Modern Archives - Page 2 of 3

February 21, 2014August 20, 2020

Chester Beatty Library

The Chester Beatty Library (Leabharlann Chester Beatty) contains Oriental and Western books and manuscripts bequeathed by the private collector Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875-1968). Located on the grounds of Dublin Castle, the library houses one of the finest manuscript collections of Islamic and East Asian material in Europe and is especially well known for its illustrated manuscripts.

History

Sir Chester Beatty was a mining magnate who at an early age began to collect stamps and Chinese snuff bottles. Over time he began to collect European and Persian manuscripts. Following a trip in 1914 to Egypt, he became interested in Arabic materials and acquired several copies of the Quran. His collection grew and came to include Japanese and Chinese paintings after a trip to Asia in 1917. Sir Chester Beatty moved to Ireland in 1950 and there he built a library. His personal collection was bequeathed to the public after his death in 1968. The collection boasts manuscripts, single folios, scrolls, textiles and decorative objects from East Asia, Armenia and Western Europe in addition to over 4,400 Islamic manuscripts. The library’s aim is to preserve and display rare materials belonging to the collection of Sir Chester Beatty and to make them available to the public.

Collection

The Islamic manuscripts in the collection range in production date from the eighth century to the twentieth century. The majority of the collection is made of some 2,650 Arabic manuscripts, most of which are unillustrated and range in topic from history, religion, jurisprudence to astronomy and medicine. There are 260 Qurans in the collection, which boasts an illuminated Quran copied in Baghdad in 1001 by the famed calligrapher Ibn al-Bawwab. In addition, there is a large collection of Mughal manuscripts and paintings, produced during the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. The smaller collection of over 300 Persian manuscripts represents fine examples of illustrated literary works, including a luxurious copy of the Gulistan of Saʿdi (MS 10) made for the Timurid ruler Baysunghur. The collection of Turkish manuscripts comprises the smallest group among the Islamic materials and consists of around 160 manuscripts in Ottoman Turkish and Chaghatay. While a small collection in general, the quality of material preserved is very fine in terms of condition and decoration, and is a great resource for art historians in particular.

Funeral of Suleyman — The procession for Sultan Suleyman’s death, from the collection of the Chester Beatty Library

An e-book version of the guide to the collections is available for download on iTunes for $12.99. Printed catalogs of the Islamic collections are available for study in the reading room. The main sources for the field of Islamic history and art are the catalogs of Turkish and Persian manuscripts by Vladimir Minorsky and A. J. Arberry. Arberry’s eight-volume catalog of the Arabic collections are available electronically on the library’s website. Thomas Arnold produced a catalog of the collection’s Indian manuscripts. For the collection of Qurans, one can consult A. J. Arberry’s handlist of Qurans held at the Chester Beatty Library (please see below for references to all of catalogs cited here). While unpublished, researchers may also consult a folder that includes recent acquisitions.

Vladimir Minorsky’s 1958 catalog of the Turkish manuscripts and miniatures is organized with an eye to the style of painting as well as the language of the text. Thus, the illuminated Persian Mathnawi of Rumi is included in the catalog of Turkish manuscripts on account of the style of its illumination. On the other hand, a manuscript made for a Turcoman ruler, with a text in a Turcoman dialect, and paintings that are closer to Persian art than Turkish art, has also been included in this catalog on account of its language. The Turkish collection includes early works such as the Sulaymannama (T.406) composed and transcribed for Bayezid II (not to be confused with the late sixteenth-century History of Sultan Sulayman (Tetimme-i Ahval-i Sultan Suleyman, T.413), a late fifteenth-century deluxe copy of the Divan of Hidayat (T.401), and the fourth part of the late sixteenth-century Siyer-i Nebi (T.419). In addition, there are several manuscripts that contain maps and paintings of holy places, astrological manuscripts, as well as single folios and albums. There are several eighteenth-century copies of Dalail al-Khayrat; a late eighteenth-century illustrated account of El-Hacc Muhammed Edib Efendi b. Muhammed Derviş’s pilgrimage between 1779 and 1780. Along with illustrated and illuminated manuscripts, there are also several waqfnamas, such as that of Davud Ağa, former chief eunuch, or that of the princess Fatima Sultan, daughter of Murad III.

Minorsky’s catalogs are quite accurate and provide a detailed description of the manuscripts, including information about the author, codex size, folio number, binding, script, the name of the scribe, copy date, and provenance, whenever possible. When dealing with anthologies and albums, Minorsky provides information on individual sections and their folio numbers. The catalogs also include an index of personal names, places and tribes, as well as a selection of images. In addition to these catalogs there are dictionaries and reference materials relating to book collecting, bookbinding, calligraphy, Islamic art, East Asian art, Christianity and Buddhism in the reading room.

In 2011 the Chester Beatty Library launched an online and interactive Islamic Seals Database of seal impressions found in the library’s collection of Arabic manuscripts, set up as part of the library’s Arabic Manuscripts Project. The project is still in progress and will include images of seals from the library’s Islamic collection. The researcher or the visitor to the site may contribute by adding information, thus enlarging the database.

Research Experience

The collection is not digitized but researchers may view the originals in the reading room. The reading room operates on an appointment basis so it is most often quite empty and very pleasant to work in, with a large desk and cradles provided for manuscript support. As the reading room works on an appointment basis, the manuscripts are already on reserve for the researcher when he or she arrives. Should the researcher wish to see other manuscripts, they are brought out a few minutes after the request. There is no need to fill out any forms. In the reading room there are two librarians on duty and they have to be present while the researcher views the material. Should one or both librarians have to leave, a guard takes their place. In general, the researcher is not required to use gloves but cradles are suggested when necessary.

Access

Aurangzeb hunting nilgai — Aurangzeb hunting, one of the illustrated miniatures from the collection of the Chester Beatty Library

The reading room is on the second floor of the library and is open from 10:00 to 13:00, and 14:15 to 17:00 Monday to Friday. The library is closed between December 24 and 26, as well as New Year’s Day, Good Friday, and any public holiday that falls on a Monday. From October to the end of April it is also closed on Mondays. It is important to contact the curator, Dr. Elaine Wright, well in advance as the reading room works on an appointment basis. While there is some flexibility in scheduling further sessions, it is best if the researcher contacts the curator for each session in advance in order to avoid any problem that may arise if the reading room is used for another event. One may contact the curator via e-mail with a description of one’s research and background as well as at least some of the manuscripts he or she would like to see. Once the researcher has an appointment through correspondence with the curator, it is quite easy to access the reading room. The guards at the entrance to the library will point the researcher in the right direction. There are lockers at the entrance (which require a 1 euro deposit), where one can leave personal belongings. There is no internet access in the reading room. The library is wheelchair friendly but it must be noted that currently there are problems with the lift service.

Reproductions

Photography is not allowed but digital reproductions for publication purposes are available on request. Reproductions for publication tend to be quite pricey at 17 euros per image. For a new photograph, it is 50 euros. There is also a handling fee of 21 euros if the images or microfilms are sent to the address. However, the curator is kind enough to provide lower quality images for free (up to 20 images) for study purposes only, if they are readily available.

Transportation and Food

The library is located very centrally, within Dublin Castle, close to Dame Street and Christchurch Cathedral. Dublin is quite small and walkable but bus routes are also available (lines 13, 40, 123, 27, 77a and 150). As the reading room closes for lunch, one may need to pack a lunch or go to one of the many nearby restaurants and cafes. The Silk Road Café, located within the library/museum, provides Middle Eastern and Irish food and has a good selection of vegetarian dishes. There are plenty of options nearby as well, from fish and chips stands to cafes, especially on Dame Street. The library also regularly holds exhibitions, which make for pleasant lunchtime perusing. The entrance to the library and museum is free. While the collection is quite small in comparison to some other manuscript libraries, the quality of materials is very high and it is a great place to work with the very obliging librarians and curators.

Contact information
Chester Beatty Library
Dublin Caste, Dublin 2
Phone: (+353 1) 407 07 50

Resources and Catalogs
Chester Beatty Library main site

Islamic Seals Database

Arberry, A.J. The Chester Beatty Library: A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts and Miniatures. V.Minorsky. Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co. Ltd. 1959-1962.

Arberry, A.J. The Koran Illuminated: A Handlist of the Korans in the Chester Beatty Library. Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co. Ltd. 1967.

Arberry, A.J. The Chester Beatty Library, A Handlist of the Arabic Manuscripts, Dublin, 1955-64. Volume 1, Ar 3000-3250.Volume 2, Ar 3251-3500. Volume 3, Ar 3501-3750. Volume 4, Ar 3751-4000. Volume 5, Ar 4001-4500. Volume 6, Ar 4501-5000. Volume 7, Ar 5001-5500. Volume 8, Indices.

V. Minorsky. The Chester Beatty Library: A Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts and Miniatures. Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co. Ltd. 1958.

Wilkinson, J.V.S.. The Library of A. Chester Beatty, a Catalogue of the Indian Miniatures. London: Oxford University Press, 1936.

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Melis Taner is a doctoral candidate in the History of Art at Harvard University

Cite this: Melis Taner, “Chester Beatty Library,” HAZINE, 21 Feb 2014, https://hazine.info/2014/02/21/chester-beatty-library/

February 2, 2014August 20, 2020

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives (Jerusalem)

Written by Anat Mooreville

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, known as the JDC or the Joint, is an international Jewish philanthropic organization started after the First World War to assist Jewish refugees in Eastern Europe and Palestine. With records of activities in over ninety countries dating from 1914 to the present, the JDC Archives are a significant resource to understand not only American Jewish relief efforts abroad, but also Jewish social, cultural, political, and economic conditions around the world. For the Middle East, the JDC Archives include records created primarily between 1940-1977 from Aden, Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. Middle East specialists will find this archive particularly useful for conducting research on Jewish history in the Middle East and North Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. The archive has two locations—Jerusalem and New York City.

