A Political Economy of the Hajj, 1925–39

When Ibn Saʿud captured the Hijaz in 1924-25, he inherited an economy that had been ruined by the policies of his Hashimite predecessors. Maladministration, royal monopolies, exchange rate manipulation, forced loans, high taxes, outright pilfering, and the inability or unwillingness to provide public security had all driven merchants and pilgrims to the edge of despair. Ibn Saʿud was quick to provide security for trade and pilgrimage traffic, including transit to outlying towns like al-Taʾif and Medina. In exchange for this service, the Hijaz was required to pay £200,000 per year to the new monarch. While there are no reliable systematic accounts of how much was transferred from the Hijaz to Najd in the first several decades of Saudi rule, this figure was almost certainly on the low end.

The Hajj had long been the primary engine of the Hijazi economy. Nearly all of the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina were employed in pilgrim traffic as guides, innkeepers, merchants, and water-carriers. For its part, Jeddah was the region’s primary port and thus the entrepôt for trade and pilgrims. The resumption of the pilgrimage in 1926 was crucial in spurring economic activity, and 1927 witnessed the largest influx of overseas pilgrims in decades, a record it would hold until the 1950s.

My paper will examine the political economy of the Hajj from 1925 to 1939. I will use a variety of primary source material—including foreign diplomatic reporting, local government documents, and contemporary pilgrim accounts—in order to inspect the extractive role of the state and what this role meant for pilgrimage fees and official discrimination based on nationality. Using data on pilgrimage numbers and payments, I will also be the first to estimate trends in government income from the Hajj.