This paper grapples with two entwined topics. First, it explores the centuries-old burial ritual that persisted among Shiʿa Muslim communities in the nineteenth century Caucasus under the Russian imperial control. The ritual entailed deliberate abeyance of burial and the storage of dead bodies of Shiʿa Muslims for a period ranging between several months to several years. The bodies were stored in the specially constructed crypts or basements of mosques. . When the relatives of the deceased deemed the timing right, a decision that hinged on a variety of personal, political, and financial factors, the corpses were brought out and transported in the specially assembled caravans to be taken for the final burial in the cemeteries of Karbala, Najaf, Qom, or Mashhad, which pious Shiʿa Muslims hold sacred. Second, this article argues that the imperial government’s reluctant consent to allow the movement of hundreds of corpses outside of the Caucasus, a decision that contradicted imperial sanitary laws, demonstrates its broader efforts to manage Islam and cultivate political loyalty of Muslims living in the region. To illuminate the history of the Shiʿa funerary pilgrimage as it unfolded in the nineteenth century Caucasus under Russian imperial control, I examined a broad range of primary and secondary sources. Of particular significance is the collection of petitions written in the Persian language seeking the permission of Russian authorities to exhume and transport corpses outside of the South Caucasus. These documents reveal crucial information like the names and places of residency of the petitioners, the circumstances of people’s passing, the number of corpses that an individual wished to transport, and the ultimate destination of the caravans carrying the dead.