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Central Historical Archive of Georgia

Written by Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky

With contributions by Will Smiley (in bold), based on a visit in July 2018.

The Central Historical Archive, located in Tbilisi, is the main depository of historical documents in the Republic of Georgia and a major archive in the Caucasus region. Famed for its large collection of ancient Georgian manuscripts and Imperial Russian documents, the archive also preserves primary sources that are of great value to Ottoman and Middle Eastern scholars.

Historical archives of Georgia

History

The origins of the archive lie with the historical department of the Russian Caucasus Army Headquarters, created in 1878, and the Caucasus Military Archive that was established in 1908. In 1918, historical documents were collected from all over Georgia to be stored in a central location in Tbilisi. This collection formed the basis of the Central Scientific Archive, founded in 1920. It was further reorganized as the Central Historical Archive of Georgia in 1939, known to students of Russian and Soviet history as Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (TsGIA GSSR). In 2006, the archive became part of the newly formed National Archives of Georgia, which also includes the Central Archive of Contemporary History, the Archive of Audio-Visual History (all three occupy the same building), and the Archive of Kutaisi.

Collection

The National Archives of Georgia, via its four central depositories and many local institutions, boasts five million written documents. The collection of the Central Historical Archive covers the period between the ninth century and the beginning of Soviet rule in 1921. It preserves documents in Georgian, Russian, Armenian, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian. Most medieval and early modern manuscripts deal with Georgian dynastic and ecclesiastic history. The archive hosts rich nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collections of documents on the civil administration of the South Caucasus, including information on urban planning, industrial and mining enterprises, railway construction, agricultural development, banking, customs, educational and medical reforms, and religious and charitable institutions.

Several fonds may be of direct interest to Middle Eastern scholars:

Fond 1452. “Collection of Persian documents” (sixteenth century – 1913): 1,237 documents, ranging from diplomatic and commercial correspondence between Iranian and Georgian rulers to the edicts (firmans) of Iranian shahs to Georgian nobles and Qajar proclamations to Caucasian residents, as well as local tax exemptions, court records, and business transactions recorded in Persian.The register of this fond is in Georgian.

Fond 1453. “Collection of [Ottoman] Turkish documents” (sixteenth century – 1911): 421 documents, including sultanic firmans related to landownership and taxation, Ottoman proclamations to the Caucasus khans to support the Porte in wars against Russia, and reports of sales of captives. Some documents deal with Ottoman-Safavid contention over the Caucasus in the sixteenth century. The considerable majority of Ottoman documents appear to be from the nineteenth century, with a smaller number from the eighteenth and seventeenth and only a very few from the sixteenth. The register of this fond is in Georgian. .

Fund 11. “Diplomatic Chancery of the Viceroy of the Caucasus” (1829-1868): 4,195 documents on Russia’s relations with the Ottomans and the Qajars, including border incidents, wars, foreign visitors, and commercial treaties.

Fund 15. “Foreign Ministry Representative for Border Relations at the Viceroy of the Caucasus” (1869-1916): 382 documents, including materials on Ottoman and Qajar consuls in the Caucasus, as well as the activities of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun).

Armenian scholars may be interested in Armenian-language petitions and letters that are scattered across various funds, dealing with civil administration of the region. For photographic, video, and audio records, researchers should consult the Central Audio-Visual Archive.

The Research Experience

The reading room is located on the first floor of the house adjacent to the main archival building, which can be reached via the official entrance. An archivist is always present in a “glass room” by the reading room. Archivists are likely to speak and/or understand Russian but, at the time of the writing (March 2014), not English. The Department of Public and International Relations, located in the main building, will have fluent English speakers to help with researchers’ queries.

Most of the archive’s collections are not digitized. An online catalog currently exists only in Georgian. The catalog in Russian was published in 1976 (reprint of the 1947 edition) and to this day remains the best guide to the archive’s collections. There is a copy of the catalog in the reading room. There is no English-language catalog.

The printed catalog lists several hundred funds. Every fund will have its own handwritten register(s) (opis’). The registers are in Russian for most fonds, but in Georgian for fonds 1452 and 1453 and possibly others. The archivist delivers registers in a few hours’ time. Based on information in the registers, researchers can order folders of documents. Each folder contains anywhere between one page to several hundred sheets; folder sizes are specified in registers. In theory, researchers should allow twenty-four hours for the delivery of requested documents. In practice, if ordered by the afternoon, documents should be delivered the same day.

