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The oldest documents in the Consulate fonds date back to 1843, to the foundation of the Consulate of Palestine during the Kingdom of Sardinia. According to the papers the Consulate closed in 1849 leaving the defence of the citizens to the Consulate of France.

The Royal Decree dated November 17th, 1871 establishes the Italian Consulate in Palestine. The papers cover the history of the Consulate until its closure, in June 10th, 1940. At that date the protection of Italian interests was entrusted to the Spanish Consulate. The activity of Consul Quinto Mazzolini and his Bureau in Rome (Ufficio Stralcio) lasted during 1943.

This fonds includes documents from the Correspondence Office doing all the correspondences of the Ministry of Education with other ministries or provinces since its foundation.
The starting and ending Hijri dates for this fonds are: 1289-1341.

The Documentary Office of the Sublime Porte (Bab-ı Ali Evrak Odası) is the institution that arranged the flow of documents in the Sublime Porte (Bab-ı Ali) after the Tanzimat. Accordingly, any document that was dealt with by the Sublime Porte is filed into this fonds.

This series contains general correspondence of the British embassy and consulates in Turkey (formerly the Ottoman Empire).
Before 1831 the records in this series are copies made from the general correspondence in FO 78
Creators according to the period:
Foreign Office, Consulates, Ottoman Empire, 1782-1923
Foreign Office, Consulates, Turkey, 1923-1968
Foreign Office, Embassy, Ottoman Empire, 1782-1923
Foreign Office, Embassy, Turkey, 1923-1968

This fonds constitutes a very rich collection of documents resulting from the assortment of documents belonging to the rule of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909). It includes 1618 files, 626000 documents and 15679 notebooks. It appears that it includes important documents for this period, which is a fresh field for the research in the history of management. Yıldız catalogues (series) are collected in five main groups; the Main Documents of Yıldız Palace (Yıldız Esas Evrakı), the Official Documents of Grand Vizierate (Sadâret Resmî Maruzât Evrakı), the Officially Presented Documents of Grand Vizierate (Sadâret Husûsî Maruzât Evrakı) and the Daily Documents of Yıldız Palace (Yıldız Perakende Evrakı).

This catalogue includes the majority of the archive materials of the Ministry of Police; correspondence from other ministries, state offices and provinces; the Correspondence Office, which includes the replies to these writings and letters, and the drafts from the Accounting Office; receipts for the transactions of the Office of Public Accounting and the bills returned.
The starting and ending Hijri dates for this fonds are: 1262-1341.

The Chancellery or Divanatun is the working office of the Catholicos.

• Series 146 CCC, Consular and Commercial Correspondence (4 volumes, vols. 2-5, 1842-1901): 578 dispatches.
• Series 74 CPC, Political correspondence, Jerusalem (27 volumes 1843-1895) : 2603 dispatches.
• Series 206 CPCOM, Political and Commercial Correspondence, known as "New Series") Turkey-Palestine, (vols. 129-138, 10 vols. 1896-1914): 880 dispatches.

Most despatches are typed, and almost always present short analyses (there are, however, overwritten drafts as well as telegraphic despatches without analysis).

The numbering of dispatches is not continuous.

Since the documents were sent from Istanbul and mostly from the former Ottoman ministry of finances’s depositories, they mainly deal with financial issues and are related to all the former Ottoman provinces ( the Balkans, Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa).

The fonds 283A includes 469 archival units (that is, folders) stored into 7 boxes. Most of the folders only contains one single document, but sometimes there are two to three, in rare cases even more documents. Some of the documents are torn and therefore are just fragments simply because the initial purpose of their transportation to Bulgaria was to be recycled in a paper mill as said above. Some other documents are in a poor condition, the edges being rotten and the text partly illegible. These damaged documents had already been taken out for chemical restoration when the inventory was made by Orlin Sabev, therefore they could not have been included into it.
The documents of fonds 283A date from the mid-16th to the early 20th century. The earliest document is dating from 1550 (fragment of a register of zeamets in the district of Doha), while the latest one is from 1908 (related to revenue collection). The 19th century documents prevail, however the number of the 17th- and 18th-century documents is also considerable. In terms of content, almost all of them deal with financial issues related mostly to incomes from taxes, expenses for the officers who guarded the fortress of Jerusalem, as well as some other minor fortresses in the region, and transfer of waqf posts with the respective salary from one holder (mostly because of his death) to another holder. Having this in mind, the documents of Fonds “Jerusalem” preserved in the National Library in Sofia could be useful for studying the socio-economic history of Jerusalem and its province during the Ottoman period.

The descriptions mention in parenthesis Gregorian dates, and into an other set of parenthesis Hijri dates and Rumi dates. When the author of the description could not read the spelling for sure, words have been put into square brackets.
In addition, the author wrote for a number of nouns the spelling in modern Turkish into parenthesis.

Finally, the nature of this fonds couldn't provide a properly structured analysis according to international standards of archival description, so we chose to divide the inventory into artificial series of 50 items, in order to ease the reading and searching.