Download Rare Documents, Manuscripts, Books & Newspapers on the history of Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey & the Ottoman Empire

Yusuf Jahshan (c. 1760s), a Diary from Ramla, Palestine

Yusuf Jahshan (c. 1760s), Book of Daniel, Ramla, Palestine

Download Yusuf Jahshan’s 18th-century copy of the Book of Daniel. I completed a partial transliteration and annotation (download here and download here). You can read more about Yusuf Jahshan here.

Filastin (1911-1912), a bi-weekly Arabic periodical published in Jaffa

Download 1911-1912 copies of Filastin, one of the first Arabic periodicals to appear in Palestine after the Ottoman Constitutional Revolution of 1908. It was published twice a week in Jaffa, and distributed widely across Palestine. If you want to learn more about Filastin, talk to Emanuel Beška, Louis Fishman, Sam Dolbee, Shay Hazkani and others. Ping me if you need an introduction.

Ottoman Archival Records, depicting disease rates in Mount Lebanon, (1915-1916)

Download charts and bar graphs painted by Ottoman Bureaucrats during World War I in Mount Lebanon. I wrote about some of them here. These documents can be found at the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA)in Istanbul, under the record name, DH.İ.UM.EK 84/9.

Download hundreds of Turkish and Ottoman documents, letters and private papers from Haldun Gürmen and other prominent Turkish scholars (1920s-1970s).

Download the Gaza Collection. This collection consists of hundreds of documents related to social, political and economic history of Gaza, specifically, and Palestine, more generally, from the 1910s-1970s, with the bulk of the material from the 1920s-1950s. Palestine Nexus acquired this collection from Gaza’s only antique dealer, Saleem Elrayes. We are making the collection freely available to the public for the first time.

Download The Palestinian Arab Index, 1946. Al-Lajna al-Thaqafa al-‘Arabiyya, al-Kitab al-‘Arabi al-Filastini (n.p.: Matba‘at al-Liwa al-Tijariyya, 1946). This book constitutes one of the most comprehensive and contemporary indices of books published either in Palestine or by Palestinian Arabs in the first half of the 20th century. It’s an invaluable resource for anyone studying Palestinian or modern Middle East history.

Muhibb al-Din al-Hamawi (d. 1608), al-Durra al-Mudi’a fi al-Rihla al-Misriyya

This manuscript (Landberg 437) is an account of al-Hamawi’s voyage to Egypt in 1590 .

Murtada ibn Mustafa al-Kurdi (d.1734), Tadhhib al-Atwar fi ‘Aja’ib al-Amsar

This manuscript (Berlin: Sprenger 23a, film: 1369) is an account of the little known Damascene traveller, Murtada al-Kurdi.

‘Abd al-Qadir Abi al-Sa‘ud (c. 1840-1), Min Misr ila Islambul (Dar al-Kutub Manuscripts, Bab al-Khalq #755, Cairo, Egypt)

‘Abd al-Qadir Abi al-Sa‘ud (c. 1840-1), Min Misr ila Islambul (Dar al-Kutub, Bab al-Khalq #755, Cairo, Egypt)

This is an account of the Jerusalemite’s al-Sa‘ud travels from Jerusalem to Istanbul. For more on the manuscript, see ʻImād ʻAbd al-Salām Raʼūf’s piece here.

The Geography of Palestine, 1904 (Jurji al- Khuri Sbiridun Sarruf (trans.), Jughrafiyat Filastin: Li-Isti‘mal Madaris al-Qabr al-Muqaddas al-‘Amma (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Qabr al-Muqqadas, al-Mutakhassa bi-dayr al-Run al-‘Amir, 1904)

In 1904, Sbiridun Sarruf published The Geography of Palestine bilingually in Greek and Arabic, the first of its kind in history. It was geared towards third-grade students of the Greek Orthodox schools. In the book, Palestine stretched from the Galilee in the north to the southern Judaean mountains in the south, and to the mountains on the Eastern side of the Jordan River on the East. For more on the book, see my dissertation, here, page 180.

The History of Jerusalem, 1920. Khalil Totah and Bulus Shihadah, Tarikh al-Quds wa-Daliluha (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Mir’at al- Sharq, 1920)

Totah and Shihadeh were 2 of the earliest Palestinians to write a History of Jerusalem in the 20th century. The book surveyed Jerusalem’s ancient and modern history, covered the city’s holy sites and religious significance. I discuss this book in great depth in my MA thesis — Zachary J. Foster, “Arab historiography in Mandatory Palestine, 1920--1948" (unpublished MA Thesis, Georgetown University, 2011), 1- 73, here.

A Palestinian Arab Index, 1946. Al-Lajna al-Thaqafa al-‘Arabiyya, al-Kitab al-‘Arabi al-Filastini (n.p.: Matba‘at al-Liwa al-Tijariyya, 1946)

This book constitutes one of the most comprehensive and contemporary indices of books published either in Palestine or by Palestinian Arabs in the first half of the 20th century. It’s an invaluable resource for anyone studying Palestinian or modern Middle East history.

Download selections from A History of Gaza (1943) 'Arif al-'Arif, Tarikh Gazza (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Dar al-Aytam al-Islamiyya, 1943). This is the first History of Gaza written and published in Arabic in the 20th century.

Download Greater Lebanon (1924). Yusuf Sufayr, Jughrafiyat Lubnan al-Kabir wa-Hukumat Suriya wa-Filastin (Beirut: Matabi‘ Kuzma, 1924)

Download this Ottoman geography book published in 1875 in Istanbul by Ahmet Hamdi. احمد حمدي, اصول جغرافياي كبير, يحيى افندي مطبعهسي

Download the Harissa Monastery Diaries from Lebanon (1914-1918).

Download 30,000 British archival documents related to Egypt, ~1900-1925

Download hundreds of unique Ottoman Documents from the 19th and 20th centuries. Document topics: miscellaneous. (source: the sahaflar çarşısıs in Beyoğlu, Instanbul).

Download French documents related to the domestic politics in Alexandretta, also known as Hatay, before and after its handover from French controlled Syria to Turkey.

Download A History of Palestine (Tārīkh Filasṭīn), first published in 1923 by ʻUmar al-Ṣāliḥ al-Barghūthī and Khalīl Ṭūṭaḥ. تاريخ فلسطين - عمر الصالح البرغوثى وخليل طوطح