Luckily, the archives of Porphyry are now in a good condition and conserved in the St. Petersburg Department of the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences (fond 118). The Imperial Academy of Sciences acquired them after his death on April 19, 1885, as it was stated in the Porphyry’s testament.
Porphyry left the Academy a capital, the interest of which would fund the publication of his scientific works. In 1886 two members of the Russian Imperial Academy, Bychkov and Büler, reported about their preliminary work on systematization of the archives. At the same meeting of the Academy it was decided that Polychrony Syrku, a specialist in Byzantine and Old Slavonic studies would undertake the work of further systematization and description of Porphyry’s archive. The outcome of this work was impressive. Already in 1891 a printed catalogue of Porphyry’s papers appeared. Between 1894 and 1901 the Academy of Sciences published eight volumes of the Porphyry’s Journals. Finally, another important publication of
the “Porphyry’s Commission” are the two volumes of documents and official correspondence, prepared by the byzantinologist P. Bezobrazov. Based on both the published and unpublished archival material several research studies on Porphyry’s activities were made.
The fonds 118: an overlap between official documentation and personal papers:
The first set of documents, concerning Porphyry’s appointment to Jerusalem, refers to the official papers of the Holy Synod and to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Most of them are preserved in at least two copies—one or more in Porphyry’s archive, and the other in the archive of the Holy Synod. A third copy may be found in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Among them are the following: Porphyry’s letters to the over-prosecutor [ober-procuror] of the Holy Synod Count Nikolay Protasov (16), and to directors of the departments of the Synod (Serbinovich (85), Voitsehovich (2), Karasevsky (8). The next file (45) also contains official letters of Porphyry addressed to the Russian Ambassador at Constantinople Vladimir Titov (74) and to the Asian department of the Ministry of Foreign affairs. Many of them represent detailed
reports on the state of affairs in the Near East. Dossiers 46 and 47 contain 143 letters (from the 1848-53 period), addressed by Porphyry to the Russian Consul general at Beirut Constantine Basili, as well as one report about the Holy Sepulcre written for Emperor Nicolas I. The official answers of these persons form a separate file (49). Another group of interesting letters are addressed to Porphyry by the Russian consuls in Jaffa (G. Mostras) and in Beirut (C. Basili, file 50). Porphyry also corresponded with Boris Mansurov, the founder of the Palestine Committee. Most of the letters are focusing on Mount Athos, but one of them concerns the new head of the Russian mission in Jerusalem after the Crimean war, bishop Cyril Naumov. Porphyry found the appointment of a Russian bishop to Jerusalem completely wrong: first of all because the presence of two bishops in one town was against the church canons, and second, because the Cyril’s behavior was in his opinion “inappropriate”. Among the letters written by Porphyry to Russian high ecclesiastics, his correspondence with Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow should be specially pointed.
The papers of the Russian mission eo ipso are conserved in two big files (238 and 352 ff.), containing official correspondence of Porphyry with different persons in Russia and abroad, dating from the period 1842-54. Apart of letters by Basili and Titov, one can find here financial papers of the mission and also an architectural plan of the future house of the Russian mission, which was built in 1853. Of special importance is also a summary of the activities of Porphyry in Jerusalem, written by himself. During Porphyry’s absence from Jerusalem he was informed about the state of affairs by his assistant and member of the mission, hieromonk Theophan (8 letters dated 1851-52). Of course information on Jerusalem is dispersed in all his private correspondence from the period of his stay there. 19 letters are addressed to Greek high ecclesiastics, among them 11 to Patriarch of Jerusalem Cyril (1848-1854, 40 ff.). During his stay in Jerusalem, Porphyry wrote detailed notes on the history, geography, ethnography and statistics of Palestine. In a separate file he collected copies and translations of descriptions of the Holy Land by other persons, as well as journals of pilgrims of different countries and centuries. Among the copies of documents written by other persons, most important is the printed report of Boris Mansurov (the founder of the Palestine Commission, dated 1858), written after his visit to Jerusalem, followed by a letter of the Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich to Porphyry, and Porphyry’s opinion on Mansurov’s proposals.
