Mahdi Chowdury

Mahdi started at Cambridge on 1 Oct 2018 and is a student at Fitzwilliam College. He is studying how Hajj – the annual pilgrimage to Mecca – is transformed by the harrowing experience of turn-of-the-century epidemic diseases. By looking at the forgotten history of pilgrim quarantine islands in the Red Sea, his research seeks to offer insight into: the experiences of common African and Asian pilgrims during such a crisis; the political and architectural techniques used to ‘medicalize’ Hajj; and the role of the Indian Ocean as an arbiter of world-historical relations.