An OSE trachoma treatent center in Casablanca c. 1954 — A sample photograph from the JDC archives: an OSE trachoma treatment center in Casablanca c. 1954

Collection

The JDC Archives are located in two centers, one at the JDC’s New York City headquarters and the other in Jerusalem in the Givat Sha’ul neighborhood. These centers are not equal in size and scope. The Jerusalem archive is the larger and more comprehensive of the two; in fact, all the records of the New York archive are available in Jerusalem in microfilm format.

The archive in Jerusalem houses the records of JDC field offices throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, along with the records of JDC operations in Israel. The bulk of the Middle Eastern and North African records of the JDC are part of the Geneva Files (1945-1977), which were subsequently shipped to the JDC Archives in Jerusalem after the Geneva Office—opened in 1957 as the European headquarters of the organization—was closed in 1977.

Although this review focuses on the Jerusalem archives, I will briefly outline what is available in the New York collection. The New York archive houses American headquarters communications with governments, national and international agencies, and JDC field offices. The bulk of the archival record concerns relief, rescue and support activities in Europe between 1914 and 1945. Later materials concern JDC activities in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps of Germany, Austria, and Italy, and JDC activities in Eastern Europe during the Communist period. For the Middle East historian, the New York archives detail the medical, educational, vocational and relief activities in Palestine starting in 1914 through the Second World War. These include institutions established to help the disabled and orphans. A detailed list of these files are available online through the finding aids (search by country). They also contain information on refugee and aid activities in North Africa during the Second World War.

The JDC Archives includes over three miles of text documents, 100,000 photographs, a research library of more than 6,000 books, 1,100 audio recordings including oral histories, and a collection of 2,500 videos, covering 90 countries throughout the twentieth century. Many of the collections are arranged chronologically, others by subject or office of origin (e.g., Geneva, Rome, Istanbul). At the same time, the JDC is an active Jewish humanitarian assistance organization. All JDC historical records older than thirty-five years are open to the public with the exclusion of materials containing information that the JDC believes would adversely affect its ongoing work.

For the period following the founding of the State of Israel, the JDC Archives in Jerusalem contain files related to Malben (נֶחֱשָׁלִים בְּעוֹלִים לְטִפּוּל מוֹסְדוֹת “Institutions for the Care of Disabled Immigrants”), the social service organization created jointly by the JDC, the Jewish Agency, and the Israeli government in 1949. Malben provided institutional care and social services; established hospitals, clinics and old-age homes; trained nurses and rehabilitation workers; and fostered the development of private and public organizations in Israel for the care of the disabled. Files also document missions and programs to help settle Jews from North Africa and the Middle East in Israel. For example, the JDC organized Operation Magic Carpet, which evacuated about 48,000 Jews from Yemen to the newly established State of Israel and Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, which brought approximately 120,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel.

Records related to the Middle East and North Africa document the JDC’s medical, educational, and vocational support in these regions from the late 1940s through the 1970s. These social efforts were wide-ranging and expansive. In North Africa, JDC initiated public health programs with OSE (Œuvre de secours aux enfants) to combat diseases such as tuberculosis and trachoma. The JDC frequently offered assistance to local Jewish educational organizations such as Ozar Hatorah and Alliance Israelite Universelle. Numerous country reports document local demographic, economic, political, and social conditions from the perspective of the JDC’s staff.

The photography collection of the Middle East and North Africa is quite large and can be fully searched by title, description, date, subject, location, photographer, and other fields on the JDC Archives’ online catalog. To see the range of photographs available, we recommend the galleries on Algeria in the 1960s, Tunisia in 1950s, and early Palestine.

A sampling of the range of materials available in the JDC archives include correspondence, committee and board meeting minutes, field reports from worldwide staff, financial statements; memoranda, lists of aid recipients and supplementary allocations, program descriptions, passenger lists, cables, supply lists, restitution laws and statutes, summaries of statistical reports, personnel files, legal files, case files, conference proceedings, lists of names, audits, brochures, press releases, pamphlets, and news clippings.

Research Experience

The JDC Archives is in the process of digitizing its collections. While the photo database is fully available online, other text resources are only partially available. The online catalog is a good place to begin your search, and some documents can be accessed through the website directly, but keep in mind it is in no way exhaustive, especially for Middle Eastern material. There is a very brief finding aid for the Geneva Office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 1945-1954 records, but it does not detail the Middle East/North Africa collection. The records of the Istanbul office (1943-47) or the Geneva office (1955-1978) are not available online. You can learn more about how to search the online database by viewing the archive’s video tutorials or reading its guide. The JDC Archives staff has access to a more comprehensive online catalog that is password protected.

To access the full catalog of the JDC Archives in Jerusalem, one must first e-mail Shachar Beer to make an appointment to visit. Only one or two researchers are allowed at a time, as the archive is located in one of the working offices of the JDC. On your first visit, Mr. Beer will give you a stack of binders that contain the full catalog. Unfortunately, they are not arranged by country, and it is advisable to spend the first day examining all the binders for relevant material and noting the title and file code that you wish to order during subsequent visits. Researchers should note that since March 2013 the archive has been in the midst of reclassifying its files and consequently the code which appears on the physical file may differ from its new classification. You therefore may not be able to order material on your first day. Material can only be ordered once a day and is limited to five or six boxes (more if the material is microfilmed). These should be ordered in the morning or emailed to Mr. Beer before your visit. The time of retrieval of material is not routine, but it usually arrives from the warehouse before 11:00. Once requested, it usually takes about thirty minutes to an hour for material to be prepared for the researcher. One should also coordinate with Mr. Beer the time of arrival to the archives in the morning, which can be as early as 9:00 or as late as 11:00, depending on his schedule.

Since the JDC Archive in Jerusalem only accommodates one or two researchers per day, I would recommend allotting at least a few days for research to get the most of out of your scheduled visits. It takes some time to become familiar with the full holdings because they are not online, and one can only see a limited number of files per day.

There is one microfilm machine, as well as a spare office and a conference room in which Mr. Beer directs researchers to work with original files. The catalog does not indicate whether the file exists in microfilm or only as an original. Since the archives are in the office of a working NGO, it is mainly full of JDC staff, the archivist, and perhaps one other researcher.

Access

In order to visit the archives, one must fill out an application located online. Once permission is received (usually less than a week), you need to email Mr. Beer to schedule an appointment.

Although the stated hours of the Jerusalem Archive are Sunday-Thursday 9:00-15:00, the actual hours depend on the appointment times scheduled with Mr. Beer. Generally, researchers may work at the archive until the JDC office closes around 16:00.

Reproductions

Reproduction services (photocopy and microfilm printing) are not available. You are allowed to use a digital camera to photograph files and microfilms. There is a one shekel fee for each photograph. Researchers tally their own photographs and report them to Mr. Beer at the end of each session. In some cases, Mr. Beer will waive the fee for photographs of microfilm material.

Transportation and Food

The archive is located in the industrial park neighborhood of Givat Sha’ul in West Jerusalem. It is not easily accessible from downtown Jerusalem. Buses 33 and 67 stop outside the archive, and it is about a ten minute walk from the Kiryat Moshe light rail station.

There are many chain restaurants and cafes in the archive building and nearby that cater to the business crowd. There is free coffee and tea in the archive itself. You can also bring your own lunch and eat it in the archive.

Miscellaneous:

The JDC Archives offers a fellowship to conduct research in either the New York or Jerusalem Archives. Check the website for details and application.

Future Plans and Rumors

The archive is in the midst of digitizing its collection, so the state of the online catalog and available digitized files is constantly changing.

Contact information

JDC Archives

Beit Hadefus Street 11, Lobby 2, Floor 3

02-653-6403

General information: Archives@jdc.org.il

Archivist: Shachar Beer <ShacharB@jdc.org.il>

Resources and Links

The online catalog is sophisticated and contains 900,000 digitized pages. However, it is not complete, especially in regards to Middle Eastern and North African materials.

The archives website is quite expansive and details the history of the JDC, the archives, and contains various finding aids and resources on how to search the archive.

**Information about the history and holdings of the collection comes from the JDC Archives website.

Anat Mooreville is a doctoral candidate in the UCLA History Department where she studies twentieth-century Jewish and Middle Eastern medical history.

Cite this: Anat Mooreville, “The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives (Jerusalem), HAZINE, 2 Feb 2014, https://hazine.info/2014/02/02/jdc/

January 20, 2014August 20, 2020

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.

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.

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/

December 23, 2013August 20, 2020

Gazi Husrev Begova Library

Written by Nir Shafir

Gazi Husrev-Begova Biblioteka (hereafter GHB) is the largest collection of Islamic manuscripts and documents in the Balkans. Located on the premises of the mosque complex of the same name in Sarajevo, the well-catalogued collection and brand new library is one of the premier locations for the study of the Ottoman Empire in general and the Balkans in particular. At the beginning of 2014, the library will officially open a state-of-the-art building to researchers and the general public.

The entrance to Gazi Husrev Begova Library

History

Like many manuscript libraries in the Islamic world, the collections of Gazi Husrev Beg Library coalesced as it aggregated the manuscripts and papers of various medresas, Sufi lodges, and private libraries over the years. The complex that houses the library was constructed by that great sixteenth-century benefactor of Sarajevo—the eponymous Gazi Husrev Beg. Starting with a medresa, dzami, hanikah, and a market, it grew to include various tombs and a clock tower displaying lunar time. In 1697, however, Eugene of Savoy razed Sarajevo, supposedly destroying many of the books and ledgers in the process. While the medresa was endowed with a small group of books, a separate library building was only built for the medresa in 1863. (Two other library buildings in Sarajevo predate this library though they are no longer extant.) In the twentieth century, the library began to incorporate the collections of other institutions and private individuals. The first volume of the catalog was published in 1963 and followed by subsequent volumes of equal detail over the years. During the 1991-1994 war, the manuscripts and defters were hidden away in private homes and bank vaults and so they were spared the fate of the Oriental Institute collections, which were completely destroyed in a fire started by the shelling of Serbian artillery. In January 2014, a new, ultra-modern library building, built with the generous donations of the Qatari royal family, will be opened. The al-Furqan Foundation has also supported the continued publication of the high quality catalog. The library has recently completely digitized its collections, which continue to grow today through the donations and bequests of individuals.

