We at Hazine love our lists. So hot off the heels of our visual resource guide and our regularly updated blog-list, we have a list of online resources to share with you all: this is where you can find primary sources online or resources to help you get at primary sources. An earlier incarnation of this list is here, written by Zachary Foster. We’re including links to digitized Islamic manuscripts, digitized periodicals, digitized books, oral history repositories, online syllabi and material history archives, all relevant to Middle East, North African, Islamicate world, and Islamic studies. Note while many of these are open access, some are not. Standard rules apply: this is not a comprehensive list so tweet at us or email us and we’ll add things to our semi-annual updates to this list.
The Historical Archive of Macedonia (Ιστορικό Αρχείο Μακεδονίας hereafter IAM) is located in Thessaloniki, Greece, and comprises a rich, albeit to a large degree unexplored, Ottoman archive. A curious researcher will find there, among other things, the main repository of archives produced by the Ottoman administration and belonging to the region of the Selanik sub-province (Selanik sancağı).[1] It is astonishing how few scholars have dealt with the archive of an Ottoman city as important as Selanik, especially considering the quantity of its holdings (comprising more than 4,000 bound Ottoman registers and an important number of loose documents) and the range of time it covers (1690-1912).
Ottoman map of the Province of Selanik.
History
The IAM was established in Thessaloniki in 1954. It is one of the forty-eight regional State Archives and operates as an independent branch under the authority of the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. Following the archive’s official establishment, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Appeal Court of Thessaloniki, which had kept the city’s Ottoman archives since 1953, transferred the collection to the IAM, as a result of the coordinated efforts of its director, Prof. Vassilios Dimitriadis. Between 1912—when the city of Selanik was incorporated into the Greek Kingdom—and 1953, the Ottoman archives were located in the translation office of Thessaloniki and operated under the authority of the city’s Court of First Instance. This translation office maintained the city’s Ottoman records and provided translation services of official documents (mostly title deeds) to private citizens. By 1956, the IAM added the archives of other translation offices in nearby towns, such as Katerini, Poligiros, Kilkis, Edessa (see below for the Ottoman names of these places).
After occupying various central buildings of the city, the IAM moved to its present building in 1994. The Russian community of Thessaloniki built the archive’s current building, known as the Russian hospital, in the first decade of the twentieth century with funding from the Russian government. After the October Revolution and the dissolution of the Russian community of Thessaloniki, the building was taken by the Greek state, which used it as a maternity hospital until the mid-1970s, when it was abandoned.
Collections
The IAM contains mainly an archive and a reference library. All research and reading take place in the library room.
Archive: While the majority of the archival material consists of Ottoman documents, the IAM also contains archives produced by the administration of the Greek state after 1912. This collection comprises administrative and judicial material (e.g. decisions of the town’s Court of First Instance, documentation of famous court cases like Gr. Lambrakis or G. Polk), ecclesiastical archives, notarial documents, archives of private Greek schools (e.g. Valagianni School), public schools (e.g. Girls’ School) or large factories/enterprises (e.g. Fix, Allatini), etc.
The Ottoman archival collection includes 4,000 bound registers and several loose documents produced over more than two centuries, which concern the sancak of Selanik. As the archive contains records for the entire sancak of Selanik, the collection includes significant material for nearby cities, such as Poligiros in today’s Chalkidiki (Poliroz), Katerini (Katrin), Kilkis (Avrethisar), Edessa (Vodinα), and Veria (Karaferye). These archives can be separated into the following categories:
Sicill archives (ιεροδικαστικά αρχεία):[2] This collection comprises 373 bound registers, which range from 1694 to 1912, and covers the longest period of all other documents in this archive. The vast majority of these registers belong to the kadı court of Selanik (337 registers, 1694-1912), while the rest belongs to the kadı courts of the districts of Katrin (3 registers, 1888-1912), Avrethisar (22 registers, 1814-1912) and Ksendire (today’s Kassandra in Chalkidiki) (11 registers, 1870-1912). Although the registers start in 1694, they also include copies of documents from earlier times. The registers range in size from 20 to 400 pages each and include not only judicial rulings, but also documentation associated with imperial decrees and administrative or military correspondence. The sicill archives of Selanik are available both in microfilm and in digital format, although they are not yet available online (for digitized archives available also online see below. It is not certain yet, when the digitized sicill archives of Selanik will be put online). The sicills originating from Katrin, Avrethisar and Ksendire are available only in their original form. An exception here is the sicill archive of the town of Karaferye (Veria, 1602-1882), which is available in microfilm and digitally, as well as online under the heading Αρχεία Ν. Ημαθίας (Archives of the Prefecture of Imathia).