Another note, which was also published later, belongs to Consul Basili (on the statistics of Syria and Palestine).20 The collection of Porphyry is rich in illustrative materials—gravures, sketches, drawings, and photos. Some of them are related to the Holy Land and Jerusalem.
This inventory includes the transcription (into Arabic and Turkish) and translation into English of the 18 volumes of reports (55% in Ottoman Turkish, 45% in Arabic) from the Ottoman municipality of Jerusalem between 1892 and 1917.
Без названияAs the Correspondence Office of Imperial Treasury is a unit that acts as the secretary of the ministry, this fonds includes official letters written by the ministry to the state offices in İstanbul and in the country.
The starting and ending Hijri dates for this fonds are: 1266-1342.
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 preface of 1984 Sofia’s catalogue explains the way the archival units are described:
[p. 30] From the point of view of diplomatics, the archives in Arabic and Ottoman-Turkish offer mainly the same documents: maktub, daftar, mahdar, sanad, etc. [...].
[p. 31] The elements of the description of each document are defined first of all by the characteristics of the material itself and by the ideas already expressed, concerning the importance of this archive which appears to be a solid basis for the study of important aspects of the economic, political, cultural and religious life of the people of North Africa, the Near and the Middle East, the Caucasus, etc. in the age of the Ottoman-Turkish feudalism. The experience of Bulgarian archivists, who have published archives in Bulgarian and foreign languages, preserved in the National Library and other institutions in the country has been taken into consideration.
In general every description of a document consists of two parts. Part I includes the following elements: date, place of issue, type and number of documents, author, addressee, a brief content and supplementary notes on it.
The date of issue or writing of the document is given first according to the Christian calendar and thereafter the Moslem (i.e. as it is given in the original). When one description contains several documents of different dates, we indicate the earliest and the latest with a dash (-) between the two. Thus we show the whole period covered by the documents [...]. In cases when there is no date on the document, or there are only fragments of the document whose date was eventually on the missing part we proceed as follows:
- if possible we date the document according to the historical event described in it [...].
- when the documents mention Turkish sultans or Grand wazirs, the date is given according to their rule. In cases when names of other well-known people in the political history of the Arab countries are mentioned and whose biographical data cannot be defined, we date the document according to their activity reflected in
it. If such a document bears also a stamp with a date, we record it at the end thus confirming our considerations when dating it. - in the cases when we date the documents only according to the Moslem date recorded on the seal of the document, we give only the initial date of the corresponding Christian year, which means that the document has not been written before that date.
Provided there is no way to date a document, because we cannot make use of any of the above-mentioned possibilities, we resort to paleographic data (paper, watermark, script, ink, handwriting). In such cases we denote the century only and when it is possible to be more concrete, supplement it with phrases like "the
beginning", "the end", "the first half", etc. [...].
The place of issue of the document shows the settlement in which it has been written or prepared and is given immediately after the date. When the name of the town is missing in the document but we can still define it by logical considerations we write it down in square brackets. When there is no possibility to define the place of issue we use the abbreviation "s.l." (sine loco).
The type of document (daftar, maktub, raftiyya, kasf, etc.) is not always mentioned in the text itself (or above it). In such case we define it on the basis of some principles in the Ottoman-Turkish diplomatics. When the description includes several documents of the same kind, the figure in brackets after the name
of the document shows their number [...]. When the archive unit contains documents of another type also, in some cases for clarity we mark down in brackets which consecutive leaf is the described document.
The author is the person or the authority that has issued the document. In most cases it comes from the same settlement in which the document has been prepared. For that reason the settlement is not mentioned again after his name and office. The name of the author is given in square brackets when it is missing in the document and it has been identified indirectly.
The addressee is the person or the institution to whom the document is addressed and the settlement where he is to be found. This element is not present in all descriptions, since in most cases it is difficult to be established. All additionally fixed data are placed also in square brackets.
