Tag Archives: Open Jerusalem

Conferences

Opening Open Jerusalem: OJ International Workshop







The project’s international workshop, entitled “Opening Open Jerusalem: Tracing Historical Paths through the Jerusalem Archives Digital Platform,” takes place at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice on 8–9 October 2018.

Read the full program

It aims to serve as a forum for presenting the new Open Jerusalem web platform (www.openjerusalem.org), deepening discussions and initiating scientific debates, with contributions from members of the Open Jerusalem team, scholars specializing in related topics, urban historians and specialists of the region.

The online catalogue of the Open Jerusalem project is for researchers, students, professionals and members of the public interested in late modern history of Jerusalem. The catalogue contains summary descriptions, transcripts or digitised documents of thousand of records from numerous archives related to the history of late Ottoman and Mandate Jerusalem.

Despite the results already achieved, other archives remain to be identified. Open Jerusalem’s work goes on, ready to discover new traces of Jerusalem’s past, present and future.

Conferences

The Digital Past of a City. Open Jerusalem at “(De)Constructing Digital History”

Benjamin Suc (Limonade&Co), Maria Chiara Rioli (UPEM/Open Jerusalem) and Louise Corvasier (UPEM/Open Jerusalem) are among the speakers at the fourth edition of the annual Digital Humanities conference organized by the Maison européenne des sciences de l’homme et de la société (MESHS). This year’s edition is co-organized with the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) of the University of Luxembourg. The theme is: “(De)constructing Digital History“. The conference will take place in November 27-29, 2017 in Lille, France.

The paper presentation will be devoted to “Le passé numérique d’une ville. Enjeux et potentialités de digital history à travers le projet Open Jerusalem“.

DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAMME

 

Seminars

Open Jerusalem at the French School of Rome

Jerusalem (El-Kouds), approach to the city. House of Caiaphas. © Library of Congress

L’atelier d’automne du projet ERC “Open Jerusalem” aura lieu les 25-26 septembre 2017 à l’Ecole française de Rome. L’équipe-coeur travaillera sur l’avancée de la base de donnée AtoM, sur la configuration du futur portail web et sur la préparation du colloque final prévu à l’été 2018. Elle présentera également les premiers résultats du projet aux membres de l’Ecole intéressés. L’atelier n’est pas ouvert au public.

The Fall workshop of the ERC project “Open Jerusalem” will be held at the French School of Rome on 25-26 September 2017.  The core team will work on the development of the AtoM database, the conception of the future web platform and the preparation of the final conference scheduled for Summer 2018. The team will also present the first outputs of the project to the members of the French School of Rome. The workshop is not open to the public.

Conferences

Normes et territorialité entre Orient et Occident : invention, partage et mémoire des espaces sacrés (IXe-XIXe siècle)

Jérusalem, 29-31 mai 2017

Programme Normes et pratiques du religieux entre Orient et Occident

École française de Rome, École française d’Athènes, Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem

CéSor, CERCEC, Université catholique de Louvain, CRHIA-Université de Nantes

On 29-31 May, 2017 Vincent Lemire and Stéphane Ancel (director and member of the core team of Open Jerusalem) will intervene at the conference “Normes et territorialité entre Orient et Occident : invention, partage et mémoire des espaces sacrés (IXe – XXe s.)”. Their presentation will discuss the role of the Ethiopian Orthodox community in late-Ottoman Jerusalem: “Construire un récit pour justifier une présence : une histoire-palimpseste de la communauté éthiopienne orthodoxe de Jérusalem (vers 1905)”

La géographie du « fait religieux » renvoie à une définition plurielle du territoire entendu comme un espace rattaché à une communauté de croyants. L’évolution de l’Église latine et l’institutionnalisation progressive de ses pratiques a mis en avant les cadres spatiaux de l’administration cultuelle, perçus à travers les frontières entre les juridictions. Pourtant, si ces principes se référaient en apparence aux règles déjà énoncées dans les premiers conciles chrétiens, la tradition issue des christianismes orientaux a continué bien plus longtemps à concevoir les territoires de l’Église comme le produit de phénomènes éminemment sociaux. Dans cette perspective, les espaces sacrés prenaient la forme d’empreintes façonnées par les divers liens entre les lieux de culte ou les sièges de l’autorité cléricale et les rassemblements locaux des fidèles. Ce contraste s’observe notamment dans la nature des structures paroissiales, présentées précocement, dans l’usage latin, comme des unités territoriales et, dans les communautés orientales, confondues avec les implantations de l’administration princière puis désignées comme des « lieux d’affluence » des croyants – ainsi le приход dans les communautés slaves. Enfin, la topographie sacrée emprunte autant au réel qu’au symbolique, dans un échange constant entre les écrits du religieux – Écritures saintes, hagiographie, récits de pèlerinage – les pratiques liturgiques, les usages sociaux et les itinéraires arpentés par les fidèles et les religieux qui participent à la définition d’un « territoire sacré » à partir de lieux sanctifiés. Cette géographie se complique encore par les concurrences entre les Églises et les communautés autour de lieux communs d’une part et par les cadres normatifs, relevant des espaces chrétiens et islamiques, qui définissent l’usage des lieux cultuels d’autre part. Notre rencontre souhaite aborder chacun de ces trois domaines sur le temps long (entre IXe et XIXe siècles) à travers l’étude de cas concrets choisis dans les zones de contact entre les christianismes d’Occident et d’Orient, depuis le sud de la péninsule Italienne jusqu’aux régions de la Méditerranée orientale, en passant par les régions de l’Europe orientale et balkanique.