Court Archives (nizamiyye mahkemeleri, τακτικά δικαστήρια): These records comprise 762 bound registers and 233 files dated between 1868 and 1912. They document the judicial system as it was set up following the Tanzimat reforms and the establishment of the nizamiyye mahkemeleri with the production of new penal codes and the new Civil Code, the Mecelle. In particular, they are comprised of the archives of the Court of First Instance of Selanik (Πρωτοδικείο Θεσσαλονίκης, 1877-1912), the Trade Court of Selanik (Εμποροδικείο Θεσσαλονίκης, 1868-1912), the Courts of First Instance of Avrethisar (1884-1912), Vodina (1885-1912), Karacova (1906-1912), Katrin (1887-1912), Ksendire (1882-1912) and Karaferye (not fully cataloged yet). They are available only in their original form. Hardly any research has been conducted in this section.
Land Registers (κτηματολογικά αρχεία): This collection constitutes the most voluminous one, with 1,821 bound registers and 25 files, ranging from 1830 to 1912. Many of these registers (725) belong to the central cadastre of Selanik (1858-1912), although the collection also contains the land registers of the districts of the Selanik province (1844-1912), the land registers of the religious endowments (the vakıf registers) (1830-1912), the land register of the vakıf of Gazi Evrenos (1845-1912), the register office of Ksendire (1872-1912), Katrin (1865-1912), Avrethisar (1872-1912), Vodena (1872-1912), the land registers of Karaferye (1872-1908) and the registers of the translation office of Thessaloniki (1909, 1912-1953), Veroia (1915-1953) and Chalkidiki. The central cadastre of Selanik is digitized and available online (for the years 1871-1908), while the vakıf register and the land register of the vakıf of Gazi Evrenos are fully digitized, but only accessible at the archive. All the other documents in this collection are only available in their original format.
Tax registers: These records consist of 1,255 bound registers produced between 1872 and 1907 for Selanik (1872-1907), Karacova (1876), Vodina (1876), Avrethisar, Katrin (1873-1875), Ksendire (1873-1875) and Karaferye (1905-1912). Only the tax register of Selanik is digitized and available online. The rest may be consulted at the archive.
The land and tax registers are the most frequently consulted collections in the archive, especially for the years after 1860. Most of the interest in these materials stems from private persons in search of title deeds or genealogical information; these deeds are mainly used for litigation purposes between individuals or between individuals and the state.
Administrative registers: These registers consist of 152 bound registers and 27 files covering the period from 1875 to 1912 and include the archive of the administrative council of the province of Selanik (Selanikvilayeti) between 1875 and 1912; the archive of the administrative councils of the districts of Avrethisar (1908-1912); Karacova (1907-1912), and Katrin (1897-1912); the archive of the central forest authority of Selanik (1893-1912) and the regional forest authorities of the Selanik vilayeti (1896-1912). While three volumes of the Selanik vilayeti archive have been digitized, most records in this section are available only in their original format.
The digitized sections that are available online can be found here.
The Reference Library: The library contains about 3,000 volumes. The books have to be read in the library or can be photocopied outside the archive. They deal mainly with the history of Thessaloniki and its surroundings, although the library has also a nice collection of Karamanlidika (Turkish in Greek script) books. In addition, one can also find Greek-Turkish dictionaries, as well as academic journals and collections like Turcica, Archivum Ottomanicum, Islamic Law & Society, and The Cambridge History of Islam.
Researchers at work in the archive’s library.
Research Experience
Research in this archive is quite easy-going and does not require any special procedure. The archive’s personnel speak English and French.