Note that the two fonds of most interest to pre-modern Middle Eastern historians, unfortunately, may be challenging for non-Georgian speakers to access. The registers (opisi) for these two fonds—1452 (Persian documents) and 1453 (Ottoman documents)—are in Georgian, rather than Russian like other registers. This will not interfere with ordering documents, but it will make it difficult for non-Georgian speakers to determine what documents they are ordering.

Georgian Archival document
Georgian Archival document

Access

The reading room of the Central Historical Archive is open weekdays from 10:00 to 17:00 and does not close for lunch. The archive is closed for the month of August.

To arrange research permissions, it can be helpful to email ahead (the main email address is info@archives.gov.ge). Anglophone researchers will be pleased to know that there is, at the moment, one person working at the front entrance and one at the desk in the reading room who speak fluent English. The other archivists, of course, speak Georgian and Russian.

In order to be granted access to the archive, researchers are asked to bring an official letter from their university or research institution, addressed to the General Director of the National Archives of Georgia. The letter should include the title of one’s research topic.

The security and registration office is located to the right of the archive’s main entrance. Researchers should submit their letter and government-issued ID there in exchange for an archival access card. The access card must be returned at the end of the visit.

Reproductions

Ordering the fonds’ handwritten registers is free of charge but the archive charges researchers for delivering primary sources to the reading room. In March 2014, the cost of ordering one archival unit (folder) is 25 tetri (15 US cents) for scholars and 50 tetri (30 US cents) for those without academic institutional affiliation.

Photocopying and scanning fees depend on the historical period of primary sources. Scanning one page of a twentieth-century document costs one lari, a nineteenth-century document – four lari, and a document produced between the ninth and eighteenth centuries – six lari. The price for taking your own pictures of documents is five lari per page, irrespective of the document’s age. Also, note that a researcher in July 2018 (Will Smiley) was denied permission to photograph documents, even for a price.

As of July 2018, take the final bill, issued by the archivist to the Liberty Bank, whose nearest branch is located on Pekini Avenue, within a ten-minute walk from the archive (note that if the researcher has a Georgian bank account, they can go to any bank).The archivists hand out small slips of paper with the archives’ account number on it and instructions in Georgian.  They will only accept cash, but there is an ATM at the bank. Bring government-issued ID to complete the transaction at the bank, and return a bank receipt to the archivist as proof of payment. Plan in advance to allow at least half an hour before the archive closes for the return trip to the bank.

Researchers who have a PhD (a faculty affiliation may be sufficient) receive a 50% discount on scanning documents. This is another reason to bring a formal letter of affiliation from an academic institution confirming one’s degree and position.

Transportation and Food

The archive is located a few miles north of the Old City. It is easily reached by subway (via the Medical University station on the Saburtalo line). Upon exiting the subway, the National Archives building, which houses the Central Archive, will be on one’s left at the intersection of Vazha Pshavela Avenue and Pekini Avenue.

There is no cafeteria in the archival building. Researchers are welcome to use a kitchen and a dining room, commonly employed by the archive employees. Located on the first floor of the main building, the kitchen is equipped with a refrigerator and cooking facilities. There is a small grocery store across from the archive on Vazha Pshavela Avenue.

Miscellaneous

The archive occasionally organizes exhibitions, which should be advertised on its website. The archive does not provide scholarships for researchers to use its collections. U.S. citizens and permanent residents may explore funding opportunities at the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC).

Future Plans

There is a plan to issue an archival guide in three languages (English, Georgian, and Russian), which would be available online.

Contact information

National Archives of Georgia

1 Vazha Pshavela Avenue

Tbilisi 0160

info@archives.gov.ge

(+995) 105-916

Resources and Links:

National Archives of Georgia

Printed Catalog (in Russian; Worldcat)

Booklet

Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is a historian of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East and specializes in transnational refugee migration.

Will Smiley is an Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. He works on Ottoman and Eurasian history and on the history of international and Islamic law.

Cite this, Vladimir Troyansky, “Central Historical Archive of Georgia,” HAZİNE, https://hazine.info/2014/03/19/georgiaarchives/, 19 Mar 2014

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Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran

Written by Christopher Markiewicz

Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran (WWQI) is a digital archive of materials related to the social and cultural history of Iran during the Qajar period. The archive seeks to aid scholarship on women’s history and gender history by making freely available online a vast array of writings, photographs, financial and legal documents, artwork, and everyday objects contained in private and public collections around the world. In this way, the project seeks to assemble a digital archive of Iranian culture during the long nineteenth century (1796-1925) with a focus on women and issues of gender.

