The British Empire and the Hajj

[Slight] explores this important but largely neglected history of Hajj and does so by tracing British involvement with the regulation and performance of this Islamic ritual from early 1860s until the Suez Crisis of 1956... Based on a combination of archival and secondary sources, this is an unusually informative, meticulously researched and highly readable book... This book will prove to be a useful source of reference on the subject for future researchers and writers alike.--Muhammad Khan Muslim News (03/24/2016) This is an excellent book... It will be indispensable for anyone interested in the Hajj.--William Roger Louis Times Literary Supplement (03/25/2016) Impressively lucid, this is a 'must-buy' addition for anyone interested in the Hajj and Western involvement in it.--John Darwin, University of Oxford The ambit of this book is formidable. The British were almost everywhere, globally, between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, and this book tells of their activities vis-a-vis the Hajj. Slight has done a wonderful job of making a huge subject transparent and understandable.--Eric Tagliacozzo, Cornell University This is a fascinating book, and particularly timely for those who ponder the nature of the West's relationship with the Muslim world...This is a valuable, intellectually robust but still highly accessible work that does much to elevate our understanding of a truly significant phenomenon within the history of the British Empire. More importantly, Slight has done much to clarify our understanding and recognition of the inherently Islamic nature of that empire in significant respects.-- (02/01/2017) This is a wildly ambitious book, covering a mind-bogglingly complex array of geographies and periods, requiring deep familiarity with African, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Southeast Asian histories. Slight balances all of this with tremendous ease and an engaging style. He is among the very few scholars with the skill set needed to speak to scholars of the British Empire, the Islamic world, and global history with virtually equal authority. The result is the most wide-ranging and significant book on the colonial-era hajj to date.-- (04/01/2017)