Almost all of the material in the archives is publicly accessible (except sensitive personal data such as adoption files or the ones which are labeled as confidential) and generally no special procedure of admission is required. Researchers are asked to fill in an application form, merely for statistical reasons, and can then immediately proceed to their research. However, researchers wishing to study large parts of the archival collection or coming for a lengthy period of time to study a specific collection are strongly recommended to communicate with IAM well beforehand in order for the required material to be prepared. These researchers are also requested to proffer some form of certification (e.g. recommendation letter of supervisor, etc.). The archive requires researchers to obtain permission from the curator of the General State Archives when requesting reproductions of a significant portion of the archives or the digital reproduction of an entire collection.
Material can be requested at any time of the day (9:00-15:00), and, in most cases, it is delivered shortly thereafter. If a researcher wishes to see more than one or two registers per day, he or she is requested to inform the librarians a day beforehand. There are two computers in the library room, at which digitized material can be viewed. In cases in which the digitized copy is not clear, the archive will also provide the originals. If the requested material has not been digitized, the archive will make available the original document for the researcher.
Unfortunately, the library room is rather small, with less than ten seating places, and can also be a bit noisy sometimes while librarians are coming and going. There is no wireless internet access. While the space does not create ideal research conditions, the close contact and exchange with personnel and other researchers partly compensates for this shortcoming, as is often the case in smaller, local archives.
Cataloging is rather short and descriptive, and only in Greek. The catalogs are not published volumes, but rather sheets of paper kept together in dossiers. There exists a general catalog (available also from the website of the archive; works only with Firefox and IE), as well as a catalog of the vakıf register, and of the sicill archives of Selanik, Avrethisar and Karaferye. The registers are listed in chronological order and in some cases include information about the content. Despite the poor cataloging, the personnel is very helpful in finding the requested material.
Accessibility
The archives are open to researchers from Monday to Friday, between 9:00 and 15:00, except all official holidays of the Greek state. The archive is wheelchair accessible via a special entrance from a side-road, while a special lift facilitates access to the library room on the first floor.
Transportation and Food
The archives are located quite centrally, a walking distance of about 20 to 25 minutes from the city’s center. They can also be accessed by the bus lines 2, 10, 11, 58,, all of which pass various stops along the central Egnatia Street. Bus tickets can be obtained at small kiosks in every corner of the city, or inside the bus. The buses stop in front of the archive building, at the Eυκλείδη stop. Depending on the traffic, buses generally reach the archive stop in ten minutes.
There is no cafeteria inside the archives, although there are plenty of cafes and small restaurants located nearby.
Exterior view of the archive.
Reproduction Requests and Costs
Copies of archival material can be obtained in either paper or digital format. Researchers may also photograph material themselves. The costs are 0.50 euros per copy for an A4-page, 0.30 euros per digital copy, and 0.10 euros for each photograph taken by the researcher. There are no limits in the material one may ask to be copied, but if it is a “large quantity”, special permission may be needed. There even exists the possibility to request material from abroad with a CD of the digitized material sent by post to the researcher.
I thank Mrs. Giannoukakou for providing me with valuable information and material concerning the IAM. I have used the following material for writing this article:
-Αμαλία Παππά-Καραπιδάκη, Τα Οθωμανικά Αρχεία του Ιστορικού Αρχείου Μακεδονίας (The Ottoman Archives of the Historical Archive of Macedonia), σελ. 55-64 and Κίρκη Γεωργιάδου, Το Ευρετήριο των Ιεροδικαστικών Κωδίκων της Θεσσαλονίκης (The Index of the Registers of the Kadi Courts of Thessaloniki), σελ. 65-68 and Κωνσταντίνος Γιαντσής, Οθωμανικό Κτηματολόγιο (Ottoman Cadastre), σελ. 69-72, in Ν. Καραπιδάκης (επιμ.), Επετηρίδα των Γενικών Αρχείων του Κράτους – 1990, Αθήνα: Βιβλιοθήκη Γενικών Αρχείων του Κράτους, 1991.
-Υπουργείο Πολιτισμού, Υπουργείο Βόρειας Ελλάδας, Νεώτερα Μνημεία της Θεσσαλονίκης, Παλιό Ρωσσικό Νοσοκομείο – Πρώην Δημόσιο Μαιευτήριο, σελ. 172.
Anna Vakali is a graduate student at the University of Basel, where she studies crime and intercommunal relations in Ottoman Selanik and Manastır during the Tanzimat reforms.