Two women in European dress from the Olga Davidson Collection - feature image
Two women in European dress from the Olga Davidson Collection.

Background and History

The idea for a digital archive of Iranian material on women’s history originated in the early 2000s. In 2009, Afsaneh Najmabadi, along with four scholars of Iranian history (Nahid Mozaffari, Dominic Brookshaw, Naghmeh Sohrabi, and Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar) were awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to assemble a digital archive of documents from a number of private collections and public institutions. The original idea for the project arose from an awareness of the state of Iranian archival resources and of the possibilities afforded by emerging digital technologies. Firstly, the project members recognized the need for assembling an archive for Iranian history in the absence of extensive institutional archival collections. In contrast to the large state archives for the Ottoman Empire, which are preserved by various state institutions in Turkey and the Middle East, no analogous institutional archives exist for Iranian history prior to the twentieth century. Despite this lack of formal institutional archiving, the project members knew of the existence of significant numbers of documents from the nineteenth century that have been preserved in the private collections of families throughout Iran. Secondly, the development of high quality digital technologies made possible the establishment of a virtual archive composed of disparate collections held in various locations. Rather than construct a physical archive on the basis of a state’s backing, the project has endeavored to collect (or “fabricate” in the words of Najmabadi) within a single website a digital archive of material from around the world.

The project has focused on women in nineteenth-century Iran for several reasons. First of all, the archive seeks to address a lacuna in Iranian social history with regard to women and gender issues. The absence of more scholarly work on women’s history for Iran is surprising considering the relatively rich material produced by women or related to women from the period which sheds light on the daily lives, social relationships, and cultural activities of Iranians during the Qajar era. Moreover, much of the material preserved in private family collections—including marriage contracts, diaries, and photographs—provides a detailed and unique view of women’s worlds. In this way, the nature of the archival material preserved in disparate private collections demands scholarly attention to aspects of women’s history.

WWQI website homepage.
WWQI website homepage.

Collection

Initially the project envisioned an archive of 3,000 images. By April 2013, the collection had grown to more than 33,000 images. The majority of the archive’s images are owned and held by forty-three private collections. In addition to these collections, WWQI has partnered with ten public institutions to make available a number of other documents and objects on the project’s website.

In general, the private collections consist of individual families’ records and therefore reflect the eclectic documents and material objects preserved by a single family over the course of several generations. In some instances, the private collections consist of the personal archives of a local notable, such as a mujtahid or kadkhuda, and consequently contain an array of financial and legal material that had been entrusted by a number of families to the local leader for safekeeping. The images found within the private collections usually range from documents of legal significance, such as marriage contracts and sales of property to documents of a more intimate world, such as photographs, diaries and letters, as well as antiquated objects of daily use. Assembling this digital collection from a disparate array of smaller collections enables scholars to develop a more thorough understanding of various social phenomena. For instance, WWQI has managed to gather and make available more than 300 marriage contracts from Muslim, Jewish, Armenian, and Zoroastrian communities. This sort of collecting allows for more systematic approaches to issues such as kinship and family. Similarly, the inclusion of large numbers of photographs invites researchers to examine relatively underused historical sources. Unfortunately, given the nature of these private collections, which are largely the holdings of relatively prominent families, the archive mostly reflects the interests and priorities of the urban upper class. WWQI is aware of this shortcoming and is working to alleviate the imbalance by actively soliciting archival contributions from families with significant rural ties.

The other major source for WWQI’s image archive is provided by a number of public institutions in Iran and abroad. These institutions range from important libraries, such as the Majlis Library in Tehran and Tehran University Library, to academic institutions, such as the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History and the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies. The documents provided by these institutions tend to include state-produced material, published documents, and art objects. In this respect, the collection contains a number of journals and educational pamphlets, as well as legal documents.

The project has at least two great virtues. Firstly, by including objects of material culture (photographs, art, and instruments), the archive invites historians to practice their craft in new ways. For instance, the inclusion of large numbers of photographs from different families living in the same period enables researchers to read images not only as solitary documents from which evidence is extracted but as a comprehensive storehouse of social information which evoke an image of the age. Similarly, objects may yield equally surprising insights. Professor Najmabadi recounted one such experience while interviewing a family in Yazd. Despite initially doubting the usefulness of the family’s possessions, one family member returned to the conversation with kitchen ladles in hand, upon which had been engraved generations of family birthdays.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the archive’s digital nature allows for the relative ease of its expansion. As contributors to the collection maintain all of their rights of ownership, the archive need not engage in complicated arrangements to transfer and preserve material. In this way, the growth of the archive is only limited by individuals and institutions’ willingness to share images of their collection for scholarly use.

