This fonds consists in the minutes of meetings of the Arab Municipal Council of Jerusalem from its creation in 1948 to its dissolution in 1967. In most cases, one minute matches one meeting, except for one relating to meetings held during three days in a row (1961-04-16 to 1961-04-18 - B937-3). The lacks observed in the original numbers given to these meetings and documents point out that one minute is missing for the beginning of summer 1955 and another one for autumn 1955 (B936-7). Moreover, the minutes of the meetings held between January 1958 and December 1959 could not be found. Therefore, a chronological gap exists between the folders B936-11 and B937-1.
Order numbers were given by the Arab Municipality itself to each of these meetings, apparently starting back from 1 when a new council was composed, except for opening sessions and irregular meetings which were named as such and not counted. From December 1963, confidential debates could occur during a meeting. In this case, two minutes were issued with the same meeting order number: a regular one and a confidential one (e.g. minutes of the meeting of the Municipal Council held on 1963-12-11 – B938-2).
The fonds allows to retrace not only the creation of the Arab Municipal Council of Jerusalem after 1948, but also the relations established with other political, social, religious institutions, its humanitarian action and its ordinary management until the 1967 war.
The Sharia court records constitute one the richest sources for the social and economic history of Jerusalem, since this court was, “by and large, the sole legal arbiter and a primary instrument of social control” (Doumani, 1985) until Ibrahim Pasha’s reforms in the 1830s. These records deal with all realms of human interaction, from personal status issues, sales contracts, building permits to civil and criminal cases. However, after the Ottoman judicial reforms of 1876 and the establishment of the nizamîya court system, the sharia courts were no longer dealing with criminal cases and less civil cases could be taken before them. Their function was further curtailed by the British mandate authorities who limited them to the Muslim community.
The shari‘a court registers (sijillât mahkama shar‘îyya) of Jerusalem represent the oldest and most complete collection of Ottoman period court registers in Palestine, covering the years 1529-1917. Microfilms dating from the Ottoman period are accessible in the Islamic Archives in Abu Dis, at the Centre for Manuscripts and Documents of the University of Jordan in Amman, in the library of the University of Al-Najah in Nablus and in the library of the University of Haifa.
The described items were selected according to the period covered by the project and the earthquake of 1837.
(Mahkama Shar’îyya al-Quds al-Sharîf (MSQSThe consulate’s archives show how worked the representatives of France in Jerusalem since 1842 and reveal whom they interacted with : local authorities, the different communities living there, Consulates from other countries, the French Embassy and the French Foreign Office.
These documents are also a way to understand the political and religious conflicts that took place from time to time during that period (Crimean War in 1853).
This collection is divided into 19 lists (sections). It is the largest collection held by the National Archives of Armenia (HAA).
بدون عنوانExample fonds Scope and content (ISAD 3.3.1)
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.
بدون عنوانTo be completed.
بدون عنوانMgr Testa took over the archive of the Apostolic Delegation after his entry to Jerusalem, on 18 June, 1948. The archive contains 38 folders concerning the administrations of the Apostolic Delegates Gustavo Testa, Arthur Hughes, Silvio Oddi and Giuseppe Sensi. The documentation covers the period 1935-1962. The documentation concerning the government of Mgr Valerio Valeri has been lost in 1948 when the palace of the Apostolic Delegation was destroyed. A well-structured filing plan is available for the government of Testa, Oddi and Sensi. The archive is accessible until 1939.
بدون عنوانThis collection includes papers from the Armenian Community of Syria to the Government of the Soviet Armenia. It is divided into 5 lists.
The documents from this fond were brought from Syria: it means that it includes papers about the inner life of the Armenian Community of Syria.
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.
بدون عنوان