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‘STEALING THE WAY’ TO MECCA: WEST AFRICAN PILGRIMS AND ILLICIT RED SEA PASSAGES, 1920s–50s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2015

JONATHAN MIRAN
JONATHAN MIRAN*
Affiliation:
Western Washington University
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Abstract

West African participation in the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) grew considerably throughout the first half of the twentieth century. This article examines the causes and consequences of failed British and Saudi efforts to channel, regulate, and control the trans-Sahelian flow of pilgrims and enforce a regime of mobility along the Sahel and across the Red Sea. Focusing specifically on Red Sea ‘illicit’ passages, the study recovers the rampant and often harrowing crossings of dozens of thousands of West African pilgrims from the Eritrean to the Arabian coasts. It examines multiple factors that drove the circumvention of channeling and control measures and inscribes the experiences of West African historical actors on multiple historiographic fields that are seldom organically tied to West Africa: Northeast African regional history, the colonial history of Italian Eritrea, and the Red Sea as a maritime space connecting Africa with Arabia.

Keywords

Northeastern AfricaWest AfricaEritreacolonial administrationIslammigrationsmuggling
Type
The Limits of Power over People in the Horn of Africa
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , November 2015 , pp. 389 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Christian Bawa Yamba, Gianni Dore, Kimberly Lynn, Joe McIntyre, Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, John Slight, Alessandro Volterra, and Massimo Zaccaria for their input. I am also grateful to Cheikh Anta Babou and the three anonymous reviewers for the journal for their critical comments on earlier versions of the article. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung for its ongoing support of my research. Author's email: [email protected]

References

1 J. Morley, Colonial Postscript: Diary of a District Officer, 1935–1956 (London, 1992), 127–8.

2 Grisman, C. S., ‘West Africans in Eritrea’, Nigerian Field, 20:1 (1955), 42Google Scholar.

3 West African Muslim pilgrims have been known in Northeast Africa and the Middle East as Takruris, Takarir, Takarin, Takarna, Takruni, originally in reference to the ancient West African kingdom of Takrur. Located in today's Senegal, the kingdom flourished in the eleventh century. They have also been referred to as Westerners and Fellata (the Kanuri name for the Fulani). On the Takruris in general, see the following monographs: ‘U. al-Naqar, The Pilgrimage Tradition in West Africa (Khartoum, 1972); J. S. Birks, Across the Savannas to Mecca: the Overland Pilgrimage Route from West Africa (London, 1978); and C. Bawa Yamba, Permanent Pilgrims: the Role of Pilgrimage in the Lives of West African Muslims in Sudan (Edinburgh, 1995). On the term Takrur, see al-Naqar, ‘U., ‘Takrūr: the history of a name’, The Journal of African History, 10:3 (1969), 365–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the various meanings of the term Takrur in mid-twentieth century Sudan, G. Mann, From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Nongovernmentality (New York, 2015), 98–100.

4 See her excellent study of these processes explored through the case of the Suez Canal as a lynchpin of different forms of mobility. V. Huber, Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869–1914 (New York, 2013).

5 On the regulation of transnational/tranregional mobilities and enclosures in the burgeoning ‘Border Studies’ subfield, see, for example, a special issue, ‘Movement on the margins: mobility and enclosures at borders’, H. Cunningham and J. McC. Heyman (eds.), Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 11:3 (2004), 287–442; and select chapters in T. M. Wilson and H. Donnan (eds.), A Companion to Border Studies (Hoboken, 2012); and D. Wastl-Walter (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies (Farnham, 2011). For a comparative historical approach to smuggling and contraband, see A. L. Karras, Smuggling: Contraband and Corruption in World History (Lanham, 2010).

6 Following the establishment and opening of Port Sudan in 1909, Sawakin lost its historical role as Sudan's chief port. However, it continued and still continues at present to function as a port for pilgrims headed to Mecca.

