in Central Asia.

By the 1870s, however, Austen Henry Layard, the British ambassador at Istanbul, and Lord Lytton, the viceroy of India, began to worry that pro-Ottoman feelings could be directed against the British in the event of a future deterioration of relations with the Ottomans. As Lytton pointed out, “If either by pressure of public opinion at home, or political difficulty abroad, Your Majesty's Government should be forced into a policy of prominent aggression upon Turkey, I am inclined to think that a Muhammedan rising in India is among the contingencies we may have to face.” Lytton's worst fears came true during the Eastern Crisis of 1875–78, when William Gladstone spearheaded a public denunciation of the “Bulgarian horrors” perpetrated by the Ottomans against their non-Muslim subjects in the Balkans. Gladstone's rhetoric sparked an anti-Turkish crusade in the press, effectively ending Britain's pro-Ottoman policy. Thus, when Russia invaded Turkey in 1877, Britain did nothing. As a result, Britain was no longer able to tout itself to Indian Muslims as the sultan's ally and protector. As a result of this anti-Ottoman turn in British foreign policy, even previously loyal Muslims became disillusioned and began to question why British support for the Ottoman Empire, considered sacrosanct in the 1850s, had abruptly ended during the 1870s. Undoubtedly, this sense of disillusionment led a great number of Indian Muslims back into the political arena, particularly into the embrace of Pan-Islam.Footnote ⁵⁴

Just as Lytton predicted, the deterioration in Anglo–Ottoman relations did raise the threat of Indo–Ottoman intrigues. Moreover, anxious reports from Layard pointed to Mecca as the main point of contact for anti-British activities. He warned that “ex-mutineer Indians at Mecca were in communication with the Porte and that through them the Ottomans could make an attempt to bring about a rising in India.”Footnote ⁵⁵ In a similar reaction to the spike in Pan-Islamic sentiments during and following the Russo–Turkish War, the English pilgrim-adventurer John F. Keane reported the following ominous details about his 1877–78 pilgrimage:

He went on to warn of violent Pan-Islamic schemes being hatched in Mecca and Jidda:

Keane's sentiments are almost identical to those expressed by the newly appointed British Consul in Jidda, J. N. E. Zohrab, who wrote the following in 1879:

In many ways Zohrab's assessment foreshadowed Britain's long-term position on the matter.Footnote ⁵⁸ Although Wilfred S. Blunt—an eccentric English aristocrat, traveler, and Arab enthusiast—has traditionally been credited for popularizing the idea of an Arab caliphate, it was actually Zohrab who had first promoted the idea. Having concluded that the Hijaz was destined to become a “major power base” from which the Ottoman sultan-caliph would “incite the Muslims of India to revolt,” Zohrab argued that Britain should establish a protectorate over it and bring the sharīf of Mecca under British control in order to allow Britain “to guide the whole Mussulman world.” When viewed from this perspective, later British support for Sharif Husayn bin ˓Ali's Arab Revolt of World War I would seem to mark the conclusion to an almost comically ambitious, multidecade project aimed at nothing less than the destruction of the Ottoman caliphate and the establishment of British control over Islam's most sacred sites.Footnote ⁵⁹

As Keane's and Zohrab's comments illustrate, in order to contain the threat of anticolonial subversion, British officials had become convinced that greater political surveillance of the hajj was necessary. However, those same officials were constrained by Queen Victoria's famous 1858 proclamation of religious tolerance and noninterference, which sought to allay both Hindu and Muslim fears that postmutiny India would be subject to aggressive Christian missionary activities.Footnote ⁶⁰ It was against these guarantees that British authorities had to weigh the need for greater political surveillance in both India and the Hijaz. Any governmental intrusions that could be perceived as an affront to the sanctity of the hajj or the religious freedom of Indian Muslims carried the possibility of a violent backlash.