Curtain tassel from the Bahman-Bayani collection.
Curtain tassel from the Bahman-Bayani collection.

Research Experience

Researchers may search and access the archive’s collections through its website. The website is nicely designed with an easy to navigate interface and is fully functional in both English and Persian. Moreover, all of the documents within the collection are clearly and effectively labeled. While the site provides a platform to search and browse the archive’s collection, all of the images are digitized and hosted by Harvard University Libraries, so users are linked to Harvard’s library page once they have located a particular document that they would like to view.

There are three ways to locate material using WWQI’s site. The site has a simple search function located on the homepage which allows researchers to identify material according to names of people or places, the type of document (e.g. letter, marriage contract), or subject (e.g. politics and government, clothing and dress, kitchen ware). As it is hard to know how subjects are defined within the collection, it is probably best to browse the list of subjects provided from a link on the homepage.

Users may also locate material by browsing within particular collections. Here users will get a good idea of wide variety of disparate holdings that collectively constitute the project’s archive. This function will be of particular use to those interested in surveying the range of material preserved and donated by a single family.

Lastly, users may browse the archive’s holdings. This method is probably the most effective way to become familiar with the wide range of material available on the site. Users may narrow their browsing to a reign within the Qajar period or browse within a particular document genre (audio files, manuscripts, letters, etc.). In addition to these two subfields, users may also browse according to person, place, or subject, as well as view all of the archives materials which have been either translated or transliterated into Latin letters.

Acknowledgement:

I would like to thank Professor Najmabadi who provided me with a copy of a paper she presented on the project at Brown University in October 2013. Most of the details in this article originate from this paper.

20 January 2014

Christopher Markiewicz is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago where he studies fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Islamic history.

Cite this: Christopher Markiewicz, “Women’s Worlds of Qajar Iran,” HAZINE, 20 January 2014, https://hazine.info/2014/01/20/qajar-women-archive/

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Open-access Digitized Archival Materials

Last week HAZİNE posted a list of libraries with open-access digitized manuscripts. This week we would like to present a list of institutions and websites with freely accessible archival material. As with the manuscript list, we will continue to add and modify this page.

Screenshot of Genizah document at Cambridge University Digital Library.
Screenshot of Genizah document at Cambridge University Digital Library.

Asnad.org

Asnad.org at Philips-Üniversität Marburg  has collated and presented in digital format more than 1,000 Persian documents related to the history of Persian lands between the ninth and nineteenth centuries. Most of these documents are reproductions of documents published in academic publications. In addition to the images of the documents, the site offers full bibliographic information on the document’s location and previous citation in scholarly volumes.

The Cairo Genizah (Cambridge University)

Cambridge University’s Taylor-Schechter Cairo Genizah Collection, along with the Mosseri Genizah Collection are available through the university’s library website. The Cairo Genizah, in addition to preserving a vast collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts, contains thousands of documents relevant to the social and economic history of the Mediterranean and the Middle East from the tenth to thirteenth century. In addition to the large archive digitized at Cambridge, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the John Rylands Library in Manchester, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America also have significant portions of the Cairo Genizah.

The General State Archives (Greece)

The General State Archives has an extensive online catalog with a number of documents digitized and freely available for viewing. The archive contains a number of Ottoman era court registers and cadastral surveys in addition to all of the archival material accumulated since the foundation of the Kingdom of Greece.

The National Archives (United Kingdom)

There are a number of collections at the National Archives which are digitized and available for download. Several of these collections may be of interest to scholars of the Middle East, especially the correspondence of the Arab Bureau between 1911 and 1920 (FO 882).

The National Archives (United States)

Through Access Archival Databases, the National Archives has made available online transcriptions of a number of collections, some of which will be of interest to historians of post-1945 Middle East. For instance, see the Central Foreign Policy Files which include State Department electronic telegrams between 1 January 1973 and 31 December 1976.

The Venetian State Archives

The Venetian archives have made freely available online one of its most important collections of Ottoman documents, Miscellanea documenti turchi. For background on this collection, as well as details on how to navigate the archive’s site, see HAZİNE’s review.

