L’empire par le Ḥajj : Registres et symbolique du pouvoir du pèlerinage à la Mecque à l’époque coloniale (XIXe-XXe siècles)‎

Abstract EN

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the pilgrimage to Mecca (ḥajj) aroused a growing interest from the European empires which, over the course of their conquests, extended their influence over most of the Muslim world.

The French, English, Russians, Dutch or Italians experimented different modes of supervision of their Muslim pilgrims’ journeys towards the holy cities of the Hijaz.

Everything seemed to have worked as if the colonial empires had got caught up in the organization of the ḥajj and, more broadly, had drawn their references in “repertories of power” inherited from the Muslim empires that preceded them.

Through rivalries and competition, the colonial ḥajj seems to have thus become, until the independence of the various countries, a powerful factor of legitimation and implementation of the imperial project.