Despite the political and epidemiological threats, officials deemed it too risky to discourage Muslims from undertaking the hajj. As a result, Britain repeatedly resisted international sanitary conventions that would have called for the imposition of a means test or passport fees, thereby limiting the number of “dangerous” and “pauper” pilgrims. Instead, Britain opted for a strategy of increased surveillance activities, in terms of both public health and politico-religious machinations. Following this logic, Zohrab recommended in 1879 that “in order to thoroughly sift the questions of aid and protection to pilgrims” the entire pilgrimage experience must be understood. Furthermore, “to do this effectively it is in my opinion necessary that a Confidential Agent of the consulate be sent to watch and follow this year's pilgrimage.”Footnote ⁶¹ The British ambassador in Istanbul proposed in June of 1880 that the Indian government employ Muslim secret agents to infiltrate the holy cities. Although Layard's plan was rebuffed at the time, British agents at Aden, Istanbul, and Jidda were charged with monitoring Ottoman propaganda efforts. In the meantime, British intelligence continued to receive reports of Ottoman intrigues from French and Dutch sources as well as its own. At this point, all of the colonial powers were becoming increasingly suspicious of Muslim radicalism transmitted via the hajj. As a result of this common interest, in December 1880 the Dutch foreign minister proposed to Layard a joint program of intelligence sharing and political surveillance related to pilgrims traveling from India and Southeast Asia to Mecca.Footnote ⁶²

In September 1881, Lord Dufferin revived Layard's suggestions, arguing for appointment of a “secret paid agent residing in Mecca.” It is ironic that the ideal man for Dufferin's proposed “secret agent” was already at work in the region. In 1878, the government of British India had attached Abdur Razzack, assistant surgeon of the Bengal Medical Service, to accompany that year's pilgrimage from India. Dr. Razzack's appointment was made in the context of growing administrative and diplomatic questions associated with the repeated outbreaks of cholera in the Hijaz, the general welfare of pilgrims, the overcrowding on vessels carrying pilgrims, and the rising numbers of indigent pilgrims. Razzack was to report only on the sanitary conditions of the hajj, a task he performed successfully in March 1879.

In light of the political concerns raised by Zohrab, Layard, and then Dufferin, however, Razzack was pressed to perform a more overtly political role. In 1882, Britain chose Razzack as the best candidate for political-surveillance activities in Mecca and the Hijaz. Razzack was said to be “an excellent man” and “altogether separated from the Delhi and Wahbabi schools . . . clever and ambitious.” Although Razzack's primary duties were to assist Her Majesty's Muslim subjects, promote the health and comfort of pilgrims, and protect them in their dealings with Ottoman officialdom, he was also instructed that the consul in Jidda “may wish to avail himself of your assistance in obtaining trustworthy information regarding the course of affairs, and of public opinion, in Mecca and neighboring places.” As Razzack pointed out in reply, he would need to frequently visit Mecca to obtain such information, to take a house there to avoid arousing suspicion, and to have an allowance that would permit him “to give some small presents to some of the religious heads.” Although Razzack's requests were approved, it is unclear whether or not Razzack really provided any covert intelligence in his reports.Footnote ⁶³

Although the degree to which Razzack actually served as a spy is debatable, his influence over pilgrimage affairs is unquestionable. From 1878 to 1895, he was the British point man for pilgrimage affairs. Razzack's presence in the Hijaz and later at the Kamaran Island quarantine station, which became operational during the 1881–82 pilgrimage season, signaled the institution of more accurate documentation of the number of pilgrims undertaking the hajj.Footnote ⁶⁴ The suggestions made in Razzack's detailed annual reports also formed the practical basis for the government of India's efforts to reform and institutionalize the pilgrimage experience.Footnote ⁶⁵ Razzack's reports were instrumental in shaping the major piece of British legislation regarding pilgrimage traffic. Based on an earlier but far less comprehensive piece of legislation from 1858, the Native Passenger Ships Act of 1876 was amended in 1883 and 1887 to reflect changes suggested by Razzack and in light of the highly contentious diplomatic effort to integrate Ottoman and British Indian pilgrimage regulations.Footnote ⁶⁶