7 A dhow is the generic name of traditional sailing vessels in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. In the context of the Red Sea it is interchangeable with sanbuq, the most widely used sailing boat in the area. On the development of negative European perceptions of ‘traditional’, ‘archaic’, dhows (in opposition to ‘modern’ steamships) as associated with illicit activities, especially the slave trade in the Red Sea, and efforts to decelerate and control dhow mobility in the late nineteenth century, see Huber, Channeling, 172–203.

8 Loimeier, R., ‘Das “Nigerian Pilgrimage Scheme”: Zum Versuch, den Hağğ in Nigeria zu organiesieren’, Africa Spectrum, 23:2 (1988), 206Google Scholar.

9 On the tortuous political aspects of furtive maritime dynamics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see M. Lenci, Eritrea e Yemen, tensioni italo-turche nel mar Rosso, 1885–1911 (Milano, 1990); C. E. Farah, The Sultan's Yemen: Nineteenth-Century Challenges to Ottoman Rule (London, 2002); and I. Blumi, Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State (New York, 2011).

10 One could cite the adventures and semi-autobiographical fictionalized writings of the eccentric French maverick Henry de Monfreid as epitomizing representations of the recalcitrant character of the Red Sea in the earlier parts of this period. See, for example, H. de Monfreid, Les Secrets de la mer Rouge (Paris, 1931); and H. de Monfreid and I. Treat, Pearls, Arms and Hashish: Pages from the Life of a Red Sea Navigator (New York, 1930).

11 Lecocq, B., ‘The hajj from West Africa from a global historical perspective (19th and 20th Centuries)’, African Diaspora, 5:2 (2012), 187–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 The point is keenly made in Mann, From Empires, 93–100.

13 Duffield, M., ‘Change among West African settlers in Northern Sudan’, Review of African Political Economy, 26 (1983), 45–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Miller and A. A. Abu-Manga, ‘The West African (Fallata) communities in Gedaref State: process of settlement and local integration’, in C. Miller (ed.), Land, Ethnicity, and Political Legitimacy in Eastern Sudan (Cairo, 2005), 375–424.

14 al-Naqar, The Pilgrimage, xvii.

15 Bawa Yamba, Permanent Pilgrims. On the Takruris in Eritrea and Ethiopia, see Ellero, G., ‘I Tacruri in Eritrea’, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, V I:2 (1947), 189–199Google Scholar; Grisman, ‘West Africans’; W. Smidt, ‘Fellata’, Encyclopaedia Aethiopica (EA), Vol. II (Wiesbaden, 2005), 518; W. Smidt, ‘Hausa’, EA, Vol. II (Wiesbaden, 2005), 1048–9; W. Smidt and Habtom Ghebremedhin, ‘Sallim Bet’, EA, Vol. IV (Wiesbaden, 2010), 496–8; W. Smidt, ‘Tukrir’, EA, Vol. IV (Wiesbaden, 2010), 998–1000. In 2002, it was estimated that 5,000 individuals of Nigerian origins lived in Eritrea. A. Akosile, ‘Abuja, Eritrea sign economic pact’, This Day (Lagos) (8 Oct. 2002).

16 Low, M. C., ‘Empire and the hajj: pilgrims, plagues and pan-Islam under British surveillance, 1865–1908’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 40:2 (2008), 269–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roff, W., ‘Sanitation and security: the Imperial Powers and the nineteenth century hajj’, Arabian Studies, VI (1982), 143–60Google Scholar.

17 It is useful to note that before the 1950s it was rare for the total number of overseas pilgrims coming to perform the hajj in Mecca in any given year to top 100,000. R. Bianchi, Guests of God: Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World (New York, 2004), 49.

