Abstract
<jats:p>The article analyzes the representation of crimes committed in the Holy Land in the 19th - early 20th centuries, involving Russian pilgrims as witnesses or victims. The study outlines the cultural, historical, and socio-political origins of persistent images and patterns used to describe criminal incidents. It demonstrates that, despite significant improvements in road safety within the Ottoman Empire, the issue of crime remained highly relevant in pilgrim narratives until the early 20th century. The author pays particular attention to the role of book learning in constructing the Holy Land image, as classical texts shaped a certain bias among educated pilgrims and often served as a pattern for describing reality.The research establishes that most crimes do not have paper trails but they fit into two recurring narrative models: a story about an attack by Bedouin robbers and the edifying story of the straggling pilgrim woman. Structural analysis reveals that these texts function according to the laws of urban legends and rumors, whereas reliable evidence of actual violence is rare. Additionally, the author finds similarities between the rumors about Bedouin robbers circulating among pilgrims and the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The study also reveals that the unanimous identification of Bedouins as the source of danger bore, on the one hand, traits of orientalism, reinforcing the West-East dichotomy. On the other hand, it took on the character of a “moral panic” initiated and/or supported by authors inte rested in developing the infrastructure of “Russian Palestine.”</jats:p>