The content of the document is the most important part of the description. Our ambition is to render it fully as much as possible and to give in concise form that information in the document which will be made use in further studies. The annotations points out first of all the event and the persons taking part in it, their position and titles, also the names of settlements, gamis, mazra'as, muqata'as, or it is mentioned whether the document contains such information.It is mentioned also whether the archive unit includes documents in Ottoman-Turkish and if so their content is also reflected in the annotation.
The supplementary notes can be of various kind, but the most common are the additional entries. These are the legalizations, notes, decisions, resolutions, accounts, etc., made on the top or in the margins of the main text by the financial authorities, predominantly in Ottoman Turkish. Moreover, in the earlier documents they are in “siyaqat”, “diwani” or in “inge diwani”. In order to avoid repetition, these details were not included in the description.
When the annotated document is “hugga zahriyya” (“hügget-i zahriyye”) we mention also the type of the document (original or copy in Ottoman-Turkish) given at the back. If the document was prepared by a person other than the one that had issued the “hugga zahriyya”, we mention his name and position as well [...].
Part II of the description of the documents is concerned with their paleographic characteristics. It includes the following elements: number and size of leaves, paper, condition of the document and text in respect to their preservation, watermark, ink, script, seals and reasons for dating.
The documents in Ottoman-Turkish and Arabic kept in the “Cyril and Methodius” National Library contain valuable material for the study of the social, economic, political and cultural development of the Arab countries from the XVIth to the XXth century.
These documents offer a rich material for studies in the field of the Arabic and the Ottoman-Turkish diplomatics and paleography, language research, as well as for special regional and town studies.
This fonds is part of the Archives of Religious Houses (or Archives of convents) held by the Historical Archive of the Custody of the Holy Land.
Structure of the fonds: Global extent: 67 files; 1875-11-01-1996-06-01
Series A, Assets and administration. Global extent: 12 files; Nov. 1875 - Sept. 1989
A-I, Special accounts. Global extent: 1 file; Nov. 1875 - Apr. 1878
A-II, Cash desk journal. Global extent: 2 files; Sept. 1977 - Sept. 1989
A-III, Revenues and expenditures, Minutes. Global extent: 1 file; July 1971 - Dec. 1974
A-IV, Revenues and expenditures. Global extent: 8 files; Oct. 1925 - Dec. 1982
Series B, Holy Masses. Global extent: 54 files; 1st. Aug. 1888 - 1st June 1996
B-I, Bastardelli. Global extent: 1 file; Jan. 1967 - Apr. 1979
B-II, Mixed registration. Global extent: 2 files; 24 Sept. 1921 - 4 Feb. 1943
B-III, Masses dedicated to benefactors ("Pro benefactoribus"). Global extent: 6 files; 1st Aug. 1888 - 8 Apr. 1962
B-IV, Masses "pro defunctis fratribus, pro parentibus religiosorum et iuxta kalendarium". Global extent: 9 files; 30 Aug. 1889 - 15 March 1995
B-V, Masses dedicated to the clergymen's relatives ("ad intentionem religiosorum de familia"). Global extent: 5 files; 1st Nov. 1923 - 29 Apr. 1962
B-VI, Masses “pro eleemosyna”. Global extent: 28 files; 21 Nov. 1923 - 1 June 1996
B-VI-I, Pro eleemosyna I. Ad intentionem dantis et p. custodis. Global extent: 15 files; 21 Nov. 1923 - 31 Dec. 1974
B-VI-II, Pro eleemosyna II. Ad intentionem dantis e gregoriane. Global extent: 8 files; 19 Sept. 1939 - 30 Apr. 1962
B-VI-III, Pro eleemosyna III. Corsi di gregoriane. Global extent: 5 files; 19 Apr. 1953 - 1st June 1996
B-VII, Masses “ad mentem ministri generalis et pro Capitulo”. Global extent: 2 files; 18 May 1960 - 1st Dec. 1979
B-IX, Masses “pro basilica Nazaret”. Global extent: 1 file; 16 July 1959 - 1st Sept. 1961
Series C, REgisters of the pilgrim priests. Global extent: 1 file; 5 Jan. 1926 - 29 Dec. 1962