18 See more in Lecocq, ‘The hajj’.

19 For a selective sample of studies that relate exclusively to European powers in Africa and their policies toward the hajj, see Escande, L., ‘D'Alger à la Mecque: l'administration française et le contrôle du pèlerinage (1894–1962)’, Revue d'Histoire Maghrébine, 26:95–6 (1999), 277–92Google Scholar; Joly, V., ‘Un aspect de la politique musulmane de la France: l'Administration de l'AOF et le pèlerinage de la Mecque (1930–1950)’, Annales du Levant, 5:5 (1992), 37–58Google Scholar; K. Mbacké, Le pèlerinage aux lieux saints de l'Islam: participation sénégalaise, 1886–1986 (Dakar, 2004), esp. 172–307; J. Slight, The British Empire and the Hajj, 1865–1956 (Cambridge, MA, forthcoming); J. Slight, ‘British Imperial rule and the hajj’, in D. Motadel (ed.), Islam and the European Empires (Oxford, 2014), 53–72; and M. Zaccaria, ‘Lo spazio dei credenti e i confini della colonia : Il pellegrinaggio a Mecca e il colonialismo italiano’, in U. Chelati Dirar, S. Palma, A. Triulzi, and A. Volterra (eds.), Colonia e postcolonia come spazi diasporici: Attraversamenti di memorie, identità e confini nel Corno d'Africa (Roma, 2011), 163–85.

20 Lecocq, ‘The hajj’, 212.

21 International efforts to suppress the Red Sea slave trade in the late nineteenth century had already led to the increased regulation and tightening of mobility in this area. Huber, Channelling, 189–92. On the Red Sea slave trade in the first decades of the twentieth century, see S. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem (Walnut Creek, CA, 2003), 66–99; and Hutson, A., ‘Enslavement and manumission in Saudi Arabia, 1926–1938’, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 11:1 (2002), 49–70Google Scholar. Both show that among the enslaved in western Arabia were some West Africans.

22 H. R. Palmer, ‘Report on a journey from Maidugari, Nigeria, to Jeddah in Arabia, 1919’, National Archives, London, Public Record Office, 1919; C. A. Willis, Report on Slavery and the Pilgrimage (Khartoum, 1926); G. J. Lethem, ‘Report on a journey from Bornu, Nigeria, to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Jeddah and Cairo’, in G. J. F. Tomlinson and G. J. Lethem (eds.), History of Islamic Political Propaganda in Nigeria (London, 1927), 16–87.

23 This is not the place to discuss the interesting question of passports whereby European colonial subjects ‘had a nationality, but no citizenship, which in Europe is inherently bound to nationality and to the right to hold a passport’. Lecocq, ‘The hajj’, 199; Lecocq, B. and Mann, G., ‘Between Empire, Umma and the Muslim third world: the French Union and African pilgrims to Mecca, 1946–1958’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 27:2 (2007), 361–83Google Scholar.

24 Annual Reports on the hajj for the years 1928, 1932, 1940, 1947, and 1953 in Records of the Hajj; M. Heaton, ‘Globalization, health and the hajj: the West African Pilgrimage Scheme, 1919–1938’, in T. Falola and M. M. Heaton (eds.), HIV/AIDS, Illness, and African Well-Being (Rochester, NY, 2007), 258–9.

25 The role of international sanitary concerns in the development of the Nigerian Pilgrimage Scheme is detailed in Heaton, ‘Globalization, health and the hajj’.

26 Heaton, ‘Globalization’, 255; Loimeier, ‘Das Nigerian’, 207–8.

27 Heaton, ‘Globalization’, 256–7.

28 It should be noted that the increasing control of pilgrim mobility in the early twentieth century produced a variety of evading strategies (for example, forging and losing identification papers, providing false names, clandestine passages) on other routes to Mecca. For example, Huber discusses the efforts made by some Algerian pilgrims to circumvent control in the Suez Canal area. Huber, Channelling, 231–7.

29 The data is drawn from the annual reports on the hajj produced by the British Legation in Jeddah. Here Volume 7 (1935–1951), Records of the Hajj: A Documentary History of the Pilgrimage to Mecca. 10 volumes, ed. Alan De Lacy Rush (Slough, 1993), henceforth Records of the Hajj.

30 For detailed descriptions of these coasts, see Naval Intelligence Division, Western Arabia and the Red Sea (B. R. 527 [Restricted], Geographical Handbook Series) (Oxford: Printed under the authority of HMSO at the University Press, June 1946). For the relevant Eritrean coast, 114–18 and for the Arabian coast south of Jeddah, 131–9.