These legislative reforms sought to ensure that pilgrims were treated humanely and given access to medical attention during both their steamship journeys and their stays in the Ottoman Hijaz. Razzack also recognized that such regulations required new institutions and infrastructure. Thus, in 1881 he suggested the establishment of a separate “pilgrimage agency,” a Muslim-funded charitable effort, to administer the hajj. Yet his proposal, at least as he had imagined it, never came to fruition. A version of his idea was taken up by the government of Bombay, however, which created a post called the “protector of the pilgrims” in 1882.Footnote ⁶⁷ Shortly thereafter, in 1885, the government of India tried to streamline the entire pilgrimage process by hiring a single agency to handle all rail transportation to the ports of embarkation, shipping, passports, and the issuing of return tickets covering all the necessary fees for a successful round-trip from Bombay to Jidda. Thus, from 1886 until 1893, the famous tourist agency, Thomas Cook & Son, was charged with the nearly impossible task of taming the pilgrimage industry and the unscrupulous pilgrimage brokers of Bombay. Ultimately, this novel experiment in colonial governance proved both unprofitable and unsatisfactory for both Cook & Son and the British officials charged with reforming the pilgrimage transport system.Footnote ⁶⁸

Just as the Thomas Cook scheme had challenged the status quo, Razzack also took on powerful vested interests in Jidda and Mecca. In 1882 he reported the following:

Presumably, Razzack's scathing comments, which shifted blame away from India and located the causes of disease in the Hijaz itself, did little for his popularity.

Perhaps even more daring than his criticism of Hijaz sanitary conditions was his attempt to take on what might be considered the most entrenched of pilgrimage institutions, the muṭawwif, or “shaykh” system. These hereditary guilds of pilgrimage guides, despite their corruption and abuses, provided pilgrims with guidance in carrying out the complex rituals of the hajj. Each guide had different linguistic and cultural specialties to suit each client's respective country of origin. Not only were these figures a necessary part of the pilgrimage experience, but also they stood at the heart of Mecca's government and economy. The British, however, regarded the muṭawwif system as a corrupt and exploitative monopoly, and in many cases it was just that. Moreover, the British resented the closed nature of the system. They wanted to appoint their own guides in order to both monitor events in Mecca and gain greater control over the recruitment activities of guides working outside the Hijaz. It was feared that these guides were distributing Pan-Islamic propaganda as they traveled to recruit would-be pilgrims in their own country of specialization. Thus, in 1881, when Razzack was first appointed Muslim vice-consul in Jidda, it was naively hoped that he would work with the sharīf of Mecca to appoint the Indian pilgrimage guides. Although Razzack was never allowed this privilege, he repeatedly exposed their abuses as well as those of the Ottoman administration.Footnote ⁷⁰

Alhough ascertaining the extent to which Razzack served as a spy is difficult, it seems that either his critical role as part of the growing sanitary regime or his suggested role as a secret agent ultimately led to his death. On 31 May 1895, a band of “‘supposed Bedouins’ attacked members of the foreign community in Jidda walking outside the walls of the town, killing Razzack and wounding the British, French, and Russian consuls.”Footnote ⁷¹ These assailants were reported to have blamed the sanitary authorities for bringing cholera to the Hijaz. On that same day, Mecca's disinfecting machine was destroyed and the building that housed it was completely ransacked. Two days later, Mecca's hospital was attacked, forcing physicians to disguise themselves and flee for their lives. Likewise, the disinfection machine in Jidda was demolished by Bukharan pilgrims, forcing medical inspectors to seek shelter aboard vessels in the harbor. Even in the absence of definitive proof, Foreign Office officials suspected that there was more to Abdur Razzack's murder and the accompanying spate of violence against medical personnel than a mere bedouin raid. Perhaps it was a plot coordinated by either the Ottoman or Meccan authorities.Footnote ⁷²

Such feelings were only exacerbated by Ottoman reluctance to carry out harsh reprisals against the Harb bedouins whom they had accused of Razzack's murder, nor did Razzack's murder end local resistance to sanitary intervention. In subsequent years bedouin camel drivers attacked the Yanbu military hospital's disinfecting machine, claiming that the disinfectants were designed to kill rather than protect pilgrims. Nine died in the riot that ensued. Yet again, three years later, quarantine and disinfection policies directed against the plague sparked riots in Jidda.Footnote ⁷³

