The Fifth Column: Foreign Muslims, Extraterritoriality, and the Autonomy of the Ottoman Hijaz

While scholars of the late Ottoman Empire have long been obsessed with how the Capitulations and the Tanzimat reforms effectively placed Christian protégés and protected persons beyond the reach of Ottoman justice, curiously little attention has been paid to the analogous projects of European powers claiming to protect their Muslim colonial subjects from the supposed corruption of Ottoman rule.  During the late 19^th century, the Ottoman state began to fear that the Muslim subjects of foreign powers could act as potential fifth columns and infiltrate the holy land of the Hijaz.  As a result of the interplay between sanitary and security threats, the pilgrimage to Mecca became subject to an ever-expanding inter-imperial web of medical and political surveillance, spies and consular agents, quarantines, steamship and pilgrimage brokerage regulations, passport controls, and documentary practices.  Effectively, the Muslim holy places and the administration of pilgrimage became subject to Eurocentric international law.

European powers controlled much of the legal and regulatory framework of the rapidly industrializing pilgrimage transportation industry.  However, their ability to monitor and regulate the hajj did not extend past the port city of Jidda.  European powers accepted that their Christian consuls were forbidden from entering Mecca and Medina.   Nevertheless, they sought to provide consular protection for their colonial subjects by appointing Muslim agents or vice-consuls to act on their behalf.  In response, the Ottoman Empire claimed that due to the Hijaz’s sacred status the province was not subject to the Capitulations or other legal concessions.  Yet, as this paper argues, by claiming that the Capitulations and other internationally binding treaties did not apply to the Hijaz, the Ottoman state further exposed the compromised nature of its sovereignty over the Muslim holy places, raising the specter of European intervention and partition at the heart of the Islamic world.