29 October 2013

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Topkapı Palace Museum

Topkapı Palace Museum: Archive and Library

The Archive and Library of the Topkapı Palace Museum (Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi) contain some of the most important documents and manuscripts pertaining to Ottoman and Islamic history. The Library (TSMK) and Archive (TSMA) are both located on the grounds of Topkapı Palace in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul.

Bağdat Pavilion, the original home of the Bağdat collection of the Topkapı Library.
Bağdat Pavilion, the original home of the Bağdat collection of the Topkapı Library.

History

Since the establishment of the palace in the fifteenth century, archival records and books have always been stored on the palace grounds. The initial storage of these materials varied over time until the establishment of the Topkapı Palace Museum in 1924. Since then, the archival materials and books of the palace have been gathered and stored in two locations on the palace grounds.

The palace archive preserves some of the oldest and most important archival records concerning the history of the Ottoman dynasty. In the earliest centuries of the dynasty’s existence, the palace (dergah-i padişahi) functioned as a movable institution constituted around the sovereign. As such, the palace’s property (including written records) often travelled with the sultan. With the establishment of Topkapı Palace at the end of the fifteenth century, the palace as institution began to assume a greater sedentary character and the records of the institution, as maintained by the Imperial Treasury (Hizane-i ‘Amire) were permanently stored on the palace’s grounds. In subsequent centuries the vast majority of these archival records were transferred to various offices of state outside of the palace. The process accelerated in the eighteenth century, so that by the time of the mid nineteenth-century establishment of a state archive (Hazine-yi Evrak), the majority of archival material was located offsite. It is this material which constitutes the historical core collections of the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi). Today it is often difficult to discern why the material that remained at Topkapı was never transferred to various offices of state in the eighteenth century. One possible explanation is to consider the Topkapı Palace archive as the family archive of the Ottoman dynasty. In many respects this approach makes sense when we consider the large numbers of documents related to members of the ruling family and palace officials. Those records which seem more unrelated to the business of the dynasty may make some sense if we consider the ruling family’s acquisition of its servants’ property upon their death (muhallefat).

The palace’s book collection likely developed along similar lines. From the earliest periods of the dynasty’s history, learned men donated and dedicated their works to the Ottoman sultans. These works were supplemented by acquisitions from conquest and the deaths of the dynasty’s servants (whose books subsequently became the property of the ruling family). Initially these books were stored at a number of locations throughout the palace grounds. In the eighteenth century, Sultan Ahmed III established a library in the interior courtyard of the palace for the benefit of his family and the palace servants. Collection headings such as Bağdat, Revan, and III. Ahmet all refer to the original location of these works in the palace grounds.

With the establishment of Topkapı Palace Museum in 1924, the archival and library collections of the palace were entrusted to the museum. In 1925, the Ağalar Camii of the interior courtyard was converted to the New Library (Yeni Kütüphane) and the books of the various sections of the palace were moved to the new facility. In 1966, the books of the Ahmet III Library were added to the Topkapı Library in Ağalar Camii. Between 2006 and 2013 the library was closed for a number of significant renovations to Ağalar Camii. These included the construction of a new climate-controlled book depot and the restoration of the İznik tiles which decorate the walls of the library’s reading room. In August 2013, the library was re-opened and made accessible for researchers. Currently, the archive remains closed, but its staff assures us that the archive will also open in a short time.

Collections

Archive

The Topkapı collection is an indispensable source for historians concerned with Ottoman history prior to the nineteenth century. With few exceptions, the archival collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum contains the only extant official records of the Ottoman dynasty for the first two hundred years of its existence.

The archive consists of two classifications of documents: registers (defter), which range from a single sheet to several hundred pages, and loose papers (evrak), which include everything from elaborately produced letters from foreign sovereigns to scribbles on scraps of paper produced by low level palace officials. With approximately 153,000 loose papers and 10,775 registers, TSMA is the largest Ottoman archive after the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office (BOA). Researchers should note that the defters of the palace archive are digitally available at BOA.