Despite the loss of its most trusted operative in the Hijaz, Britain continued to pursue its medico-political surveillance efforts. Just two years after Razzack's murder, the Foreign Office once again urged a new initiative to organize Muslim spies, calling for the creation of “an Indian Muhammadan Detective Agency at Constantinople, Mecca, Jeddah, and Baghdad.” However, the proposal was eventually rejected by the government of India, which doubted that “any respectable Muhammadan would consent to work as a secret agent in Mecca, Jeddah, or Baghdad.” Furthermore, they reasoned that such work could be more effectively carried out from Jidda, as it had been under Dr. Abdur Razzack.Footnote ⁷⁴

UNDER WATCHFUL EYES: THE HAJJ COLONIZED

Positioned at the margins of its Indian Ocean empire, just beyond the grasp of Britain's surveillance efforts, Mecca, the Ottoman empire, and the Red Sea were untamed sites that had the potential to generate feelings of exclusivity, fanaticism, and political subversion. How then was this problem of colonial “disorder” approached by British officialdom? It is ironic that as the renowned Dutch Orientalist Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje pointed out at the time, the hajj was inherently manageable. Throughout his career he reassured nervous elites in both the Dutch and British empires that the supposedly unruly hajj could be policed and disciplined, suggesting that it might even offer an avenue to further subjugate the Islamic world to the colonial order.

Having spent nearly a year in Jidda and Mecca in 1884–85, Hurgronje became convinced that “Europeans greatly exaggerated the city's role as a breeding ground for anti-colonial agitation in the Islamic world.” To prove his point, he emphasized the inherently conservative nature of the hajj and the mundane business of the pilgrimage industry, arguing that “the vast majority of hajjis returned home exactly as they departed—not as rebels but as ‘sheep.’” Hurgronje also painted native Meccans as more concerned with “fleecing their pilgrim prey” than fomenting rebellion. In sharp contrast to the “herd of gullible hajjis,” Hurgronje acknowledged the presence of a small minority of “conspirators who turned their piety into fanaticism and rebellion.” He argued that the true danger of the hajjīs lay in the “networks of exiles and students [sing. muqīm] who took refuge in Mecca's many expatriate communities, exploiting the freedom of the hajj to propagandize visitors from their homelands.”Footnote ⁷⁵

Hurgronje's solution to this paradox was simple. He argued that instead of restricting access to Mecca, a strategy that he reasoned was needlessly provocative, colonial governments should increase their diplomatic, intelligence, and sanitary presence in the Hijaz. Following his recommendation, the Dutch created a full-service hajj agency in Jidda, ostensibly to protect their subjects from fleecing and epidemic disease. He argued that by supporting the hajj, colonial regimes could simultaneously endear themselves to the majority of their subjects while keeping a watchful eye on any subversive elements. His strategy, as this essay has demonstrated in a variety of ways, was to bring the hajj within the framework of colonial governance and surveillance.

Following Hurgronje's model, both the Dutch East Indies and British India moved to pry as many of the functions of the hajj as possible from Ottoman control. By engaging in this strategy of interimperial contestation, the British and their European colonial counterparts slowly decreased the space for anticolonial activities previously afforded by the hajj and extended the tentacles of colonial authority to include pilgrimage institutions spanning the entire Indian Ocean basin. In this way, colonial structure became pervasive even in Mecca, successfully making Pan-Islam and the hajj manageable dangers.

By the close of the 19th century, significant progress in containing cholera had been made. International sanitary conventions had been ratified in Venice in 1892 and again in Paris in 1894. With the outbreak of plague in Bombay in 1896, even Britain's long-held policy of obstructing international sanitary regulations finally became untenable.Footnote ⁷⁶ By this point, British and international commitments in Arabia and the Red Sea had become an institutionalized part of the pilgrimage experience. Simply put, the hajj had been colonized. Even after World War I, the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the dismantling of the caliphate (1924), and the dissolution of the Pan-Islamic movement as a substantial political force, international sanitary surveillance in the Hijaz and Red Sea remained. Once again, a new international sanitary convention was drafted in Paris in 1926. Thereafter, an office was established in Paris to coordinate sanitary control over Mecca with the Egyptian Quarantine Board. This system remained in place until the World Health Organization's creation in 1948. Indeed, despite the fact that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia took over political and religious control of the pilgrimage in 1926, international, essentially colonial, control of the hajj lingered until 1957.Footnote ⁷⁷