Collection

The library’s main collections consist of Islamic manuscripts, printed books, documents such as court records, and photographs. The manuscript collection contains around 10,500 volumes in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Bosnian (in Arabic script). Of these languages, the first two tend to predominate. Given that many of the books in Sarajevo apparently did not survive its razing in 1697, the manuscript collection is heavily weighted toward topics, authors, and copies from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The collection seems to include a much higher than average concentration of moralistic, dogmatic, and sermon-like texts than other manuscript collections and so researchers can find a wide array of texts condemning practices like tomb visitation or tobacco smoking. Similarly, there is a large number of manuscripts copied by medresa students, as evinced by the surfeit of treatises on education. While such treatises were popular throughout the Ottoman Empire, the local origins of many of these copies provide researchers a glimpse of the local intellectual

Eugene, the dude that burned down Sarajevo in 1697

culture. Researchers can gain further insight into this local culture by reading the small but significant number of treatises written in Bosnian, the vernacular of the region. These treatises, too, are often prayer books or moralistic exhortations. At the same time, the collection points to the many Bosnian scholars who traveled to Syria, the Hijaz and Istanbul in the early modern period. There are, of course, a good number of older and more “precious” books and the library’s promotional brochure highlights some of these.

In addition to its manuscripts, the library contains one of the largest collections of early print in the Balkans. The library’s holdings comprise over 25,000 printed treatises in Arabic, Turkish and Bosnian (in Arabic scripts). In addition, it also has a collection of around 35,000 books in Bosnian and other European languages in Latin script.

The library also houses various documents from the Ottoman period. Of these, the most comprehensive are the court records (sijillat) of Sarajevo and the more limited collections for the neighboring cities of Mostar, Tuzla, and Fojnica. For Sarajevo, these records exist primarily for the eighteenth century, starting from 1707 and ending in 1852. Records from before that period are presumed to have been destroyed in the razing of the city in 1697. Three volumes of sixteenth-century court records do exist, however, for the years 1551-1552, 1556-1558, and 1565-1566. For Mostar there are two registers covering 1766-1769, for Fojnica a single register covers the years 1763-1769, and a partial register from Tuzla exists from the first half of the seventeenth century. In addition to this, there are 1,600 endowment charters (vakifnama), 500 as individual documents and 1,100 within the court record defters. Paired with these, there are around 5,000 documents produced by the Ottoman bureaucracy. Library patrons consult these documents as digital copies.

Finally, the library houses a special collection documenting the Muslim community of Bosnia. The community’s archives cover the period of 1882-1993 and complement the large collection of 5000 photographs, postcards, and posters held in the library. The library also holds complete collections of many nineteenth-century Muslim newspapers from Sarajevo.

One of the many photographs from the library's collections — One of the many photographs from the library’s collections

Research Experience

The manuscript collection of Gazi Husrev-Begova Library, along with those of the other manuscript libraries in Sarajevo, bears the distinction of being extremely well-cataloged. The eighteen-volume printed catalog, written by numerous individuals, is essentially divided into two: the first nine volumes or so describe collections present in the library until around 1970 and the second half details acquisitions after that date. In both halves, works are categorized topically. The catalogers made a smart choice to maintain the conceptual unity of each codex: all the treatises in a mecmua, which comprise the vast majority of volumes, are listed after the first entry. Codices are placed under specific topics according to their first work, which means that the topical organization of the catalog is slightly loose. Researchers should browse through indices of every volume of the catalog if they are looking for particular authors or titles. The catalogers were particularly attentive to the details of manuscript production; they mention copyist names, owners, locations, physical characteristics, as well as any unique aspects or contents of a manuscript in each entry. Excellent indices exist for author name (in Arabic and Latin scripts), title, copyist, owner(s), and location. Mistakes, while present, are rare. The catalog is written in Bosnian, but there should also be an English translation available. The catalog often quotes material directly in Arabic, so researchers can simply read the quoted text. There had been an electronic catalog available, although the library removed it recently from its website due to poor performance. In its place, the library is actively developing a new electronic catalog that it hopes to roll out in the coming months.

The printed works in the library have traditionally received less attention than the manuscripts although this is quickly changing. The library has recently finished cataloging them and once the new electronic catalog is online, researchers should be able to access the catalog of printed works. Some of these printed treatises were even part of the collections of the Ottoman-era libraries from the eighteenth century, though the new catalog might not list the original collection name for each entry, and therefore researchers must go through the volumes individually to find this information.

The main reading room of Gazi Husrev Begova Library

It is very pleasant to conduct research at Gazi Husrev-Begova Library, especially since the opening of the new building. The building has a large general reading room with excellent desks and ample windows overlooking the medresa complex. The desks have good overhead lamps. The reading room should eventually have a large collection of reference material but is empty for now.

To request a manuscript researchers should first browse through the printed eighteen-volume catalog of the library. A Bosnian- and English-language copy of the catalog is kept behind the reception desk and the staff will let you browse a couple of volumes at a time. Once the library introduces the new computer catalog, researchers should also be able to use the single computer terminal at the reception desk to find relevant manuscripts. You must stand to use this computer since it was not set up for consultations longer than a few minutes. Once researchers identify a manuscript they wish to consult, they can fill out a form and request up to twenty manuscripts at a time. After twenty minutes to an hour, the digitized copies of the manuscripts are transferred to a computer terminal in a second reading room behind the reception desk for consultation. If library patrons wish to buy copies of the digitized manuscripts, they must fill out a further form that is then sent to the director for approval. The staff might let you simply delete unwanted files on your terminal and burn the remaining images onto a CD or they might prepare the specific pages you request. Researchers can request to see the physical copy of the manuscript only after receiving permission directly from the director of the library.

The new GHB library was largely designed with digital research in mind. The quality of the digitized manuscripts is generally high, though there are the occasional low-resolution images. Generally speaking, the binding of a manuscript is photographed though this might be limited to the cover itself. Conveniently, an information slip from the catalog listing its title and author precedes the digital copy of each work, even separate treatises in a mecmua. The only inconvenience is that researchers cannot access the digitized manuscripts directly from the computer catalog.

The staff of the library are extremely helpful and professional. The working language of the library is Bosnian, though employees at the reception desk should be able to speak English, Turkish, or Arabic.

Researchers should note that as the library settles into the new building, new protocols and procedures will be instituted, so some of this information might change in the near future. For instance, there is a large reference library of books in Bosnian, English, Arabic, Turkish, and more available to researchers, but it is not currently on the shelves. The library, however, is constantly striving to improve researcher experience and will make changes as needed.

Access

The library is open Monday to Friday, from 8:00 to 15:00. It is closed on the weekends along with secular and religious holidays. Researchers are advised to talk to the receptionist to keep abreast of religious holidays in Bosnia, which can be a bit different from those in other Muslim countries.

The library, like all research institutions in Sarajevo, is very welcoming to researchers. After a short registration process, in which researchers might need to provide a formal ID, researchers can access the collection.

The main entrance of the library might not be wheelchair accessible, but researchers in wheelchairs should be able to enter from the employee entrance on Mula Mustafe Bašeskije Street.

Reproductions

Digital reproductions are provided in the form of a CD. The price is a somewhat costly at €1 per exposure and the CD will be ready for pick-up three days after the initial request. The delay is a bit odd, since all the material is already digitized, but researchers in a hurry might be able to expedite the process with the help of an accommodating staff member. In the future, the library hopes to introduce a system that will allow researchers to request digital reproductions remotely. Researchers are not allowed to take their own photographs as they are not allowed to see the original manuscript or defter.

Transportation and Food

The library is located in the center of the old city of Sarajevo and is easily accessible by the tram. Researchers can alight at either the cathedral or the last stop— Baščaršija. The very modern looking library building is located in between the two stops, next to the Gazi Husrev Begova Dzamija complex and the Old Synagogue/Jewish Museum. If researchers stay at hotels or hostels near the historic center, the library is easily reached by foot.

There is no shortage of eating options near the library as it is in the center of the historic city. Next door there are a variety of cafes and burek sellers as well as quite a few more touristy restaurants. There is also a small café in the library itself that serves Turkish tea, Bosnian coffee, and espresso.

Miscellaneous

The library also houses a museum in the basement that exhibits certain rare manuscripts and various material artifacts related to writing, reading, and daily life in Sarajevo. Various marble inscriptions from Sarajevo dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are also displayed in the basement for the time being. There are also conference facilities in the library itself.

The library's museum — The library’s museum

Since 1972, the library has also published a journal titled Anali Gazi Husrev-begove biblioteke, of which free copies are available online. The informative journal highlights the historical research of scholars from the area. Although the journal is written in Bosnian, researchers can render the text searchable and then copy the text into Google Translate for a relatively functional translation.

Future Plans and Rumors

The library will officially open to researchers on January 15, 2014. Some of the protocol listed above will inevitably change as the library streamlines and refines its procedures. As stated earlier, the library hopes to reintroduce a new computer catalog on its website and even provide researchers the chance to request copies remotely.