2 April 2014
Cite this: Anna Vakali, “The Historical Archive of Macedonia in Thessaloniki”, HAZİNE, 2 April 2014, https://hazine.info/2014/04/02/archive-macedonia-thessaloniki/
[1] I will use the Ottoman term Selanik when referring to the city of Thessaloniki during Ottoman rule.
[2]I have included the Greek names as well, because the catalogs are available only in Greek language.
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.
Background and History
The idea for a digital archive of Iranian material on women’s history originated in the early 2000s. In 2009, Afsaneh Najmabadi, along with four scholars of Iranian history (Nahid Mozaffari, Dominic Brookshaw, Naghmeh Sohrabi, and Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar) were awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to assemble a digital archive of documents from a number of private collections and public institutions. The original idea for the project arose from an awareness of the state of Iranian archival resources and of the possibilities afforded by emerging digital technologies. Firstly, the project members recognized the need for assembling an archive for Iranian history in the absence of extensive institutional archival collections. In contrast to the large state archives for the Ottoman Empire, which are preserved by various state institutions in Turkey and the Middle East, no analogous institutional archives exist for Iranian history prior to the twentieth century. Despite this lack of formal institutional archiving, the project members knew of the existence of significant numbers of documents from the nineteenth century that have been preserved in the private collections of families throughout Iran. Secondly, the development of high quality digital technologies made possible the establishment of a virtual archive composed of disparate collections held in various locations. Rather than construct a physical archive on the basis of a state’s backing, the project has endeavored to collect (or “fabricate” in the words of Najmabadi) within a single website a digital archive of material from around the world.
The project has focused on women in nineteenth-century Iran for several reasons. First of all, the archive seeks to address a lacuna in Iranian social history with regard to women and gender issues. The absence of more scholarly work on women’s history for Iran is surprising considering the relatively rich material produced by women or related to women from the period which sheds light on the daily lives, social relationships, and cultural activities of Iranians during the Qajar era. Moreover, much of the material preserved in private family collections—including marriage contracts, diaries, and photographs—provides a detailed and unique view of women’s worlds. In this way, the nature of the archival material preserved in disparate private collections demands scholarly attention to aspects of women’s history.
WWQI website homepage.
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/
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.
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.
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/
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 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.
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 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.
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).
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 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.
The Venetian State Archives (Archivio di Stato di Venezia) has made freely available online one of its most important collections of Ottoman documents. The Venetian State Archives is one of the most important repositories in Europe of archival material related to Ottoman history. While the majority of material related to the Ottoman Empire is only accessible through research on site in Venice, through the auspices of Progetto Divenire, the archive has digitized and made available online a number of its collections, including an important collection of documents concerning relations with the Ottoman Empire (Miscellanea documenti turchi).
Detail of the Ottoman Ahdname of 1050/1641 (n. 1470, Miscellenea documenti turchi).
History
The collection now labeled Miscellenea documenti turchi contains some of the most important documents related to the political and diplomatic relations between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire. While there are other collections within the Venetian Archives which preserve important material pertaining to the relations between these two states, many of the most important imperial letters (name-i hümayun) and treaties (ahdname) issued by Ottoman sultans are preserved among the twenty boxes of documents which comprise Miscellanea documenti turchi. For this reason, many of these documents have been examined and published by prominent Orientalists and Ottomanists of the twentieth century, including Luigi Bonelli, Lajos Fekete, Alessio Bombaci, M. Tayyıp Gökbilgin, Maria Francesca Tiepolo, and Şerafettin Turan. Beginning in the 1940s, Alessio Bombaci was tasked with organizing and cataloging the collection. Although Bombaci developed an inventory of the collection’s fifteenth- and sixteenth-century holdings, he never produced a formal catalog as the difficulties of carrying out the work in the midst of the Second World War proved too great. In the 1980s, Maria Pia Pedani resumed the work of describing the collection and creating a catalog. This work was published in 1994 in a volume entitled I “Documenti turchi” dell’Archivio di Stato di Venezia. In 2006, the Venetian State Archives, in collaboration with the National Council for Research in Florence (Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche di Firenze), began digitizing this collection through Progetto Divenire. Today all of the documents of the Miscellanea documenti turchi are freely available online.
