Famed explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton gained his highly regarded reputation through his many voyages across the eastern world, or the “Orient.” Burton recorded one of his most famous travel experiences in his Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah in 1853, when he entered the Holy Cities of Islam, and engaged in the rituals of Hajj.
After years serving the colonial state in India, Burton approached the Royal Geographic Society with an idea: to infiltrate Medina and Mecca, thus removing a “huge white blot” or “blank space” from the European cartographic construction of the Near East.1 He set off on his “adventure” in 1853, masquerading as ‘Sheikh Abdullah,’ first to Medina and then eventually Mecca, all whilst performing the rituals of Hajj and making detailed notes/sketches along the way.
Whilst Burton had a minor reputation as a “polyglot orientalist,”2 it was this specific adventure that afforded him the popularity that his previous books failed to produce. The impetus behind Burton’s decision to infiltrate Islam’s holiest sites was to create a “mould-breaking travel book”3 that would bring him fame. Whilst the challenge of entering Mecca as a non Muslim had been met before, Burton’s desire to outdo his predecessors meant he went further than just adopting a disguise; he ‘became’ his subject. In asking what is achieved through Burton’s appropriation of the ‘native,’ an answer can be found in Anne McClintock’s analysis, where she declares, “mimicry and cross-dressing as technique not of colonial subversion, but of surveillance.”4 We shall soon see how.
A Personal Narrative’s success can be attributed, amongst other things, to the sensibilities of its readership, i.e. Victorian Britain. The Christian sentiments of the British readership, meant there was an interest in the Holy Lands as well as a fascination towards, and a fear of, Christianity’s “historic rival,”5 Islam, which the Hijaz epitomised. Burton was able to tap into this deeply rooted fascination with the Near East, into both the fear and romanticisation of Islam as the dominant religion of the region. Consequently, Burton’s decision to go to the Hajj in an “oriental disguise” when he could have simply have proclaimed to be a convert to Islam, was directed towards his British audience as a form of performance than anything practical or necessary.
Whilst Burton’s book may be considered a standard travel book of the period, bringing adventure and excitement to the banalities of Victorian life, the author’s own personal allegiances cannot be ignored. As a committed imperialist subscribing to the notion of British superiority, Burton’s Personal Narrative sits amongst travel writings as “indices to western and especially British political and military superiority.”6 It was more than just another tale of ‘discovery’ and was arguably, informally in service to the colonial state. It was an extension and perpetuation of imperialist sentiments through informal means, whilst being a form of intelligence gathering for the same imperial power, with Burton himself acting as an informal agent of British imperialism. As we will see, his observations of Indian Muslim pilgrims are a demonstration of this.
Indian Muslim Pilgrims and the Hijaz
During the 19th century, the British Raj’s interests were met through a variety of methods. One such method, was the creation and use of agencies, which, amongst other things, dealt with the Indian Diaspora, and facilitated pilgrimage to Arabia. It acted as the ears of the Empire, listening to the goings on of the Islamic world. The 19th century also saw the arrival of regular steamships in the Red Sea. This proved significant in that the steamship brought the Hijaz closer to the British Indian Ocean. Consequently, this allowed the Hijaz’s importance to be brought to the attention of British.
During Burton’s trip to the Hijaz, he used the opportunity to analyse the ‘natives,’ outlining potential concerns for the British Empire. Burton directly questioned and warned against the existing laissez-faire attitude in which Britain dealt with Indian Muslim pilgrims at the time. For example, British consuls made no effort to document the numbers of pilgrims or migrants, nor were pilgrims from British territories required to have passports or travel documents.
The idea that the Hijaz could be a place to facilitate political dissent and anti-imperial conflict was not an immediate concern for the Empire. Burton expressed a completely antithetical standpoint as a result of his observations. He opines, “To an “Empire of Opinion” this emigration is fraught with evils. It sends forth a horde of malcontents that ripen into bigots; it teaches foreign nations to despise our rule.”7 He puts forth the notion of the Hijaz as a potential asylum, where Indian colonial subjects could escape colonial clutches and freely express dissent, thereby creating a fertile ground for religious “fanaticism” to flourish. He states, “Such, I believe, is too often the history of those wretches whom a fit of religious enthusiasm, likest to insanity, hurries away to the Holy Land.”8
Not only does his account therefore act as a form of intelligence gathering, but he even goes so far as to provide recommendations or a “cure” to these potential problems, suggesting that Indian pilgrims “prove their solvency before being provided with a permit”9 to travel, and the need to have a Vice Consul at Jeddah, as well as an overall stronger British presence there. He describes Indian pilgrims as dying “from starvation on the streets…lank bodies, shrinking frames…”10 invoking sentiments and language similar to that which facilitated European protectionism of Christian minorities under the Ottoman Empire. In this respect, Burton’s Personal Narrative is an exercise in surveillance for imperialist aims and political expediency.