Contact information

Gaza Husrefbeg no. 46 Sarajevo 71000 Bosnia and Herzegovina

info@ghb.ba

Phone: +387 33238152, +387 33 264 960

Fax: +387 33205525

Resources and Links

Gazi Husrev Begova Biblioteka main site

Annals of Gazi Husrev Begova Library

23 December 2013

Nir Shafir is a doctoral candidate at UCLA researching the intellectual history of the Ottoman Empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Cite this: Nir Shafir, “Gazi Husrev Begova Library,” HAZINE, 23 Dec 2013, https://hazine.info/2013/12/23/ghb_library/

December 3, 2013August 20, 2020

Central Zionist Archive

Written by Liora R. Halperin

The Central Zionist Archive (hereafter CZA) in Jerusalem is the main archival resource for scholars researching the history of the Zionist movement, both within Palestine/Israel and internationally, and the history of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) during the British Mandate and late Ottoman periods. Any scholar researching a topic that relates, either directly or indirectly, to the Jewish community in pre-state Palestine or the international institutions of the Zionist movement (e.g. the World Zionist Organization, the United Israel Appeal, or the Jewish Agency) will find the CZA to be an important archive.

The exterior of the Central Zionist Archive

History

The Central Zionist Archive was founded in Berlin in 1919 as the archive of the Zionist Movement; its goal was to collect the documentation of the branches of the Zionist movement located around the world, as well as the personal archives of key Zionist leaders. The first director of the archive, Georg Herlitz, began ordering the archive according to the organizational structure of the various offices that produced the documents in the collection. In the wake of the Nazi rise to power in 1933, the archive was moved to Israel and opened to the public in 1934. At this point, the collection’s focus expanded well beyond the history and bureaucratic activities of the global Zionist movement to include also the history of the Yishuv and Jewish settlement in Palestine. Alex Bein, the long-serving director of the archive, worked to realize the expansion of the collection as well as the transfer of Theodor Herzl’s archive to Palestine in 1937. Bein also gathered the personal archives of several other early Zionist figures. After being located for decades in the basement of the Zionist institutional offices on King George Street, the archive was moved into its current location in 1987.

Collection

Next to the Israel State Archives, the Central Zionist Archive is the largest archive in Israel. The Central Zionist Archive has, according to one estimate, about 80 million documents—a quantity which one writer described in 2007 as “ten kilometers of Zionism” (Anat Banin, “The Treasure Vault of the Jewish People” The Jewish Magazine, Hanukkah 2007). The CZA contains the archives of, among other bodies, the committees, subcommittees, and offices of the World Zionist Organization, as well as the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund, the United Israel Appeal (Keren Ha-Yesod), and the Jewish National Council (Va‘ad ha-Le’umi). It also holds the records of other Zionist organizations and institutions in countries around the world and in Palestine/Israel, the records of Zionist Congresses, and over 1500 personal archives as well as extensive collections of periodicals, images, and maps. Most of these documents were produced in bureaucratic offices, mainly in the twentieth century, with a smaller number of documents from the late nineteenth century and a growing collection oftwenty-first-century collections from currently active Zionist organizations around the world. Approximately one-third of these documents are from the period of the Holocaust, making the CZA an important source for materials pertaining to Zionist activity during the Second World War. It also has a large collection of newspapers, maps, and half a million photographs and negatives. The CZA also has a unit for family research, and charges a fee of 100 shekels for individuals and 150 for institutions to look into immigration records, primarily for those who entered the country between 1919 and 1974. It also possesses a large book collection.

The contents of the CZA’s collections and sub-collections are listed on the archive’s website, which was updated relatively recently and is user-friendly. Researchers are advised to use the online lists and come on the first day of research with an initial list of materials they wish to order.

It should be noted that the documents held in the Central Zionist archive, with a few exceptions, were those either created or received by the Zionist movement, or, more specifically, associates of the Zionist Organization, as opposed to affiliates of the Labor Zionist or Revisionist movements. A wide range of organizations associated with the Zionist labor movement including MAPAI, Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza‘ir, the Kibbutz HaMe’uhad, the Histadrut, as well as the archives of the Revisionist Movement and of local municipalities, are held in other organizational or municipal archives located around Israel. Moreover, while the Central Zionist Archive is a central archive for the history of pre-state Zionism and the proto-state institutions of the Yishuv, the archives of the British mandatory government in Palestine are not held at the Central Zionist Archive, but rather at the Israel State Archives, where they were transferred after the creation of the state. A basic understanding of the structure and political diversity of the Zionist movement is essential to predict whether a given document or collection is likely to be held at the CZA or a separate archive elsewhere in Israel.

While the CZA holds materials from the Jewish community of Palestine up to 1948, it also contains and continues to collect the documents of certain international Zionist organizations outside the direct purview of the Israeli state. Given the worldwide nature of the Zionist movement, the archive contains materials from all major sites of Zionist movement activity including Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and South America. It contains materials from Palestine and from other Middle Eastern locations where the Zionist movement was active. Given the global reach and extent of these materials, the archive has important information on other topics, for example, global Jewish communities, resistance to Zionism, major events in Jewish history, the Arab population of Palestine, etc. However, visitors should plan their research mindful of the explicitly political and ideological logic—chronicling the history of the Zionist movement—by which the collection was assembled. The bulk of the collection is in Hebrew, but Zionist records from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are more likely to be in German, and the records and correspondence of Zionist organizations around the world will likely be in the state languages of their respective countries.

Research Experience

The collections are organized, by and large, with reference to a document’s institutional place of production. In other words, the structure of the collections follows the structure of the institutions from which they came. Each top-level archival designation refers to a different institution. Some of the largest are the Va’ad Ha-Le’umi (Jewish National Council, archive code J), the Jewish Agency (archive code S), the Jewish National Fund (archive code KKL), Keren Ha-Yesod (United Israel Appeal, archive code KH), Zionist Organization Offices in various cities (archive code Z), and the Zionist Commission (archive code L). The number following the initial letter usually refers to a particular office or committee within the organization (e.g. J2 or S25). The number following the slash is the folder number. Personal archives have designations starting with the letter A. Although it is possible to find files by keyword, it is helpful to pay attention to the top-level letter and number for any given source in order to understand accurately its bureaucratic origin.

There are two basic ways to access catalogs. The computerized catalog is the main way to search for files, and one can search by keyword, as well as by year and other parameters. The operation of the computerized catalog is not immediately intuitive, and researchers should plan to ask for help from the reading room staff.

The second way to search the collections are through the bound volumes for each archival unit, which are organized by letter and are located to the left of the main desk in the reading room. Some of these volumes are missing, but if the one you need is on the shelf, the low-tech browsing method can be a useful way to understand the overall organization of each archival unit. Researchers normally request material through the computer system. In the event that the computer system is inoperable, researchers may continue to make requests using the paper slips. In my experience, computer outages are not uncommon, but this issue may have been resolved.

Thanks to support from the Judaica Division of the Harvard University library, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and the Claims Convention, the organization that distributes and allocates the funds of German Holocaust reparation payments to Israel, the CZA is digitizing its collections and researchers should expect that a good proportion of their documents will be viewed not on paper but on the computer terminals located in the reading room. Digitized documents are not always high quality, and, except for maps and other full-color documents, scans are in black and white. It is therefore occasionally difficult to read documents. Moreover, the functions for zooming and moving between pages are sometimes frustrating and the overall experience of dealing with scanned documents may be more difficult and less efficient than handling paper documents. In cases where the digital copies of documents are illegible, one can request paper files, but there is not an organized or streamlined procedure for such requests.

There are five pull times over the course of the day: 9:00, 10:00, 11:30, 13:00, 14:00. Five items (a book, a folder, etc.) may be requested at each of these times, for a maximum of twenty-five items over the course of a day. This means that researchers who intend to look at a large number of files will need several days before all their files can be brought. However, once a set of files is requested, it can be stored on a hold shelf indefinitely as long as you are still working with it. Files that are scanned can be accessed at any time, so it makes sense to start the day focusing on what files need to be ordered, and then work with scanned files while waiting for the paper files to arrive.

Central Zionist Archive 2 — Files, waiting for the researcher…

The reading room staff are helpful. It is important for researchers to enter with the mindset that they need to continue asking questions if they find the initial responses insufficient. The reading room staff speaks some English but researchers who do not know Hebrew often find this to be a real impediment to their research. It is also not a bad idea to ask other archive users for help if the archive staff is away from the desk. The reading room staff, though they can answer questions about the procedures of ordering files or making copies, are not the ones to answer research questions or questions about the organization of the archive. Instead, researchers should turn to Batia Leshem, Head of Institutional Archives, or Rochelle Rubenstein, Deputy Director of Archival Matters, for those sorts of conversations. Their offices, as well as the offices of other archivists, are located one level below the reading room. Ask at the security desk in the lobby for specific directions to their offices.

The reading room is sufficiently comfortable. It tends to have enough room for the number of researchers who are normally working there without feeling either empty or overcrowded. It is air-conditioned. Researchers are asked to deposit their belongings in a locker outside and not bring in food or water. There is not an extremely rigorous search process in this regard but researchers should be prepared to abide by these regulations.

There are a wide range of reference volumes in the reading room itself, including dictionaries between Hebrew and a variety of other languages, a range of different historical and biographical encyclopedias, and a range of books about the history of the Zionist movement.

Access

The archive is open between 8:00 and 15:30, Sunday through Thursday. Users should be aware that the archive is closed for all major Jewish and Israeli national holidays, including often the whole day or half day of the eve of a holiday. Given the seasonal arrangement of holidays, this means that researchers planning travel in September-October and April-June in particular should consult a calendar and make sure that they are not planning research during a period of multiple holiday closures. In addition, the archive closes for a break in mid-August (call ahead before you come since closure information is not always posted on the website).

Access to the archive is granted after the submission of a short application. Researchers should make an application appointment and come to the archive with their Israeli identification number or foreign passport number.. Researchers have gained access without a formal letter of introduction, but it is not a bad idea to have one, especially for doctoral students. Once one is in the system, one does not have to fill out subsequent paperwork for future visits, even if one is working on an entirely different project, but it is helpful to consult with the archive staff to orient oneself around each new topic.

The archive is wheelchair accessible.

