The Hejaz Railway was built without any foreign capital
Unlike every other Ottoman railway of its era, this 1,464-kilometer desert line was funded entirely by taxes and global donations from the Muslim community.
In 1900, Sultan Abdulhamid II launched an ambitious engineering project to connect Istanbul to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. While most major infrastructure in the late Ottoman Empire relied on European financing, the Hejaz Railway was strictly funded by internal taxes and a massive international donation campaign. This financial independence was intended to ensure that no foreign powers could claim a stake in the strategically and religiously sensitive route.
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