Archive of the General Directorate of Foundations, Ankara (VGMA)

Archive of the General Directorate of Foundations, Ankara (VGMA)

• National
• Religious

The Archive of the General Directorate of Foundations (VGMA) houses the records related to awqāf in the Ottoman Empire. For the history of this institution, the number of records stored there and its present situation, as well as the stages in the official founding of the VGMA, see Kani Özyer, “Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü Arşivi” [Archive of the General Directorate of Foundations], in Uluslar arası Türk Arşivleri Sempozyumu [Turkish Archive Symposium], 17–19 November 2005 (Istanbul: BOA Publications, 2006); Mustafa Alkan, “Türk Tarihi Araştırmaları Açısından Vakıf Kayıtlar Arşivi” [Waqf records archive from the perspective of Turkish historical studies], Vakıflar Dergisi 30 (2007).

The Archive of the General Directorate of Foundations (VGMA), located in Ankara, houses 610 ʿatīḳ (old) appointment and cedīd (new) new registers. They are composed mainly of records of appointments, promotions, and dismissals of waqf employees, and were continually updated.
The ʿatīḳ registers were also called treasury registers and covered the appointment records of waqf staff before 1300/1882. These are mainly composed of the Istanbul, Anatolian, Rumelian, and Ḥaramayn (Mecca and Medina) series.

The organisational structure is available here : https://www.vgm.gov.tr/en/Sayfalar/SayfaDetay.aspx?SayfaId=17

Entry prepared on 2019-09-09

Şerife Eroğlu Memiş, "Between Ottomanization and Local Networks: Appointment Registers as Archival Sources for Waqf Studies. The Case of Jerusalem’s Maghariba Neighborhood", in Angelos Dalachanis and Vincent Lemire (eds.), Ordinary Jerusalem 1840-1940. Opening New Archives, Revisiting a Global City, (Leiden: Brill, 2018), p. 75-99; https://www.vgm.gov.tr/en/Sayfalar/SayfaDetay.aspx?SayfaId=14; https://organizations.vgm.gov.tr/en/Documents/menu110.pdf; https://www.vgm.gov.tr/en/Sayfalar/SayfaDetay.aspx?SayfaId=14

Author(s) : Open Jerusalem http://www.openjerusalem.org/