Showing 70 results

The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (Russian: Императорское православное палестинское общество), founded in 1882, is a scholarly organization for the study of the Middle East. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the society was renamed the Russian Palestine Society (Russian: Российское Палестинское Общество) and attached to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Its original name was restored by the society on 22 May 1992.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs included three departments. The Asian Department was the only one created on a geographical basis. It focused on the Oriental Russian policy, on the Russian subjects business in the East, and on the training of translators and dragomans for Russian missions in the area. The Asian Department (renamed after the First Department in 1897) consisted in two sections: the Far East and the Middle East. In the Middle Eastern section, an office called the Political Table was in charge of enciphering and deciphering telegrams, and also the Slavic, Greek, and Turkish Tables (later, the Persian, and other tables were formed. At each table worked two or three persons.
The ministry supervised the activity of Russian presence in the world, among them the Russian Embassy in Constantinople and the Russian Consulate in Jerusalem (founded in 1858).
Until the Crimean War, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem was taking care of the Russian pilgrims in accordance with Russian authorities. In exchange, the Russian Embassy in Constantinople provided diplomatic and political support for the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. In fact, since 1820, the only Russian diplomatic mission in Palestine had been the vice-consulate in Jaffa. From 1838, Jerusalem was under the jurisdiction of the Russian Consulate General in Beirut, which was responsible for the entire Palestine. In 1847, Saint Petersburg sent to the Holy City the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission (REM) to control Russian pilgrims, and to become a direct channel of ecclesiastic communication between the Russian Synod and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. The REM suspended its activities during the Crimean war; and, in 1857, it revived under the guidance of Bishop Cyril Naumov (1857-1863) who replaced Archimandrite Porphyry Ouspensky (1847-1854).
The objective of the REM under Bishop Cyril, according to a project of the minister of foreign affairs Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov (1856-1882), was to serve Russia’s ecclesiastic and diplomatic interests in Palestine, which, in practice, meant that the mission had a political role to play. Since there was still no consulate in Jerusalem, Bishop Cyril was receiving instructions and tasks from three different sources: a) the Minister of Foreign Affairs, b) the Director of the Asian Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and c) the Russian Ambassador in Constantinople. The head of the REM was sending his reports to these three different structures, whereas the Consul General in Beirut was instructed to provide him regular support and assistance. The mission, as an ecclesiastic institution, was subordinate to the Synod of the Russian Church, but, from 1857 till 1862, it was under the control of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During the nineteenth century, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held three different archives: the St Petersburg Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the State Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg, and also the Moscow Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MGAMID). In the oldest Moscow Archive (it was founded on the base of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs in 1724) the main documents on the Russian history till the early-nineteenth century were kept; later, the collections passed to the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA). In the Saint Petersburg State archive (also called the State Archive of the Russian Empire, founded from documents of non-diplomatic character on the base of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1834), they kept materials on the tsar family, notorious criminal trials, industry, culture, and history of peoples of Russia. In 1864, the State Archive of the Russian Empire was united with the Saint Petersburg Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; later, its collections passed to the RGADA.
But the main documents on the current activity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including those on the activity of the Consulate in Jerusalem, were kept in the Saint Petersburg Main Archive, materials of which passed to the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire. Its collections were shaped according the principle of the provenance of documents, and their topics.

The Procurator (Russian: прокурор, prokuror) was an office initially established in 1722 by Peter the Great, the first Emperor of the Russian Empire, as part of reforms to bring the Russian Orthodox Church more directly under his control.
The Russian word also has the meaning of prosecutor.
The Chief Procurator (also Ober-Procurator; обер-прокурор, ober-prokuror) was the official title of the head of the Most Holy Synod, effectively the lay head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and a member of the Tsar's cabinet. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, a former tutor both of Alexander III and of Nicholas II, was one of the most powerful men to hold the post, from 1880 to 1905.
The General Procurator (Procurator General) and the Chief Procurator were major supervisory positions in the Russian Governing Senate, which functioned from 1711 to 1917, with their meaning changing over time. Eventually Chief Procurator became the title of the head of a department of the Senate.