31 Estimates of both licit and illicit pilgrim crossings are drawn from Loimeier, ‘Das Nigerian’, 210–11; Birks, Across, 147; Willis, ‘Report on slavery and the pilgrimage’; Palmer, ‘Report on a journey from Maidugari, Nigeria, to Jeddah in Arabia, 1919’; Annual Reports on the hajj (British Legation in Jeddah) between 1926 (1344 A. H.) and 1953 (1372 A. H.), in Records of the Hajj; E. Brémond, Le Hedjaz dans la guerre mondiale (Paris, 1931) quoted and translated in F. E. Peters, The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places (Princeton, 1994), 329; Research and Documentation Centre (RDC), Asmara, Eritrea, British Military Administration in Eritrea (BMA) 12503/227/Ref. 51/B/1, Chief Secretary, Asmara, to Senior Civil Affairs Officer, Massawa, 13 July 1943; RDC BMA 12501/227/284/Vol. III, Chief Secretary to Civil Affairs Branch, GHQ, MEF, 13 Feb. 1945; Il Regio Console a Gedda (V. Bernabei) al Ministro degli Affari Esteri (S. Sonnino), 23 Jan. 1918, in Ministero delle Colonie – Direzione generale degli Affari politici, Arabia (henceforth Arabia) Volume III: 1917 maggio-dicembre e gennaio 1918 (Roma, 1919), 335–6.

32 D. Odorizzi, Il commissariato regionale di Massaua al 1° gennaio 1910 (Asmara, 1911), 124–5.

33 Zaccaria, ‘Lo spazio’.

34 Il Regente il Governo della Colonia Eritrea (G. Cerrina Feroni) to Ministro delle Colonie, 4764/726, Asmara, 28 June 1916; 4814/726, Asmara, 30 June 1916, in Arabia, Volume II, 34–38; Zaccaria, ‘Lo spazio’, 166, 180–1.

35 Il Regio Console a Gedda (V. Bernabei) to Ministro degli Affari Esteri (S. Sonnino), 23 Jan. 1918, in Arabia, Volume III, 335–7.

36 Zaccaria, ‘Lo spazio’, 178.

37 Willis, ‘Report on slavery and the pilgrimage’, 24.

38 ‘Report on the hajj of 1346 A. H. (1928)’; ‘Report on the hajj of 1349 A. H. (1931)’, British Legation, Jeddah, in Records of the Hajj, vi, 207–8, 403.

39 A. Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (London, 1998), 297; Naval Intelligence Division, Western Arabia and the Red Sea, 328. The coastguard service was created in Jeddah and other coastal towns to suppress smuggling, regulate shipping, and check unauthorized entry, especially that associated with the pilgrimage.

40 ‘Report on the hajj of 1352 A. H. (1934)’, British Legation, Jeddah, in Records of the Hajj, vi, 661; ‘Report on the hajj of 1353 A. H. (1935)’, British Legation, Jeddah, in Records of the Hajj, vii, 48.

41 ‘Report on the hajj of 1350 A. H. (1932)’, British Legation, Jeddah, in Records of the Hajj, vi, 529–30.

42 ‘Report on the hajj of 1352 A. H. (1934)’, British Legation, Jeddah, in Records of the Hajj, vi, 661; ‘Report on the hajj of 1353 A. H. (1935)’, British Legation, Jeddah, in Records of the Hajj, vii, 48.

43 ‘Report on the hajj of 1351 A. H. (1933)’, British Legation, Jeddah, in Records of the Hajj, vi, 577–8.

44 Muḥammad Sālim Bā Ṭūq was born in Jeddah to a Hadrami father and an Egyptian mother. He settled in Massawa in the mid-1850s. In 1917, he co-headed the official delegation of Eritrea's Muslims to Jeddah and Mecca for the purpose of acquiring a hostel for pilgrims from Italy's colonies. For more on the Bā Ṭūq family, see J. Miran, Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa (Bloomington, IN, 2009), 127–9 and index.