Reproductions

Researchers are asked to pay (as of 2012) 40 agorot per page for photographs taken on a personal digital camera. This is charged through self-reporting. It is useful to be able to customize one’s own images, zoom or crop as desired. Also, this is the cheapest form of reproduction available.

If one wishes to have photocopies made of paper files, they must be marked on a special ordering sheet and cost 1 shekel per page. They are normally ready within a week.

Documents that have been scanned cost 1.50 shekel per page if printed and 2 shekalim per page if emailed and they must be ordered and take some time to arrive (this is another reason why it is often a boon to chance upon files that have not yet been scanned that you can photograph with your own camera).

Transportation and Food

The CZA is located directly across from the Jerusalem Central Bus Station and next door to the Binyane Ha-Umah International Convention Center. The CZA is extremely well serviced by public transit. The light rail makes a stop outside the Central Bus Station and any bus, whether in the city or inter-city, that serves the Central Bus Station will do (from the bus station cross Jaffa Road and Zalman Shazar Ave. Follow Josef Herlitz Rd off of Zalmar Shazar Ave to the right of the Convention Center to get there.) In addition, it is useful to know that it is only about a twenty-minute walk between the Central Zionist Archive and the National Library at Hebrew University’s Giv’at Ram campus. This proximity between institutions is useful to maximize one’s working hours, as the CZA closes at 15:30, while the National Library remains open until 19:45.

There are a couple food options near the Central Zionist Archive. A small food cart on Zalman Shazar Ave. near the bus stops sells snacks and basic prepared sandwiches of poor quality. The other option is crossing over to the Central Bus Station, which has a food court with decent fast-food style options. The bus station is also a reasonably pleasant place to get coffee or a pastry and it has free wi-fi and various shops. If you want to make the most of the research hours between 8:00 and 15:30, however, the best idea is to pack a lunch.

Miscellaneous:

The archive occasionally hosts lectures and symposia related to topics in the history of the Zionist movement. Sometimes it also organizes small exhibits in its lobby space.

Future Plans and Rumors

The archive plans to continue digitizing files.

Contact information

Website: www.zionistarchives.org.il

Address: 4 Zalman Shazar Avenue, Jerusalem

Director: Yigal Sitry

Phone number: 972-2-620-4800

Fax: 972-2-620-4837

Main contact email: cza@wzo.org.il

Other emails and phone numbers:

Academic Director	Dr. Motti Friedman	02-620-4803	motif@jazo.org.il
Administrative Director	Gili Simha	02-6204800	gilis@wzo.org.il
Deputy director for archival matters	Rochelle Rubinstein	02-6204816	rocheller@wzo.org.il

Heads of Departments:

Institutional archives	Batia Leshem	02-6204818	batial@wzo.org.il
Private archives	Simone Schliachter	02-6204817	simones@wzo.org.il
Photograph Collections	Anat Banin	02-6204825	anatb@wzo.org.il
Graphic Collections and Maps	Nechama Kanner	02-6204810	nechamaka@wzo.org.il

Resources and Links:

Search catalog online

3 December 2013

Liora R. Halperin is assistant professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focuses on Jewish cultural history, Jewish-Palestinian relations in Palestine and Israel, language ideology and policy, and the politics surrounding nation formation in Palestine in the years leading up to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Her first book, tentatively titled Babel in Zion: Hebrew and the Politics of Language in Palestine, will be published by Yale University Press in 2014.

Cite this: Liora R. Halperin, “Central Zionist Archive,” HAZINE, https://hazine.info/2013/12/03/central-zionist-archive/, 3 Dec 2013

November 22, 2013August 20, 2020

Tahrir Documents

Written by Alex Winder

Tahrir Documents is a collection of pamphlets, newsletters, signs, poems, and other texts gathered in and around Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, between March 2011 and May 2012. The physical documents are housed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Special Collections at the Charles E. Young Research Library. However, all documents are available online at www.TahrirDocuments.org as scanned PDF files with accompanying English translations. The archive seeks to create a record of the print culture of the Egyptian uprising against Hosni Mubarak and its aftermath.

Tahrir Square, January 25, 2012: an archive in the making

History

Tahrir Documents was founded in 2011 through the efforts of a group of American graduate students in Cairo and explicitly states its lack of affiliation “with any political organization, Egyptian or otherwise.” Generally speaking, documents were gathered once a week on Fridays, when they were distributed to crowds in Tahrir Square. They were then scanned and translated by volunteers, primarily Egyptians and Americans, a number of whom were students of the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA). The founders of Tahrir Documents intended the archive to illustrate the richness and diversity of print culture in Tahrir Square at a time when media discourse on the “Egyptian Revolution” gave primacy to the impact of online social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Further, translating these documents into English represented an attempt to give the diverse and polyvalent texts available in Tahrir Square a wider English-speaking readership. Efforts to collect and translate documents continued through May 2012, at which point no further documents were added to the collection.

Collection

The collection includes a wide range of documents collected in and around Tahrir Square from spring 2011 to spring 2012, including newsletters and broadsheets, pamphlets, announcements, advertisements, and poetry. The archive also includes a small number of largely text-based signs held by protestors at Tahrir Square. Though most of the documents are stand-alone pieces, there are several newsletters of which multiple issues were collected and translated. Each document exists in the original along with a full English language translation. The date of collection and of translation are included on the Tahrir Documents website.

The Tahrir Documents website includes 567 documents. In this respect it differs from other efforts to document and archive the Egyptian uprising of 2011 and the events that followed, such as University on the Square, R-Shief, or the Committee to Document the 25^th January Revolution, which include a much wider range of material (electronic media, photographs, oral histories, music, and so on). The archive’s self-imposed limits are generally speaking a boon for researchers in that they result in a relatively coherent collection—one knows, for example, that all of these documents were produced in Egypt and were physically present in the space of Tahrir Square on the date collected—but the archive’s discontinuation in May 2012 can be frustrating in light of subsequent events in Egypt.

The Research Experience

All documents in the collection are digitized and available online, making them easily available to researchers throughout the world. Scans or photographs of the original documents are posted with translations on the Tahrir Documents website and can be downloaded by users. Documents are posted in chronological order according to translation date and are also divided into seven main categories according to subject: Revolution, Politics, Solidarity, Culture, Constitution, Regime, and Religion. Each category includes a number of sub-categories, and documents are frequently listed under multiple categories or sub-categories. Most useful, perhaps, is the ability to search the full texts of translations for the entire collection. Unfortunately, it is not possible to conduct searches in Arabic. As the documents were translated by a large group of volunteers, some inconsistencies in translation or transliteration do at times crop up; for the most part, however, this is not a huge hurdle (most names and places are transliterated in modified International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies style, for example). In general, the interface is easy to use and accessing the documents poses no difficulties.

Broadly speaking, these documents would be of interest to researchers of post–January 2011 Egypt, especially the political culture of Tahrir Square. Those whose focus extends to Arab political culture more generally will also find rich primary material, as the documents include political tracts, manifestos, and explanatory notes from political currents ranging from salafi to revolutionary socialist. Indeed, given the location where these documents were collected, it is not surprising that the vast majority are explicitly political in content; however, the location-specific—rather than subject-specific—method of collection has resulted in the inclusion of some surprising and unusual pieces. Those more interested in Egyptian popular culture, for example, will also find poems, fiction, and advertisements collected here.

Access

The Tahrir Documents web site is easily accessible. Those who want to access the original documents must go to the Department of Special Collections at the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA. Visitors have to register and documents are delivered in one to two days. The Department of Special Collections is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, except during holidays; non-UCLA visitors must be over eighteen years old and present a government-issued photo identification to obtain an access-only card from the circulation desk at the Young Research Library.

Upcoming News and Rumors

The online component of Tahrir Documents will officially migrate to a UCLA library website in the coming months. This transition will bring with it a new interface and metadata, which should allow for new ways of searching and filtering results.

Contact information

Tahrir Documents

Email: tahrirdocuments@gmail.com

Charles E. Young Research Library, Department of Special Collections

Email: mspec-coll@library.ucla.edu

Phone: 310-825-4988

Resources and Links

Tahrir Documents

Interview with librarian David Hirsch about the collection of the documents

November 22, 2013

About the author: Alex Winder is a doctoral candidate at New York University working on twentieth-century Palestinian history.

Cite this: Alex Winder, “Tahrir Documents,” HAZİNE, 22/11/2103, https://hazine.info/2013/11/22/tahrir-documents/

November 13, 2013August 20, 2020

Red Crescent Archives (Turkey)

by Chris Gratien and Seçil Yılmaz

The Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay, formerly Hilâl-i Ahmer) is a charity organization founded during the late Ottoman period on the model of the Red Cross societies. Its activities in the areas of medicine, care for prisoners of war, and other social services, particularly during the World War I period and the early years of the Turkish Republic, make the archives of this organization a vital resource for historians interested in medicine, public health, war, and charity alike during this formative period. Recently, its archives in Ankara have been made public through a searchable online catalog, opening an exciting new field of research for Ottoman and Turkish historians.

History

The Ottoman Red Crescent was founded in 1868 partly in response to the experience of the Crimean War, in which disease overshadowed battle as the main cause of death and suffering among Ottoman soldiers. It was the first Red Crescent society of its kind and one of the most important charity organizations in the Muslim world. Its role in battlefield care made it integral to late Ottoman war efforts. The Red Crescent also played a critical role in the development of the young Turkish Republic’s health institutions.

In 2006, a major overhaul of these archives was initiated to make them available to researchers. This includes a cataloging effort similar to the organization of the Ottoman State Archives (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi), wherein each document is cataloged, described, and shortly thereafter digitized. Most of the documents pertaining to the 1868-1911 period have been cataloged and efforts continue for later periods.

