Economics: Agents, Pilgrims, and Profits

Abstract

International audience; In the nineteenth century, the ancient muslim pilgrimage economy, based on the caravan system, was rocked by technology and administrative rationality. At the same time, with colonization, the pilgrimage wich had hitherto remained a strictly muslim affair, become a common concern of the colonial powers which subsequently had to manage it from an administrative and economic perspective. With the introduction of steam navigation, which was, in this case, a true revolution, the transportation of pilgrims proved very vulnerable to the assault of European capitalism. The internal economy of Hejaz, on the other hand, was negatively affected by the changes of this period, especially those of a political nature. The disappearance of the financial boon that came with the Ottoman Empire in particular was offset by heavier taxes on the pilgrims. Those driven by faith much more than economic rationality left for Hejaz with very modest means and sometimes in situations of real financial insecurity. On arriving in the holy places of Islam, they encountered a level of misery hardly different from their own, which the region’s inhabitants sought to relieve by exploiting the pilgrims until the arrival of oil revenues propelled the pilgrimage into a new economic era.

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The different versions of the original document can be found in:

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139343794.010

• https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01419865/file/EconomicsHajjHAL.pdf