IOR/R/15/1/576

The volume consists of letters, telegrams, memoranda, and reports relating to the Hajj pilgrimage to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. The majority of the correspondence is between the British Legation in Jeddah, the Foreign Office in London, the Government of India, the British Residency in Bushire, the British Ministers in Cairo and Baghdad, the Political Agencies in Bahrain and Kuwait, and Ibn Sa'ud.

Contained in the volume are the annual reports on the pilgrimage composed by the Agent in Jeddah for the years 1936-39 and 1941-43. Each report consists of some or all of the following:

• a general introduction;
• information on quarantine;
• statistics;
• information on health, transport, customs, 'mutawwifs' (pilgrim guides), religious policy, tariffs and the cost of pilgrimage, and pilgrims from other Muslim regions of the British Empire (India, Afghan, Malay, West Africa, Sudan, Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan, Sarawak, Somalia, Zanzibar and East Africa, South Africa, Aden, Hadhramaut, Muscat, Bahrain, and Kuwait).

A major theme of the volume is the difficulty in getting Indian Muslims to Mecca overland from the Persian Gulf due to the dangers of the shipping lanes in wartime. Many of the documents are concerned with the issues of transport, cost, health, and supply of the routes from Iraq via Najaf and Medina, and from Kuwait via Riyadh.