Red Crescent Relief Efforts in Jerusalem c1917 (source: US Library of Congress)

Collection

The Red Crescent archives contain a variety of documents pertaining to health and health services in the Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey. For the Ottoman period (including World War I), these documents almost exclusively concern budget and funding issues along with services pertaining to war, particularly the 1877-78 Russo-Ottoman War (93 Harbi), the Italian invasion of Libya, the Balkan Wars, and of course, the First World War. There is very little overlap between the collections of the Ottoman archives and the Red Crescent.

In addition to offering a glimpse at late Ottoman medical institutions, social historians of the Ottoman Empire will also be drawn to documentation regarding Ottoman prisoners of war, which includes letters about and by Ottoman soldiers. The Red Crescent boasts over 300,000 POW cards from all sides of the conflict containing the names and origins of prisoners, their place of capture, and sometimes other biographical or health information. The collection also contain letters and requests from prisoners of war during the conflict. In this regard, researchers of other regions such as Europe or South Asia will find these archives useful as the Red Crescent was the intermediary between the Allies and Allied prisoners held in Ottoman territories.

During the Republican period and even during the War of Independence, the Red Crescent took on an increasingly national character and expanded its function to issues of health in the cities and countryside. Though it has not been well-studied, the contents of the collection indicate that the Red Crescent was part and parcel of early Republican health services in rural settings, where relatively few institutions had been established by the Ottoman state. Here, there is somewhat more overlap with the collections of the Başbakanlık Republican Archives, though the Red Crescent may prove to be much richer than the former in the area of health as its catalog grows.

In addition to archival documents, there is also a decent collection of visual materials such as photographs and postcards.

The collections include several varieties of documents, including hospital reports, health statistics, personal letters, account books, and reports by health inspectors. Due to the organization of the digital catalog, researchers cannot access files or folders in their sequential order. The archive’s online search function only provides individual files with no connection to surrounding material. In order to identify documents of a particular variety or source, researchers will need to identify particular boxes of interest or the names of particular officials or organizations associated with the research topic and search using these terms (more on this below).

The contents of the Red Crescent’s collections are largely unexplored by researchers and not fully known to the organization itself. According to the archive’s website, there are some 1500 boxes and 550 bound notebooks in Ottoman and French from the period beginning with the organizations founding until the language reforms in 1928. However, it is our experience that the contents are a bit more varied than this. For example, this sample document that we have provided originates from the Egyptian Red Crescent and is entirely in Arabic.

Researchers will need a command of modern Turkish to be effective, though of course, most of the documents from the Ottoman period are in Ottoman Turkish.

Stacks — The original documents are stored at the archives, but researchers will not be issued original documents. Rather, researchers must consult materials in the digital environment unless they have not been digitized. (Source: kizilay.org)

The Research Experience:

For researchers, the main question regarding the Red Crescent archives is whether or not to go to the physical archives itself. The archive is located in the Etimesgut neighborhood of the Ankara suburbs, and while researchers are free to work there, there is no proper workspace. Moreover, researchers will be expected to order documents through the website and receive photocopies by mail regardless of whether they go there or not. Thus, it is possible for the entire process to be handled through correspondence. Here, we will make the argument for a visit to the archives in person and explain in which situations this is necessary.

Since this archive is relatively hard to use and access, a trip to Red Crescent Archives is probably not worth your time unless you are working on specific issues related to health, medicine, prisoners, or war, though it is always worth searching the catalog to see what might be available remotely.

There are several factors that will encourage committed scholars to make a visit arising from the limitations of the catalog. Many of the descriptions are short or obscure. Some, for example, only mention the individual who composed them, making them utterly impossible to find via keyword search unless one knows to search for that individual. Moreover, the one sentence description may prove inadequate in determining whether or not to purchase the fairly pricy photocopies (more on this below). Going to the archive in person will allow you to see entire folders (which represent the original file boxes) of the documents, which usually have a shared theme or point of origin. This also enables you to get a closer look at the actual contents of documents before ordering them and gives you access to some paper documents that have not yet been digitized. If you are already in Turkey, a visit to the archive will ultimately save you a great deal of time and money, and it will surely yield better research results.

Kızılay Kütüpanesi — Red Crescent Library and Museum (from kızılay.org)

Access

The archive is open weekdays from 9:00 to 18:00 and closes for a one-hour lunch break at noon. Researchers are asked to contact the archivists before coming, as completing the application and request process by email will expedite the research process (information here). A passport is sufficient to gain access, but bring a second form of ID to leave with the guards. Laptops are forbidden as is photography. Spoken Turkish is absolutely essential to use the archive effectively, even though some documents pertaining to foreign POWs will be in English and French. The staff is extremely friendly and helpful, and you will likely be the only researcher there on any given day. Wheelchair access may be an issue as the reading room is on the second floor.

Reproductions

The archive’s reproduction fees are relatively expensive, as revenue generated from photocopies are considered a donation to the society. Photocopies cost 50 kuruş per pose, while scans of all documents cost 10 TL per pose. The archive does not fulfill reproduction requests on site, so researchers must provide a mailing address in order to receive copies or scans. Requests are fulfilled promptly and copies are generally obtained within one or two weeks.

Transportation and Food

Although there is a neighborhood in the heart of Ankara named Kızılay, researchers will be disappointed to find the site of the Red Crescent archives is in a much more remote location in Etimesgut, a northern suburb of Ankara accessible mainly by minibus. It occupies two buildings at the back of a large site operated by the Red Crescent, so it will be normal to be a little disoriented during the first visit. There is essentially nowhere to eat near the site. There is a serviceable cafeteria used by the employees, who will likely offer you to accompany them to lunch if you are just there for a day or two. In general though, we recommend researchers pack a lunch.

Miscellaneous

The library staff will give researchers a short tour of the modest museum and library at the archives upon their visit. This museum contains some important visual materials, artifacts, and books and publications by and about the organization that may be consulted by researchers. If you are doing extensive research at the Red Crescent, particularly on the institution itself, inquire about the contents of the museum as it may contain some very interesting materials.

Future Developments

As the digitization and cataloging process is ongoing, it is always worth checking in periodically to see if anything on your topic has been added.

Contact information

Address: Arşiv Yönetimi Bölümü

Türk Kızılayı Caddesi No:6

Etimesgut – ANKARA

Archives Department Administrator

Hande UZUN KÜLCÜ

Tel: +90 (312) 293 64 26

handeu@kizilay.org.tr

Fax: +90 (312) 293 64 36

Resources and Links:

Red Crescent Archives Catalog (in Turkish)

Red Crescent Library Catalog

Full PDF of Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s 1879 work on the Red Crescent’s Foundation (in Ottoman)

Sample Document

About the Authors

Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University

Seçil Yılmaz is a doctoral candidate at City University of New York.

Cite this: Chris Gratien and Seçil Yılmaz, “Red Crescent Archives (Turkey),” Hazine, 13 November 2013, https://hazine.info/2013/11/13/turkish-red-crescent-kizilay-archives-ankara/

November 1, 2013August 20, 2020

The National Archives (United Kingdom)

The National Archives is the official state repository for the United Kingdom and is situated in Kew Gardens, London. Among the archive’s 11 million records, comprising hundreds of millions of documents, are vast numbers of items relating to the history of interactions between the peoples of the British Isles and the Middle East from the Crusades to colonial rule. As well as documents in European languages, The National Archives contains a significant collection of documents in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian.

British Archives — The National Archives (United Kingdom). Photo courtesy of Michael Talbot.

History

The National Archives holds records of the English and subsequently the British state dating back to the eleventh century. Often still known by one of its former names, the Public Record Office (PRO), the archive owes its current form to a law passed in 1838 aimed at gathering the scattered and often poorly-kept documents of the British government and judicial system. The current collection represents the merger by 2006 of four major holders of British archival records: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office (founded in 1786); the Public Record Office (1838); the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (1869); and the Office of Public Sector Information (2005). These collections in their sum cover almost every conceivable aspect of the United Kingdom’s foreign, domestic, military, and civil history. In addition, it holds a number of papers and manuscripts donated by private individuals. The Public Record Office moved from its original location in the City of London to the current building in Kew Gardens in 1977, and following the formation of The National Archives, all relevant documents were moved there, aside from a substantial portion kept in offsite storage in a former salt mine in Cheshire. Once the preserve of specialist academic researchers, the National Archives is today hugely popular with amateur historians and genealogists.

Collection

The material available for historians of the Middle East is extensive. A huge variety of manuscripts, correspondence, financial records, printed texts, registers, and memoranda shed light onto British trade, diplomacy, warfare, and colonialism in the Middle East. As well as English-language documents, there are a significant number of items in French, Italian, and Latin. Moreover, there is a collection of generally unexamined documents in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian interspersed amongst the registers, and sometimes separated into different files. Due to the scale and variety of the archive, only the main relevant collections for Middle East researchers will be discussed here.

The classifications to be consulted largely depend on time period and area of research. For mediaevalists, there are around 300 cataloged records relating to the Crusades and early trade with the Middle East and Levant in the Chancery (C), and Special Collection (SC) series, with documents dating from as early as the 1210s.

Records relating to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa begin to appear in significant numbers from the early sixteenth century with the beginnings of a significant trade, and especially after the formal establishment of relations between England and the Ottoman Empire in 1580. Several hundred volumes and loose documents relating to trade and diplomacy between the 1570s and 1770s are held in the State Papers (SP), with diplomatic correspondence in SP97 and mercantile records in SP105 and SP110. These include a number of records in Ottoman Turkish, or their translations in Italian. There are a number of extracted documents relating to this period under the series Extracted Documents (EXT), including maps and original letters from Ottoman sultans to British monarchs. Further records on trade and piracy can be found in the Admiralty collection (ADM). Some references to early political and commercial interests in Iran can also be found in that series.