45 RDC BMA 12501/227/284/Vol. III, Cavaliere Hassan Batok, Asmara, to Senior Civil Affairs Officer, Massawa, 20 Aug. 1948.

46 Lecocq noted how pilgrims’ quest for labor opportunities on the road could send them off-track and away from the ‘official’ pilgrimage routes. Lecocq, ‘The hajj’, 203.

47 Ellero, ‘I Tacruri’,103–4; D. B. Mather, ‘Migration in the Sudan’, in R. W. Steel and C. A. Fisher (eds.), Geographical Essays on British Tropical Lands (London, 1952), 140; J. S. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia (London, 1952), 222–3.

48 Lethem, ‘Report on a journey from Bornu, Nigeria’, 50.

49 G. Dore, ‘Spazio politico, attraversamenti, ricomposizioni ethniche nel bassopiano occidentale eritreo’, in U. Chelati Dirar and I. Rosoni (eds.), Votare con i piedi. La mobilità degli individui nell'Africa coloniale italiana (Macerata, 2012), 245–7.

50 Lecocq, ‘The hajj’, 203. The report refers to ‘Ethiopia’ but I speculate that to some extent this might also hold true for Eritrea.

51 A. Pollera, Le popolazioni indigene dell'Eritrea (Bologna, 1935), 281; personal communications: A. Volterra, 29 Aug. 2013, and G. Dore, 30 Aug. 2013.

52 G. Corni, Tra Gasc e Setit (Roma, 1930), 69–72; Grisman, ‘West Africans’, 42–3.

53 Giovanni Ellero specifically identified West Africans in Eritrea as Hausa, Bornu, Fullo (Fulani, Fulbe), Kotoko, Bagirmi, Borkou, Bilala For. He further provided details about the precise location of each group in Eritrea and compiled a word list with about one hundred entries in Italian and their rendering in West African languages. Ellero, ‘I Tacruri’, 99–103.

54 N. Arielli, Fascist Italy and the Middle East, 1933–19 40 (New York, 2010), 94, 145; H. Erlich, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia: Islam, Christianity, and Politics Entwined (Boulder, CO, 2007), 72–4.

55 Umm-al-Qura [Mecca] of 22 Feb. 1937, [‘Politics and the hajj: Italian propaganda and the Eritrean pilgrimage’] in Records of the Hajj, vii, 229.

56 RDC BMA 12503/227, Ref. 51/B/1, ‘Pilgrims’ Struggle’, Report by Political Officer, Massawa, 28 Oct. 1942.

57 RDC BMA 12502/227/284/Vol. IV, Chief Secretary to Senior Civil Affairs Officer, Massawa, 21 Sept. 1948 and Hassan Mohammed Batok, Massawa, to Chief Administration, Asmara, 23 Apr. 1951. I strongly suspect that the rejections of his petition and appeal had something to do with his previous more than enthusiastic embracing of the Italian fascist administration.

58 Ityopia newspaper (Arabic section), issue 237, 27 May 1951.

59 RDC BMA 12501/227/284/Vol. III, Chief Secretary, Lagos, to Chief Secretary, Asmara, 2 Apr. 1948.

60 RDC BMA 12501/227/284/Vol. III, Cavaliere Hassan Batok, Asmara, to Senior Civil Affairs Officer, Massawa, 20 Aug. 1948.

61 RDC BMA 12502/227/284/Vol. IV, Senior Divisional Officer, Red Sea Division, to Chief Secretary, Asmara, 28 Apr. 1951.

62 RDC BMA 12503/227, Ref. 51/B/1, 2nd Lt, J. Morley, Massawa, to Senior Political Officer, Massawa, 25 Nov. 1941 and Senior Political Officer, Massawa, to Military Administration, Asmara, 24 Dec. 1941.

