Imperial Pilgrimage: British Engagement with the Hajj and Muslim Subjects

John Slight’s The Hajj and Britain’s Muslim Empire provides a nuanced exploration of the evolving relationship between the British Empire and the Hajj pilgrimage from the 1850s to 1956. It examines how religious pilgrimages such as the Hajj function as transnational movements of people that intersect with imperial power dynamics. For the British, ruling an empire that spanned from Nigeria and Sudan to India, the Hajj represented more than just a religious event; it was a focal point of Muslim unity and exchange. The book argues that the sheer number of Muslim subjects under British rule effectively made Britain a ‘Muslim Empire’, thus necessitating engagement with the Hajj, a critical practice in Sunni Islam.