Administrative reform from the 1780s saw the creation of new government ministries including the Foreign Office. This reform, coinciding with the beginnings of methodical archiving, meant that the number of documents produced and archived increased dramatically from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Documents relating to the Ottoman Empire between 1779 until 1906 are generally held in FO78, comprising an astonishing 5,491 thick volumes of correspondence, intelligence, and administrative documents relating to diplomacy and trade produced and received by the embassy in Istanbul and the consular establishments in the Balkans, Anatolia, the Levant, and North Africa. Some consular establishments have their own separate codes (e.g. Aleppo is FO861). The FO series continues into the post-Ottoman period, covering British diplomatic establishments across the Middle East into the 1970s. For instance, FO141 contains 1,521 volumes of correspondence of the British embassy and consulates in Egypt between 1815 and 1973. It is also in this later period that a large amount of material can be found relating to Iran, following the establishment of formal relations in 1807. The main consular posts have their own codes, although some 734 volumes of general correspondence between 1807 and 1905 can be found in FO60. These series contain a number of Persian documents within the registers.

The records of the Colonial Office (CO) are the main resource for researchers interested in British colonial rule in the Middle East. For instance, CO730 contains 178 volumes relating to the Iraq Mandate, and CO733 comprises 495 volumes concerning the Palestine Mandate. There are a large number of sources on British oil interests in Iran and the Persian Gulf in the Ministry of Power’s series (POWE), as well as in the diplomatic correspondence. Additional sources on colonialism can be found in a whole host of other series, including the Board of Trade (BT) and War Office (WO). The private papers of major and minor colonial officials and administrators are available in paper or on microfilm, such as those of Earl Kitchener (PRO30/57). There are a number of records relating to a number of locally recruited military, police, and colonial forces, from the Macedonian Mule Corps (WO405) to the Aden Police (CO1037).

There are a number of introductory subject guides available on The National Archives website. However, for most academic researchers, learning to use the archive’s catalog effectively is the key to research success.

Research Experience

Catalogs and Searches: The Research and Enquiries Room on the first floor hosts a large number of computer terminals, and also offers free wi-fi. The archive’s new catalog, Discovery, enables a variety of search techniques. As well as simple keyword searches, results can be narrowed down by series code, date, and subject area. The browsing function is very helpful for researchers getting to grips with their series of records.

Although the catalog is remarkably comprehensive, most of the descriptions are rather general, giving little sense of the content, particularly those marked ‘general correspondence’. Some early modern and a smaller number of later series do contain document-by-document descriptions, but these are comparatively few in number. For those researching more specialised topics, this can mean labor-intensive searching over a large number of records. For those in search of Arabic or Ottoman Turkish documents, these are often kept in their original setting in the correspondence registers, but on occasion they have been extracted into separate files without any context.

The relative comprehensiveness of the catalog does not necessarily equate to a completeness of records. For instance, there has long been a suspicion that documents relating to atrocities committed by the British or under British supervision in the colonies, including their possessions in the Middle East, have been withheld from the public. This suspicion proved to be well-founded, and in 2013 after a legal challenge, a significant amount of material was released from a secret Foreign Office archive at Hanslope Park, including some relating to Aden, Cyprus, and Palestine. Doubtless there are still more records hidden away.

Digitized Documents: Some 5% of documents in The National Archives have been digitized, and the number is gradually increasing. Many of the more popular series relating to military or family history are only available in digital format. A significant number of the archive’s microfilmed series have been digitized and are available to download for free, including a number of series of interest for Middle East researchers, such as the records of the Arab Bureau (FO882).

Original Documents: Up to six files may be ordered from an off-site location via The National Archives website. Next-day advanced requests must be submitted by 17:00 the day before the planned visit. In the archives themselves, orders can be made from the computer terminals in the Research and Enquiries Room and in the reading rooms. It is necessary to reserve a seat in order to request documents, and documents will be delivered into a cabinet marked with the seat number.

The majority of research takes place in the first floor reading room, and researchers can select seats in group areas, quiet areas, and light areas for better photography. It is advisable for those intending to take photographs to arrive at the archive at a relatively early hour, as those seats are in great demand. Some older and oversized documents will be delivered to the second floor reading room.

Most orders take less than an hour to be completed, and in practice even in busy periods it can take as little as half an hour between ordering the document and receiving it. Up to twenty-one documents can be ordered per day. For researchers requiring bulk orders, at least two days’ notice is required and the completion of an online form. It is best to discuss this order with staff at the first floor reading room’s help desk before it is placed.

Library: The National Archives Research Library, situated on the first floor, contains some 65,000 volumes on a variety of subjects, and its holdings include works on Middle Eastern history, bibliographies, and subject guides. The catalog can be searched by subject or through keywords.

Help and staff: The National Archives is incredibly user-friendly. There is a ‘Start Here’ desk on the first floor before entering the reading rooms to help orientate new researchers. On the same floor, there are two help desks: a red desk that specializes in military and family history, and the blue desk that offers advice on political, economic, social, and colonial history. There are a number of computer terminals through which the archive’s online and digitized resources can be accessed.

The staff are generally friendly. However, whilst keen to help, the advice they can offer on specialist research is often limited. Security is strict when entering and leaving the reading rooms. This is aimed at ensuring that no documents are removed, and no prohibited items, such as pens, are brought in. Laptops must be opened, and stationary and cables must be kept in clear plastic bags, which may be searched. Inside the reading rooms, security guards make regular patrols to ensure that documents are being handled in an appropriate manner. Guides on how to handle the documents and other rules of the reading room are prominently displayed by the computer terminals and on the desks.

Access

The National Archives is open Tuesdays to Saturdays. The opening hours are between 09:00 and 19:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays with last document orders at 17:00, and between 09:00 and 17:00 on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, with last document orders at 16:15. The archives are closed on public holidays, full details of which can be found on the website.

It is necessary to have a reader’s ticket to view original documents. To obtain a reader’s ticket, new researchers must go to the registration room on the second floor to fill in an online form, and bring two forms of identification, one that provides proof of name with a signature, and another that shows proof of address. Acceptable forms of documentation are listed on the website. Digitized material and the library collection can be viewed without a reader’s ticket.

All public areas in The National Archives are fully wheelchair accessible. A number of dedicated computer terminals exist for partially sighted researchers.

Reproductions

Researchers can take their own photographs of documents for free, and are encouraged to do so. Flash photography is strictly forbidden. There are a number of seats in the first floor reading room with camera stands. Some kinds of document cannot be photographed, including those that are fragile or non-public records, but this will be made clear on ordering.

Printed copies of microfilm documents can be made for 25p per page. There are a number of machines on the first floor through which cash can be added to the reader’s ticket for such copying, and the staff will help first-timers through the self-service printing process. The archive offers its own paper and digital copying services. Prices vary, and it is necessary to submit a form online to receive a quote. Orders are usually fulfilled in less than two weeks, although this varies depending on the type and quantity of document being ordered.

Transportation, food, and other facilities

The National Archives is situated in Kew Gardens, some ten miles / sixteen kilometers from Central London. The easiest way to access the archives is by the London Underground. The walk from the station to the archives is well signposted, and takes less than ten minutes. Kew Gardens Underground Station is served by the District Line and London Overground. For researchers staying in Central London, the District Line is by far the easier option, and the journey takes around forty-five minutes. The Transport for London Journey Planner is very helpful in planning routes to the archives from anywhere in London.

The archive contains a café and restaurant on the ground floor, which is reasonably priced for the area. Most teas are around £1.50 and coffees over £2. Lunch with soup, a main dish, and desert costs around £10. Vegetarian options are available. There are also are a number of cafés, restaurants, and pubs around the station.

The ground floor also hosts a number of other facilities, including a free cloakroom with lockers. There is an interesting museum that houses a number of archival treasures, as well as a bookshop.

Outside the archive is a large pond frequented by ducks, moorhens, geese, swans, and herons. Outdoor seating is available around the pond, making for very pleasant breaks when the weather permits.

Contact information

Address:

The National Archives

Ruskin Avenue

Kew, Richmond

Surrey

TW9 4DU

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8876 3444

Online: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/contact/

Resources and links

The National Archives home page

Searchable online catalog

Written by Michael Talbot, Teaching Fellow in Ottoman history, University of St. Andrews

Cite this: Michael Talbot, “The National Archives (United Kingdom)”, HAZİNE, 1 November 2013, https://hazine.info/2013/11/01/the-national-archives-united-kingdom/

October 29, 2013August 20, 2020

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.

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

October 10, 2013August 20, 2020

Süleymaniye Library

Süleymaniye Library (Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi) is the largest manuscript library in Turkey and preserves one of the world’s most extensive collections of Islamic manuscripts. Since its establishment in 1918, the library’s vast collection of manuscripts has made it one of the most important centers for researchers working on all periods and regions of the Islamic world. The library is located within the Süleymaniye Mosque complex in the Fatih district of Istanbul.

A view of Süleymaniye Camii from the courtyard of the reading room.

History

The library is situated in two of the medreses built in the mid-sixteenth century as part of the mosque complex commissioned by Sultan Süleyman and designed by the Ottoman architect Sinan. The libraries of the mosque and medrese have existed since the complex’s establishment, but only in the early twentieth century did they become a public research library. The establishment of the Süleymaniye Umumi Kütüphanesi was an outgrowth of the First World War. Established in 1918, it consolidated the collections of the medrese and mosque along with manuscripts from the provinces that had been transferred to Istanbul for safekeeping for the duration of the war. With the closing of traditional institutions of religious learning in 1924, the library’s collection was supplemented by the considerable holdings of various mosques, Sufi lodges, and medreses in Istanbul. Since that time, the library’s collection has grown through the further consolidation of the manuscript libraries of Turkey and today the library continues to add new works primarily through private donations. Between 2002 and 2011 the library digitized its entire collection of manuscripts, which are now all accessible from computer stations in the reading room, but not online. Today this work continues with respect to the library’s printed works.