Collection
The collection contains 2,022 documents related to the Republic of Venice’s relations with the Ottoman Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. The collection is ordered chronologically with a small number of undated documents added to the end of the collection’s series. Documents n.1-1997 are ordered chronologically and include material produced between 859/1454 and 1252/1837. The majority of these documents are from the tenth/sixteenth century (n. 73-1117), although the collection has considerable material from the eleventh/seventeenth century as well (n. 1118- 1609).
The range of material varies from elaborately produced imperial documents such as official royal correspondence (name-i hümayun) and treaties (ahdname) to short letters and reports written by provincial Ottoman officials, especially in the Balkans. The documenti turchi includes such important rescripts as Selim I’s victory announcement (fethname) in the wake of the Ottoman capture of Kemah and the defeat of ‘Ala al-dawla Dulgadir in 921/1515 (n. 165) and the peace treaty offered by Selim II in 980/1573 which ended hostilities between the Ottomans and Venetians after the battle of Lepanto and the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus (n. 818). For the seventeenth century, the collection has a large number of documents concerning Crete (n. 1334 contains many documents) as well as the Treaty of Karlowitz together with the Ottoman capitulations with the Republic of Venice (n. 1610, dated 1112/1701). In total, the collection has twenty-one treaties with Venice issued by Ottoman sultans.
While the collection’s material is mostly in Ottoman Turkish, there are a fair number of documents issued in other languages including Greek, Italian, and Arabic. Most of the documents are accompanied with contemporary Italian translations or summaries. Particularly interesting is the fair amount of Ottoman imperial correspondence composed in Greek which bears the sultan’s insignia (tuğra). The creation of Ottoman documents in Greek by the central chancery was a relatively common occurrence in the fifteenth century. This is reflected in the holdings of Miscellanea documenti turchi, where all of the Ottoman documents produced during the reign of Sultan Mehmed II (d. 886/1481) were prepared in Greek. The collection’s last rescript issued by a sultan and composed in Greek is Sultan Süleyman’s victory announcement issued for the Hungarian campaign and siege of Vienna in 935/1529 (n. 250).
The collection includes more quotidian material as well. There are many examples of testimony (hüccet)endorsed by Ottoman provincial judges. Moreover there are several surprising inclusions in the collection. For instance, the last document in the series explains the rules of Persian grammar in Arabic verse (n. 2022).
Research Experience
The collection is available at the archive’s website. While the site is in Italian, its simple and logical layout allows users with little knowledge of Italian to navigate it without too much difficulty. Users may browse the documents in order by clicking on the link to any of the individually numbered documents. More importantly, the archive’s website provides an advanced search option (ricerca avanzata, located in the menu bar). Within the advanced search option, select the collection (documenti turchi) and the search criteria under the heading ‘criteria directory’ (elenco criteri). Search criteria range from name of sender or recipient to document origin, destination, type, date, language, and even physical dimensions. In the box below labeled imposta il contenuto da cercare, you may enter your search term. Make certain to select Miscellanea documenti turchi under the reproduced series field (serie riprodotte) before you request the search (effetua la ricerca). The search engine enables users to enter multiple search terms.
Once you have located a document to view, click on its link. The archive’s website is often slow and as the document files are very detailed, this step may take a few seconds. This will bring up the document’s page. In order to access the catalog information as well as view the digitized document, click on the document link on the right-hand side of the page under the heading schede. In order to view the document in a large format in a separate window, click on the screen icon on the upper right of the document viewer. The catalog information for each document is quite detailed and includes information on the document’s sender, recipient, date, location, as well as a short description of the document’s contents.
The open-access digitization of this important collection is a welcome development in our field. Many libraries and archives around the world are turning to digitization as a way to preserve their collections while also make them available to a wider community of scholars and researchers. In an upcoming post, Nir Shafir will examine the implications of these developments for conducting research.
Catalogs and Useful Resources
Archivio di Stato di Venezia. I “documenti turchi” dell’Archivio di Stato di Venezia: inventario della miscellanea a cura di Maria Pia Pedani Fabris; con l’edizione dei regesti di Alessio Bombaci. Rome: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, Uficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1994.
Inventory of the lettere e scritture Turchesche in the Venetian State Archives. Edited by Maria Pia Pedani; based on materials compiled by Alessio Bombaci. Ledien; Boston: Brill, 2010.
Miscellanea documenti turchi: The open-access digitized documents of the Miscellenea documenti turchi at the Venetian State Archives
