Introduction

Summary

As one Muslim’s journey from late Mughal India showed, the Meccan pilgrimage connected empires. On his way to Arabia from Delhi in 1744, a certain Saiyid ʿAtaullah was unexpectedly summoned to the Mughal court, where authorities tasked him to convey a message to their Ottoman counterparts. Though in itself never a political act, the hajj from the Indian Subcontinent had long been transimperial by definition given its itinerary, taking pilgrims across the Indian Ocean between two great Islamic empires of the early modern world. For Saiyid ʿAtaullah, it was going also to be transimperial in political purpose.