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Accepted Paper:

From west Africa to Mecca: colonial attitudes toward the hajj compared  
Irit Back (Tel Aviv University)

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to explore and compare the dynamics which developed in French and British colonies in West Africa toward the hajj,analyzing the historical developments of different colonial policies toward the pilgrimage of West Africans Muslims to Mecca and Medina.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to explore and compare the dynamics which developed in French and British colonies in West Africa toward the hajj.It will focus in the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the eve of Second World War, analyzing the historical developments of different colonial policies toward the pilgrimage of West Africans Muslims to Mecca and Medina. I claim that the hajj pilgrimage could be defined as religious migration, one that resulted in mobilizing social and cultural changes. Though the hajj was nothing new in the history of West African Muslims, the colonial era carried some major changes in its patterns, both in its scope and intensity, and in its influence on the mobilization of people and ideas both to the sending and receiving societies.

The paper further posits that hajj routes during the colonial era moved from colony to colony, and in some cases created new communities of pilgrims along the route. In this sense, the hajj could be seen as a religiously motivated migration. As such, I will examine the idea that this migration was an engine for social and cultural change, in the sense that the migrants may hope to contribute additional resources or benefits to the receiving community. As such, this research will form part of the broader effort to assess the effects of migrations on world history, particularly in non-western regions where this process has been less thoroughly studied.

Panel P139
Recovering the dynamism of African people: contemporaneous history (20th and 21st centuries)
  Session 1