Voir le programme ici: Programme_Jérusalem_29_31_mai_2017 et les résumés là: Normes et territorialité_Résumés

Seminars

Jerusalem through the Hebrew Press

Ifpo & IFJ

are pleased to invite you to a public lecture by
  تقدم محاضرة لـ 
Abdul-Hameed Al-Kayyali (Ifpo, Research Associate, Department of Medieval and Modern Arabic Studies / Open Jerusalem)
عبد الحميد الكيالي- المعهد الفرنسي للشرق الأدنى- عمّان
Hassan Ahmad Hassan (University of Jordan, Faculty of Foreign Languages)
حسن أحمد حسن- الجامعة الأردنية- كلية اللغات الأجنبية
 القدس نهاية الفترة العثمانية في عيون الصحافة العبرية: مقاربة نقدية
Late Ottoman Jerusalem Through the Eyes of the Hebrew Press : A Critical Approach
Lecture in Arabic / المحاضرة بالعربية
     (في المعهد الفرنسي (عمان، جبل الويبدة
    الثلاثاء، 14 آذار/ مارس 2017 في الساعة السادسة مساءً
Tuesday, March 14th 2017 at 6 pm – Institut français (Amman,  Jabal al-Weibdeh)
عمومًا، تُعد الصحافة المحلية مصدرًا أوليًا للتاريخ المحلي والمدني، وفي سياق الحقبة العثمانية المتأخرة برزت هذه الصحافة كأداة فاعلة في شرعنة المدينة بوصفها فضاءً تشاركيًا في المجتمع. في ضوء هذه الفكرة الأساسية وغيرها، يتناول الباحثان، وبشكل نقدي، جوانب محددة من المجال العام للقدس كما تعرضه أحد أبرز الصحف العبرية في فلسطين العثمانية. 
It is widely held that local press is an important primary source for local and urban history. In the context of late Ottoman Jerusalem this press emerged as an active tool in legitimating the city as shared unit of society. In the light of this idea and others, the two researchers critically address certain aspects of Jerusalem’s public sphere as portrayed in one of the most prominent Hebrew newspapers in Ottoman Palestine.
 
Al-Kayyali, historian, holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Aix-Marseille in the “Studies of Arab and Muslim World”. He focuses in his research on the question of “cultural and religious interrelations” that includes: Arab Jews​ ​in general and​ Jerusalemite Jews in late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine.
عبد الحميد الكيالي: باحث في مجال التاريخ، يحمل درجة الدكتوراة في “دراسات العالم العربي والإسلامي” من جامعة إكس- مرسيليا، ويركز في أبحاثه على العلاقات المتبادلة في بعديْها الثقافي والديني، والتي تتضمن اليهود العرب بشكل عام، ويهود القدس في نهاية الفترة العثمانية والانتداب البريطاني في فلسطين.
Hassan, historian and linguist, holds a master degree from University of Jordan in “Jewish Studies”. He focuses in his research on the question of Hebrew press in late Ottoman and mandatory Palestine.
حسن أحمد: باحث في مجاليْ التاريخ واللغة، يحمل درجة الماجستير في الدراسات اليهودية من الجامعة الأردنية، ويركز في أبحاثه على الصحافة العبرية في نهاية الفترة العثمانية والانتداب البريطاني في فلسطين.
Conferences

The politics of archives and the practices of memory

“The Politics of Archives and the Practices of Memory,” is the theme of the fourth annual meeting of NDPS, to be held March 3-4, 2017, at the Watson Institute, Brown University.

New Directions in Palestinian Studies (NDPS) provides a platform for rigorous intellectual exchange on new directions in research and writing about Palestine and the Palestinians, supports the work of emerging scholars, and promotes the integration Palestinian studies into the larger streams of critical intellectual inquiry.

