Traces of Polycentric Archival Practices in the Ḥaram al-Sharīf Corpus

2023–2025

RFE17

Ḥaram al-Sharīf Document #076 (verso): Judicial confirmation by a Jerusalem judge, a Damascus judge, and several notary witnesses from the years 771-773/1369-72 of an acknowledgement (on the recto side) by a woman named Sufrā Khātūn bint al-Bāwardī regarding the dedication of various movable goods for an endowment which she established in Jerusalem; with archival notes at the top of the document. Jerusalem, al-Ḥaram al-sharīf, Islamic Museum, © Mohammad H. Ghosheh

This project examines and contextualises traces of archival practices in the Ḥaram al-sharīf corpus. The variety of documentary subcorpora in the Ḥaram corpus testifies to a world of multifaceted and polycentric documentary and archival processes in 8th/14th century Jerusalem. In the first phase, this research aims to record the identifiable textual traces of archival practices in each documentary subcorpus and to complement this with the investigation of material traces of preservation and organisation through the analysis of the source material on a microscale. This project aims further to contribute to an understanding of the documents’ archival histories before and after they became part of the collection, as it is constituted today in the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem, by analysing the intersections of the multiple documentary, temporal, spatial, and material variables of archival practices. To contextualise these archival histories in their particular socio-cultural contexts, this project analyses how the strategic preservation of documents is related to the local and transregional structures of political authority. Overall, this research contributes to the broader debate on archival practices in the pre-Ottoman Middle East and develop a detailed understanding of the polycentric networks of archival sites and actors in 8th/14th century Jerusalem.

People

Project lead: Anna Steffen