The Indian Revolt
Just two years after the publication of Burton’s account saw the pivotal events that led to British concerns over the autonomous nature of the Hijaz and the realities of colonial oppression. The Indian Revolt of 1857 shook British India to its core and the way the British viewed the Hijaz for the rest of the 19th century was through the lens of this groundbreaking moment. The revolt came to be seen as a manifestation of “Muslim fanaticism,” although, this view comes from oversimplified assumptions,11 delegitimising dissent and resistance.
Religion now became the “primary site of the colonial encounter,”12 with blame for the revolt being placed on external Arab influence or inherent Muslim exceptionalism as opposed to “heavy handed British policies as the primary source of Muslim dissent in India.”13
Consequently, Indian Muslims began to look more towards the Ottoman Empire as an “alternative psychological and spiritual centre.”14 In light of the British view of the autonomous, exclusive Hijaz as a “launching pad of anti colonial radicalism”15 along with the strength of the Ottoman Empire’s claim over Muslims as a unified collective under the Sultan’s care, British inaction was no longer feasible. By the 1880’s, Britain repositioned itself as a “protector of the Hajj”16 as a means to dismantle international Muslim unity and diffuse potential challenges to European colonial hegemony. Due to these increasing contentions, calls for more covert forms of political surveillance of the Hajj grew, culminating in exactly that. Whilst concerns regarding potential cholera outbreaks during the 19th century were also an impetus for surveillance, they did not outweigh the political motivations, which Burton directly contributed to.
Imperial legacy
Burton’s account of his travels reflects the relationship between “travel, knowledge and imperialism.”17 His elaborate impersonation of a Muslim pilgrim was reflective of an arrogance and attitude of racial superiority towards natives as a means of “ferreting out the secrets of the colonized.”18 Upon encountering the Kaba for the first time, he observes the reactions of other pilgrims, and comments, “…theirs was the high feeling of religious enthusiasm, mine was the ecstasy of gratified pride.”19 Though Islam fascinated him, as Tim Youngs notes, Burton “clearly saw his role as that of vanguard laying the groundwork for later conquest.”20
The travel writings that occupied a prominent role in 19th century narratives of Empire, then, were therefore not simply naive travel accounts. They helped to perpetuate British superiority and negative ‘othering.’ Travel writings like Burton’s should not be air brushed as products of their time; narratives such as his are refashioned and repurposed
throughout history. As noted by Youngs, “the prejudices and (mis)perceptions of 19th century travel writers and their audiences are deployed in print and the broadcast media still”21 – whether that be in the media portrayal of Afghans and Iraqis in the lead up to the US invasion of both countries, or in the orientalist portrayals of Muslims in Hollywood.
Travel writings like Burton’s played a significant role in the portrayal and perceptions of Muslims. The legacy of these portrayals which facilitate modern day’s securitisation of Muslims and the overall Global War on Terror paradigm can be highlighted through the following historical analysis as described by Michael Christopher Low:
“…it was during this era that colonial officials began to render all Muslims as racially distinct. Muslim resistance was framed as a racial defect, explainable only through reference to their peculiar faith and civilizational identity. As a result of these racialized assumptions, Muslim resistance to unjust colonial rule and demands for more equitable rights within European empires were consistently delegitimized, minoritized, and denied as manifestations of an irreducible Muslim alterity.”22
Footnotes
¹ Parama Roy, Oriental Exhibits: Englishmen and Natives in Burton’s Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah, Boundary 2 22, No. 1 1995, 192.
² Ibid, 186.
³ Tim Jeal, Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011, 36.
⁴ Dane Keith Kennedy, The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World, Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press 2007, 68-69.
⁵ Ibid, 63.
⁶ Geoffrey Nash, From Empire to Orient: Travellers to the Middle East, 1830-1926, London, [England] New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005, 3.
⁷ Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, Memorial ed. Otbe Book Publishing, 2019, 385.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Michael Christopher Low, “Empire and the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan Islam under British surveillance 1865-1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, May, 2008, Vol. 40, No. 2 Cambridge University Press, 49.
¹² Ibid, 15.
¹³ Low, 275.
¹⁴ Michael Christopher Low, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj , New York: Columbia University Press, 2020, 60.
¹⁵ Ibid, 72.
¹⁶ Ibid, 70.
¹⁷ Tim Youngs, Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century : Filling the Blank Spaces Anthem Press, 2006, 13.
¹⁸ Ibid, 77.
¹⁹ Burton, 339.
²⁰ Youngs, 81.
²¹ Ibid, 6.
²² Low, 50.
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