In 1937 the museum invited the Hungarian historian and archivist Lajos Fekete to survey the palace archive and make recommendations for the collection’s classification. With his recommendations, the museum staff produced a two volume guide to the collection organized alphabetically according to the subject of the document (usually the document’s creator or addressee). Unfortunately this published guide only covered the archive’s collection up through the letter H. Between 1949 and 1951 M. Çağatay Uluçay described the remainder of the collection in five handwritten notebooks which were kept at the archive for researchers’ use. Beginning in 1957 İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı and subsequently Şefi Ülkü Altındağ produced a catalog of the 153,000 loose papers of the archive on small notecards. These notecards and the published and unpublished guides from the first-half of the twentieth century remain the only resources which describe the full extent of the archive’s collection. Since 2006, the archive has been closed to facilitate a number of changes, foremost of which is the development of a completely new and thorough catalog of the archive’s collections. As of autumn 2013, the Archive under the direction of Sevgi Ağca has produced four volumes of a planned fifteen volumes. The volumes have been published and are available at the Archive for consultation.

As the archive of the Ottoman dynasty, the collection provides the best material for researchers concerned with the activities of the royal family, as well as the functioning of the palace and central state administration. The loose papers include all manner of official documents including edicts (ferman), titles of investiture (berat), reports (arıza), and petitions (arzuhal). The majority of the registers include finance records such as salary registers of palace officials, inventories of the Imperial Treasury, and surveys of religious endowments (evkaf) established by one of the royal family members.

Although the majority of the documents are in Ottoman Turkish, the collection also includes a fair amount of material produced in other languages. This is particularly true for the earlier periods in which much of the state correspondence was composed in Persian. The collection even includes an example of an extremely rare edict (yarlığ) in Uyghur-script Eastern Turkish (Chaghatay) composed by order of Sultan Mehmed II in the aftermath of the Ottoman victory over the Aqquyunlu confederation at the Battle of Otlukbeli in 1473.

While the vast majority of the archive’s collection consists of documents produced by the Ottoman state, the archive also includes an exceptionally important collection of documents produced by other Muslim dynasties. The majority of these documents were produced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Iranian dynasties such as the Timurids, the Qaraqoyunlu, the Aqqoyunlu, and the Safavids. In all likelihood these ‘foreign’ archival documents arrived in Istanbul with other spoils of war in the wake of one of the victorious Ottoman campaigns waged against the Aqqoyunlu or Safavid polities.

Library 

The collection of the palace library contains approximately 13,400 manuscripts. The majority of these manuscripts are in Arabic (approximately 8,500), although the library has a sizable collection of manuscripts in Turkish (3,081 including works in Chaghatay and Kipchak), and Persian (904). While the library is not even the largest collection in Istanbul, its holdings are distinguished by many rare and, in some cases, unique manuscripts, including many early copies of important works and a number of autographed manuscripts. Beginning in 1961, Fehmi Edhem Karatay produced a seven-volume catalog of the library’s Arabic, Persian, and Turkish collections organized according to the language and literary genre of each work. In addition to works in these languages, the library also has a sizable uncataloged collection of material in European languages. For those interested in the Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Syriac holdings of the library, we suggest consulting D. Adolf Deissmann’s Forschungen und Funde im Serai (Berlin-Leipzig, 1933).

The majority of the library’s collection consists of works related to Islamic religious sciences along with many works of history, grammar, poetry, belles lettres, and other sciences. Its Arabic works are distinguished by a large number of early copies of the Quran, including a few which were reportedly copied by ‘Uthman bin ‘Affan and ‘Ali bin Abi Talib. The library’s Turkish works include a large number of histories of the Ottoman dynasty, many of which are preserved solely through the library’s copy.

While the library is certainly of great importance to historians and scholars of Islamic studies, the library’s significant collection of finely produced volumes and illustrated manuscripts mark it as one of the great libraries in the world for art historians. Most of the volumes with miniatures were produced in the palace painters’ atelier (nakkaşhane) or in Iran and subsequently acquired by the dynasty. In addition to the illustrated volumes, the library also has an important collection of calligraphy (hat) and other art forms.

Research Experience

Topkapı’s library is a pleasant place to work. The library’s reading room is located in the anteroom of the former Ağalar Camii. The room consists of two large tables at which researchers may examine manuscripts. The reading room has sufficient natural light for reading and is enclosed on four side by walls of beautifully decorated seventeenth-century İznik tiles. As library patrons work in the library after making an appointment (see Accessibility section below for details on this procedure), the reading room is never crowded. Researchers request manuscripts from the library staff by submitting a short request form. Generally the staff make requested manuscripts available within ten minutes of a request. Researchers are asked to wear gloves while examining any of the library’s manuscripts.

