Unfurling the Flag of Extraterritoriality: Autonomy, Foreign Muslims, and the Capitulations in the Ottoman Hijaz

By the conclusion of the nineteenth century millions of Muslims from across Africa and Asia found themselves living under European colonial rule. As a result of this previously unthinkable scenario, a paradoxical rift in the traditional fabric of the Capitulations was opened. Up until this point, the Capitulations had always been predicated on the idea that the foreign subjects being excused from Ottoman jurisdiction would be non-Muslims. But what if the subjects of states enjoying capitulatory privileges were, in fact, Muslims hailing from European colonies or protectorates? Although conventional wisdom suggests that the Hijaz was excluded from the Capitulations, from the early 1880s onward, British consular officials waged an aggressive campaign to extend the privileges of consular protection to Indian and other colonial subjects traveling or residing in the Hijaz. By examining this Anglo-Ottoman clash over the extension of the Capitulations to the Hijaz and the Sharifate of Mecca, this article finds that both the increasing pressures of European legal imperialism and the unintended consequences of the measures meant to blunt them combined to radically alter and undermine the Hijaz’s exceptional legal, religious, and ideological positions within the empire.