Gold Coast Colony’s Northern Territories Protectorate Muslims on Haj: Passports and Repatriation Deposits, 1897-1950

Abstract

Ghana had a census for the Muslim population in 2017 and 2021, a national census including Muslims. Two international airports were being constructed to render three international airports for Muslims to embark on planes at Accra, Cape Coast and Tamale for the annual haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. This paper is situated in the north, where the Gold Coast colonial government wrote diplomatic letters for the dispersed Islamic people in the Northern Territories Protectorate who travelled on haj. In 1910, British colonial officers and the Gold Coast colonial government made policies that met the Saudi monarch’s requirement that Muslim pilgrims had to travel with British passports. During the colonial era, the Gold Coast colonial government allotted passports to Muslim pilgrims in the Northern Territories Protectorate from the Gold Coast and Nigeria and controlled the finances they deposited for repatriation during haj.