Hajj across Empires
Pilgrimage and Political Culture after the Mughals, 1739–1857

A highly original new history of Muslim political culture across the Indian Ocean from 1739 to 1857.

Rishad Choudhury (Author)

9781009253666, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 July 2025

376 pages, 11 b/w illus. 3 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.543 kg

'An exemplary book that teaches us how investigating Indian Muslims on the move can succeed … dives deep into fresh and exiting archives, including manuscripts, to unearth in various complementary case studies how the hajj reshaped lives and visions around the Indian Ocean in the 18th and 19th centuries.' Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, H-Soz-Kult

Rishad Choudhury presents a new history of imperial connections across the Indian Ocean from 1739 to 1857, a period that witnessed the decline and collapse of Mughal rule and the consolidation of British colonialism in South Asia. In this highly original and comprehensive study, he reveals how the hajj pilgrimage significantly transformed Muslim political culture and colonial attitudes towards it, creating new ideas of religion and rule. Examining links between the Indian Subcontinent and the Ottoman Middle East through multilingual sources – from first-hand accounts to administrative archives of hajj – Choudhury uncovers a striking array of pilgrims who leveraged their experiences and exchanges abroad to address the decline and decentralization of an Islamic old regime at home. Hajjis crucially mediated the birth of modern Muslim political traditions around South Asia. Hajj across Empires argues they did so by channeling inter-imperial crosscurrents to successive surges of imperial revolution and regional regime change.

Introduction. Hajj in the Crisis of Empire
Part I. Departures: experiences and exchanges in the indian ocean: 1. Pilgrim passages
2. The Hajj bazaar economy
Part II crossings: ideologies and institutions across empires
3. The ʿUlama on Hajj
4. Hindi Sufis and the Hajj
Part III Returns: states between home and the Haramain: 5. The Company Raj and the Hajjis
6. Routes of the Muslim state
7. Faqirs and fanatics, or, reconfiguring pilgrimage and political culture
Conclusion: the Hajj and the ends of the Mughal world
Index.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]