The Russian Embassy in Constantinople, which was controlled by the Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (that had existed since 1819), supervised the Russian Consulate in Jerusalem.

The Synod is an ecclesiastical governing body created by Tsar Peter I in 1721 to head the Russian Orthodox Church, replacing the patriarchate of Moscow. Peter created the Synod, made up of representatives of the hierarchy obedient to his will, to subject the church to the state, and appointed a secular official, the chief procurator, to supervise its activities. The Synod persecuted all dissenters and censored publications, and Peter disposed of church property and revenues for state purposes at his own discretion. In 1917 a church council reestablished the patriarchate, but the new Soviet government soon nationalized all church-held lands.

In the 17th century, King Louis the 13th decided to appoint a French consul in Jerusalem, as he was urged to protect the Latin people and restore their threatened rights. But until 1842, the French presence in town remained occasional.
Before the French consulate being stable, French and Palestinian affairs were ruled by other French consulates first in Aleppo, then in Cairo and finally in Damascus.
On the 29th December of 1842, the French Foreign office established a consulate in Jerusalem, and first put in charge Count Gabriel de Lantivy. For quite a long time, consuls’ missions had been both religious and political. Consuls were directly under the authority of the French embassy in Constantinople.

In 1871, the defeat of France against Germany unsettled the protectorate and French prerogatives upon the Christian monks it had to protect. Therefore, the French Foreign office deeply reformed the consulate so that it could better serve the French interests in the area. At the end of the 19th century, the Consul of France used the powerful French Catholic missionary movement to enlarge his influence. Many French religious orders came and settled their houses in Jerusalem and around Holy places (Mytilene agreement in 1901 and Treaty of Constantinople in 1913). Thus, the French presence in the area increased just before the First World War. Furthemore, capitulations of the Ottoman Empire allowed France to gather more and more people under its protection. In addition, as a consequence of colonization of Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Consulate also began to protect a larger number of Muslim and Jewish citizens who came and lived in the Holy City.
Franco-Russian Alliance (1891) brought some troubles to the Consulate. The diplomatic and political crisis the Ottoman Empire got through until the First World War unsettled its authority. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1918, the General Consulate in Jerusalem enfranchised from the French Embassy authority in Constantinople and became General Consulate. In may 1941, The Consulate was closed upon mandatory British authorities.

Consuls of Jerusalem Post :

• Count of Lantivy (1843-1845)
• Mr. Helouis-Jorelle (1846-1848)
• Mr. Botta (1848-1855)
• Mr. de Barrère (1856-1870)
• Mr. Crampon (1871-1873)
• Mr. Patrimonio (1873-1881)
• Mr. Langlais (1881-1883
• Mr. Destrées (1883-1885)
• Mr. Charles Ledoux (1885-1897)
• Mr. Pierre Auzepy (1898-1901)
• Mr. Honoré Daumas (1901-1902)
• Mr. Jules Boppe (1902-1904)
• Mr. Georges Outret (1905-1907)
• Mr. Georges Gueyraud (1908-1914)

To be completed

Ottoman period:
Jerusalem municipal council (majlis baladiyya, meclis-i belediye) came into existence in the early 1860s. Jerusalem was, in fact, one of the very first cities within the Ottoman Empire to form a municipality, which was further consolidated after the Ottoman law on municipalities in 1877. From the 1880s onward, the municipal council was composed of nine to twelve members, elected for a renewable mandate of four years: there were generally six Muslims, two Christians, and one or two Jews on the council (depending on the period), in addition to a maximum of four ex officio members.

Mandate period:
Construction of the historical city hall building in 1930 (used until 1993)

From 1948: to be completed.

To be completed.
The Supreme Spiritual Council is the highest executive body of the Armenian Church and is presided over by the Catholicos of All Armenians. The members of the Council can be elected by the National Ecclesiastical Assembly or appointed by the Catholicos of All Armenians. The Catholicos of All Armenians, Gevorg V. Soorenian established the Supreme Spiritual Council on January 1, 1924, to replace the Synod of Bishops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_and_Commonwealth_Office