Michael Christo Low, "Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj" (Columbia UP, 2020)

New Books in the Indian Ocean World · Jan 28, 2021 · 1h 28m

With the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for the globalization of epidemic diseases. European, especially British Indian, officials also feared that lengthy sojourns in Arabia might expose their Muslim subjects to radicalizing influences from anticolonial dissidents and pan-Islamic activists. European colonial empires’ newfound ability to set the terms of hajj travel not only affected the lives of millions of pilgrims but also dramatically challenged the Ottoman Empire, the world’s only…