63 RDC BMA 12503/227, Ref. 51/B/1, Senior Civil Affairs Officer, Massawa to Chief Secretary, BMA. HQ, Asmara, 12 June 1944 and 30 June 1944.

64 RDC BMA 12503/227, Ref. 51/B/1, Secretariat, Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, Asmara, to Keren, Agordat, Asmara, Massawa, Addi Ugri, Addi Keyh, 6 Nov. 1941.

65 RDC BMA 12503/227, Ref. 51/B/1, ‘Pilgrims’ Struggle’, Report by Political Officer, Massawa, 28 Oct. 1942.

66 RDC BMA 12502/227/284/Vol. IV, Senior Divisional Officer, Red Sea Division, to Chief Secretary, Asmara, 28 Apr. 1951.

67 RDC BMA 12503/227/Ref. 51/B/1, Police HQ, Massawa, to Senior Civil Affairs Officer, Massawa, June 1944 and correspondence of 3 June 1944, 12 June 1944, and 29 June 1944.

68 The Sarkin Zango is a Hausa term that refers to the overseer of a zango, usually a caravan camp or market in West Africa, but which in Chad and the Sudan refers to a resting place for the use of pilgrims.

69 RDC BMA 12501/227/284/Vol. III, Chief Secretary, Lagos, to Chief Secretary, Asmara, 2 Apr. 1948.

70 ‘Report on the hajj of 1365 A. H. (1946)’, British Legation, Jeddah, in Records of the Hajj, vii, 716.

71 RDC BMA 12501/227/284/Vol. III, British Legation, Jeddah, to Civil Administration, Asmara, 14 July 1946.

72 RDC BMA 12501/227/284/Vol. III, Chief Administrator to HBM. Minister, Jeddah, 19 Dec. 1946.

73 RDC BMA 12501/227/284/Vol. III, Chief Secretary to Civil Affairs Branch, GHQ, MEF, 13 Feb. 1945.

74 RDC BMA 12503/227, Ref. 51/B/1, Political Branch, GHQ, Middle East, Cairo, to Military Administration, Eritrea, 3 Feb. 1942.

75 RDC BMA 12503/227, Ref. 51/B/1, Immigration Office, Massawa, to Immigration Office, Asmara, 31 Oct. 1942.

76 ‘General Report on the Pilgrimage, 1953 (1372 A. H.)’, in Records of the Hajj, viii, 172. Inconsistent decisions on pilgrimage fees and exemptions for West Africans in the second half of 1940s reflect Saudi hesitations as to a strategy that would effectively deal with the problem of illegal crossings. In 1941, fees were up from 6 to 25 pounds, followed by exemption of full dues to 14.50 pounds in 1945. A year later they were raised to 36.10 pounds and in response to British request pilgrims from West Africa were fully exempted that year alone. In 1948 full dues were reduced to 28 pounds for West Africans. Attempts to deter pilgrims from taking the road to Mecca by imposing high fees proved ineffective.

77 RDC BMA 12502/227/284/Vol. IV, HQ, Red Sea Division, Eritrean Police Force to Directorate of Eritrean Affairs Secretariat, ‘System of dhow registration’, [n.d], 1952; General Report on the Pilgrimage, 1953 (1372 A. H.)’, in Records of the Hajj, viii, 172.

78 B. S. Hall, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1900 (New York, 2011), 291–4.

79 A. K. Medugbon, ‘The Nigerian pilgrimage to Mecca’, in J. I. Clarke and L. A. Kosiński (eds.), Redistribution of Population in Africa (London, 1982), 118; K. Sani Hanga, ‘The hajj exercise in Nigeria: challenges, constraints and drawbacks’ (February 1999). Unpublished paper accessed at: (https://www.academia.edu/1060403/the_hajj_exercise_in_nigeria_challenges_constraints_and_drawbacks). On the transformation in pilgrim transportation from French West Africa, see Lecocq, ‘The hajj’.

80 J. N. Paden, Ahmadu Bello Sardauna of Sokoto: Values and Leadership in Nigeria (London, 1986), 179–99.