Jerusalem’s Islamic archives : sources for the question of the Waqf in the Ottoman period

Abstract

This survey intends to describe and elucidate several vital first-hand sources available for the study of Ottoman Jerusalem. Mainly, these sources are those documents found in the religious court registries (Sijillat al-mahkama al-shariyya) of Jerusalem and archival documents from the Jordanian Ministry of the Waqf of Jerusalem. These archival documents are located in various institutions in Jerusalem and outside the city. They are of considerable importance in studying religious endowments (Waqf) in Jerusalem, and in Palestine in a general. On the one hand, they provide researchers with a broad field of information about social, economic, cultural and political life in the Ottoman period. Further, the sources gain added interest when compared with similar documents from Ottoman cities besides Jerusalem.