Collection

As one of the largest collections of Islamic manuscripts in the world, Süleymaniye Library provides researchers enough material to research for a lifetime. Currently, the collection consists of approximately 100,000 manuscript volumes and 50,000 printed books. It is impossible to describe thematically the extent of the collections, but one can say that they touch heavily upon topics such as law and jurisprudence, belle lettres, morality texts and sermons, sciences such as logic, rhetoric and grammar, as well as a wide array of other bodies of knowledge. In many ways, the books reflect the diverse and varied interests of the generations of scholars who spent their lives in the medreses, libraries, and palaces of Istanbul and beyond. It is a treasure trove not just for Ottomanists, but also for researchers working on all periods of Islamic history both within the Ottoman Empire and beyond. Manuscripts range in copy date from the eleventh century to the twentieth century, with the majority produced in the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. In terms of a rough estimate, we believe that perhaps sixty percent of the manuscripts are in Arabic, thirty percent in Turkish, ten percent in Persian and a smattering of manuscripts in other languages. Süleymaniye Library also holds an extensive collection of printed material in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian as well as in European languages. In addition, the private notes and archives of some twentieth-century historians, like Süheyl Ünver, are also kept in the library. Finally, the collection contains significant examples of hat, levha, and ebru.

All of the manuscripts and many of the printed works are digitized. All books are viewed through the library’s computer terminals but one may request special permission in order to view the physical manuscript. Materials are organized according to the original collections to which they belonged, i.e. the mosque, dervish lodge or private library from which they came. The main catalog is electronic and only accessible at the library. However, the researchers can access a partial electronic catalog of Süleymaniye Library’s materials through the Türkiye Kütüphaneleri Veri Tabanı at ISAM. (See our review of ISAM.) Researchers can still consult the earlier card catalog, the Union Catalogue of Manuscripts in Turkey, and photocopies of the nineteenth-century catalogs, both printed and hand-written in rıka script—all available in the library’s reading room. While the electronic catalog is much more efficient, the older catalogs provide different information on the manuscripts often excluded in later catalogs. While such information is usually useful, it is not necessarily more or less reliable than later catalogs. For those who prefer reading in the Arabic alphabet, in 2010 a three-volume catalog in Arabic of the original Süleymaniye collection’s holdings was published. Of course, this Arabic-language catalog only covers a small portion of the library’s overall collection. The library’s computer catalog also includes the collections of other manuscript libraries in Istanbul. Some of these can be viewed electronically at Süleymaniye (Nuruosmaniye, etc.) while others must be consulted—whether digitally or physically—at their respective libraries (Beyazıt and Millet). For other collections, such as Kandilli Rasathane or Edirne Selimiye, the library provides an incomplete list of digitized manuscripts in the computer catalog.

Research Experience

Süleymaniye Library’s computer catalog is a wonderful resource on its own but requires some practice to master. First, users should know that they can only enter their queries using the conventions of modern Turkish transliteration rather than traditional Arabic transliteration or the original Arabic (e.g. şeyhülislam rather than shaykh al-islam or شيخ الاسلام). Researchers can search by author name, title, date, subject, etc. though one must keep in mind that the catalog is not entirely reliable. Titles and names are often transliterated in multiple ways, texts are routinely mislabeled, and many texts and marginal works are left out of the catalog if the cataloger decided that it was not important. Copy dates are usually accurate and present on perhaps one fourth of the texts in the catalog, though if one examines the undated texts, about half of those will actually have copy dates as well. Of course, readers, commentators, and copyists throughout the centuries did not give a text the exact same title and so researchers should be prepared for variant author names and titles. Finally, the vast majority of titles that are displayed in the search results are actually in mecmuas (compendia or miscellanies). Researchers must access these by first looking up the manuscript volume containing the text by the accession number (demirbaş) and then going to the first work in the mecmua to open the digital copy. While these obstacles might be discouraging, they also provide researchers opportunities to discover many unexpected treatises.

(Read our article on how to conduct research in digitized manuscript libraries)

The quality of the digitized manuscripts varies widely. Süleymaniye was one of the first libraries in the world to begin a systematic digitization of its collections and therefore many of the electronic copies have significant quality problems. In the initial stage of digitalization, the library digitized manuscripts in an ad hoc manner, using researchers’ cameras and whatever equipment that was available at hand. Most of the problems in the digital copies are the result of poor lighting or image quality and affect a researcher’s ability to comfortably read the text, such as: poor resolution and image quality that make it impossible to read small text and notes; text on the margins and spine being cut off or poorly photographed; pages being blurred due to movement. Other problems, such as the exclusion of a manuscript’s bindings, sides, and blank pages within the volume render the digital copies of a manuscript of limited value to researchers interested in the codicological aspects of the volume. Those manuscripts that were digitized at a later date are of much higher quality and include photographs of the binding, etc. Since Süleymaniye houses such a large collection of manuscripts, it is often possible to see other copies of the same work. Researchers who need to consult the physical manuscript can request access from the director.

The library’s current reading room is a bit underwhelming as it consists only of twelve computers and a few books on the shelves of a poorly lit room. The computers are a bit buggy and tend to start displaying portions of the screen in black after a while. Researchers can fix this by logging out and reopening the catalog, though they will most likely lose any open documents in the process. If one’s computer does not work or refuses to log-in, try using another one first. Given the small number of computers, the reading room can become crowded, especially in the afternoon, but is generally empty during the mornings and evenings. Turkish students also tend to use the library desks to study for their standardized exams at certain times of the year. The librarians are helpful and are happy to show researchers how to use the catalog, but only read and speak Turkish. Turkish tourists often come in and start pulling books from the shelves in the mistaken belief that the reference books are the manuscripts and groups of Arab tourists also wander in to try to conduct genealogical research or read random works. Most researchers only stay for a few hours, so the long-term users often befriend each other.

The library also has a rather extensive reference collection on the shelves. This consists of the most important bio-bibliographcial works, encyclopedias, and dictionaries for conducting research. The reference section’s collection of bio-bibliographical works is relatively extensive and includes copies of Haji Khalifa/Katip Çelebi, Brockelman, and Sezgin; a notable lacunae in this regard is the absence of any bio-bibliographical work of Persian literature, such as Storey or Munzavi. Arabic, Ottoman, and Persian dictionaries as well as catalogs of other manuscript libraries and topical catalogs. Sets of the Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed.; Diyanet Vakfı Islam Ansiklopedisi; and Islam Ansiklopedisi (Milli Eǧitim Basımevi) are also available for consultation. Biographical dictionaries for the Ottoman period are on the shelves along with other classic reference works on the Ottoman period (in Turkish mostly). Some of the books may be in the depository and therefore need to be specially requested.

One of the main courtyards of Süleymaniye Library

Accessibility

The great advantage to researching at Süleymaniye Library is its working hours. While the library’s official hours are Monday-Friday 9:00 – 17:00 excluding holidays, researchers may make free use of all of the resources of the library’s reading room between 9:00 – 23:00 every day of the year, including all holidays. Copies can only be obtained during official hours, however. Researchers in wheelchairs might have trouble accessing the current reading room as there are some steep marble stairs at the entry. If they can get into the reading room, they should be able to use the computer terminals without any issues.

Researchers must provide an official government ID in order to enter the reading room. For Turks, this means their national identity card and for foreigners their passport or residency permit (ikamet tezkeresi). Researchers do not need to register in order to conduct research and the library is the most open and friendly research institution in Istanbul.

Transport and Food

Süleymaniye Library is most easily reached by tramway, bus, or foot. If you take the tramway, get off at the Beyazıt stop and then walk to Beyazıt Square. Take the street that is to the left of the monumental Istanbul Üniversitesi gate and follow it until it ends. Bear right, walk 30 meters and the library is on one’s left. Coming from Taksim Square, one can take any bus that passes through Aksaray. Make sure to get off at the Müze stop (the one next to the aqueduct, before Aksaray) and make your way through Unkapanı until you reach Süleymaniye Library from behind. (This route is poorly lit and may not be safe for women walking alone at night.) You can also walk up to Süleymaniye from Eminönü by following the signs after the bazaar ends. Needless to say, the library is directly across from the mosque.

There are a number of eating options around Süleymaniye Library. The most famous are the kuru fasulye restaurants in front of the library building, though one can also find pide, mantı, and other options close by. There are a variety of tea gardens nearby, including one in a historic courtyard. Dostan provides homemade mantı and pizzas and such.

Reproductions

All reproductions are provided as PDFs on a CD. The cost per exposure (i.e. a photograph of two pages) is fifty kuruş for Turkish citizens and one lira for non-citizens as of October 2013. The librarians can provide CDs within a few minutes or an hour, depending on the number of reproduction requests they are processing. Librarians take time off for lunch and Friday prayers, so researchers should wait patiently if the librarians are not present. Researchers should check the contents of the CDs and load them onto more secure devices as soon as possible. Occasionally the CDs are written with corrupt data which prohibit their transfer to other devices. If this happens, ask the staff for a new copy on a different CD.

Miscellaneous

Süleymaniye Library also offers classes on traditional Islamic subjects, like calligraphy, tafsir, etc.

Future Plans and Rumors

The Süleymaniye Library is currently undergoing a major renovation. When completed sometime in 2014, the reading room will be greatly expanded and modern offices installed in many of the old buildings. Plans for the renovation also include a new exhibition space, which should minimize the interruptions of tourists in the reading room.

Contact Information

Süleymaniye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi

Ayşe Kadın Hamam Sok. No:35 Fatih İstanbul

Telephone: 212 520 64 60

Süleymaniye Library does not have an official website. The collections are not listed on the official Yazmalar website but a partial catalog can be accessed through the İSAM Türkiye Kütüphaneleri Veri Tabanı. It is best to simply show up in person if you need to conduct business with the library.

Written by Nir Shafir and Christopher Markiewicz

10 October 2013

Cite this: Nir Shafir and Christopher Markiewicz, “Süleymaniye Library”, HAZİNE, 10 October 2013, https://hazine.info/2013/10/10/suleymaniye-library/

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