The reading room has a complete copy of Karatay’s seven-volume catalog of the collection. The reading room’s copy of the catalog is more accurate than other copies, as it includes a number of marginal notes and corrections which detail the actual location and state of the library’s collection. In addition to these catalogs, the reading room also has a catalog key which converts the collection shelf mark number to Karatay’s catalog accession number. This catalog key is an extremely useful tool for locating references to manuscripts in Karatay’s catalogs. Aside from these materials, the library has no readily accessible reference material.

The only difficult aspect of working at the Topkapı library is negotiating the crowds of tourists on the palace grounds. As the palace is one of the most popular tourist sites in Turkey, researchers must contend with the thousands of tourists who enter the palace every day. When entering the palace grounds at the Gate of Salutation (Bab-i Selam), we advise researchers to head straight to the guard booth at the gate and present themselves as a researcher at the library. The guard will ask you to pick up a visitor’s card (ziyaretçi kartı) from the guided tours ticket sales booth. With this card, researchers may enter the palace grounds without purchasing a ticket.

While the archive is currently closed, researchers may request to purchase digital archival material if they know the archival reference number and the material has already been digitized. Requests for purchase are submitted to the archive’s director and are generally approved and ready for pick up within one week (see Reproduction section below).

The staff of the library and archive are quite friendly and willing to help. Some of the staff speak English, so researchers without Turkish should be able to manage.

Accessibility

Researchers must obtain permission to conduct research at Topkapı from the Museum Directorate. The research request application consists of a request form, a research statement produced by the researcher which describes his or her research and specifies the material at the archive or library the researcher requests to consult, a letter of affiliation with a research institution, and a photocopy of the researcher’s identification (passport or Turkish national id card). The research statement should include 1) a description of the current project on which the applicant is working, 2) mention of the purpose of the study (doctoral dissertation, academic article, etc.), 3) enumeration of the specific works or archival materials to be examined, and 4) the contact information and signature of the applicant. These applications are processed within a few days. The museum offers research permission valid for a single calendar year; each January permission must be renewed with a new application.

The library is open Monday through Friday between 9:00 and 16:00 with a one hour break for lunch between 12:00 and 13:00. After obtaining permission, those who wish to work at the library should make an appointment by telephone or in person. Researchers in wheelchairs will have some difficulty navigating the palace ground and the three steps at the library entry.

Reproduction Requests and Costs

Researchers working in the library may request digital reproductions of material upon submission of a short request form. In general, if these requests are for non-commercial scholarly use, they are quickly approved within one or two days. Reproductions of non-illustrated pages cost 2 TL for foreigners per photographic exposure and half as much for Turkish nationals. Reproductions of illustrated material cost more.

Digital reproductions of archival material may be obtained in a similar manner. As with the library, these reproductions also cost 2 TL per photographic exposure. As the archive is currently closed, researchers must know the defter or evrak reference number of their documents in order for their requests to be processed. After researchers have obtained research authorization, they may request reproductions remotely. Once the museum receives payment via bank transfer, the staff will mail copies of the requested material on CD.

Transportation and Food

The museum is in the very center of Istanbul and easily accessible by tramway. Researchers can disembark at either the Sultanahmet or Gülhane tramway stop and then proceed to the palace on foot. The approach from Sultanahmet is a bit further but is on relatively level ground, whereas the Gülhane approach necessitates a short walk up a hill.

There are few options for food on the grounds of the palace. Konyalı is the only restaurant on the grounds of the palace. It has a beautiful terrace with views of the Bosphorus, but meals here are relatively expensive. Researchers may find many options for lunch outside of the palace, but they will need to re-enter the palace grounds—and contend with the masses of tourists—when they return. We recommend packing a lunch and finding a bench to eat in one of the palace’s gardens.

Contact Information

T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Müdürlüğü

Sultanahmet, Fatih / İSTANBUL

Tel: +90 212 512 04 80 / Fax: +90 212 528 59 91

Email: topkapisarayimuzesi@kulturturizm.gov.tr

Resources and Links

http://www.topkapisarayi.gov.tr/

The English version of this site only includes tourist information. We recommend that researchers use the Turkish version of the site to learn more about developments at the archive and library.

Written by Christopher Markiewicz

10 October 2013

Cite this: Christopher Markiewicz, “Topkapı Palace Museum: Archive and Library,” HAZİNE, 10 October 2013, https://hazine.info/2013/10/10/topkapiarchiveandlibrary/