The central question of the fourth annual meeting is: What does it mean for the colonized, the disenfranchised, and the displaced to produce narratives through archival and memorial practices? Other theoretical, empirical, and comparative questions follow. How are archives and memories produced, assembled, and mobilized in settler colonial contexts? In what ways are archives and memories sites of struggle and appropriation, and looting? How can we theorize archives and memory from perspectives critical of state-centric political configurations and conventional concepts of sovereignty?

An archive fever has been coursing through the Palestinian body politic for two decades now. What explains this phenomenon and how has it been shaped by the information technology revolution? How have artistic and social media interventions reconstructed the archival and the memorial as sites for research? In what ways can one analyze novels, poetry, and other forms of literature as forms of memory and archives without instrumentalizing these literary genres?

Vincent Lemire, director of the Open Jerusalem project, will present the work conducted by OJ on Jerusalem history throughout dozens of archives in Jerusalem and around the world.

Research

Inventorying Undisclosed Archives: The Italian Consulate in Jerusalem

Antonella Di Domenico*

The analysis of the holdings of the Italian consulate in Jerusalem collected in the Historical Archives of the Foreign Ministry in Rome is among the work pursued by Open Jerusalem in order to narrate an entangled history of citadinité – including the history of institutions, actors and practice, with a special attention devoted to unlocking archives – of a global city like Jerusalem from 1840 to 1940. immagine_post_deposito
These records haven’t been inventoried yet and they are currently not available to researchers. The holding consists of 200 files divided into 4 deposits: 1936 (concerning records from 1863 to 1925); 1974 (concerning records from 1878 to 1951); 1976 (this memorandum of deposit has been recently discovered); 1995 (concerning records from 1936 to 1977).
The holding is located in the Foreign Ministry Archives, ‘Archivio storico consolati’ section (F1, F2), covering 22 linear meters.
The history documented by these records begins in 1872, the year of the establishment of the Royal Italian Consulate in Jerusalem. This holding contributes important information not only about the activities and the institutional life of the Consulate itself but also of the complex dynamics between the Consulate and the city of Jerusalem, its inhabitants and structures.
In order to retrace the history of these archives and how they are now organized in the Archives, you cannot skip the figure of Count Quinto Mazzolini, emblematic politician of the Fascist period. Brother of the more well-known Diplomat Serafino, Quinto Mazzolini was Consul General of Jerusalem from 16 September 1936 to 20 June 1940. He was the first person to deposit the records of the Italian consulate in the Foreign Ministry Archives.
During his stay in Jerusalem, especially in the troubled years of the outbreak of the Second World War, Mazzolini actively worked to organise the papers of his office. He deposited the first part of the records in 1936, when he identified the records of what he called ‘the old archive’, depositing these records at the Foreign Ministry in Rome where they constituted the first part of the archives of the Italian consulate in Jerusalem. In 1940, after leaving Palestine, Mazzolini deposited other papers to the Foreign Ministry. Being forced to leave the Consulate for security reasons, he tried to keep at least a part of the records safe.
As attested by a cable dated 8 February 1951 with the object ‘L’archivio del Consolato in Gerusalemme trasferito a Roma‘ (The Consulate archive moved to Rome) the history of the records further became more complicated during the war. A part of the records were burnt, while another part was delivered to the Italian consulate of Spain that had assumed the protection of Italian interests in Palestine. Other records were moved to Rome. In 1945, Mazzolini probably sent the missing part of the records of the ‘Ufficio stralcio’ (the Removal Office, responsible for closing the work of a suppressed institution) to the Foreign Ministry Archives.

telespresso-1951
The records from 1872 to 1977 cover a wide spectrum of topics: educational institutions, cultural institutes, commercial, financial and political relations, issues of privileges and protectorates, protection of religious orders, conflicts among different rites. The subjects and the history of these records are of large interest for the scope of Open Jerusalem.
This new fond is rich of important sources for reconstructing the relations between Jerusalem’s inhabitants and the institutions at that time.
In order to inventory the records and make them accessible to scholars, Open Jerusalem and the Historical Archives of the Foreign Ministry (particularly thanks to Stefania Ruggeri) have established a partnership that has already led to some archival interventions: overview of the files; preliminary analysis of the holding; first arrangement and reallocation of the files, the reconstruction of a filing plan and the drafting of a list of deposits which is becoming more and more analytical as the archival work proceeds. These interventions will conclude with the publication of the inventory of the fond of the Italian consulate in Jerusalem in 2017 that will be published by Open Jerusalem and the Italian Foreign Ministry Historical Archives.

* An extended version of this article was presented by Stéphane Ancel, Antonella Di Domenico, Roberto Mazza and Maria Chiara Rioli at the French School in Rome in the workshop about “The Italian Consular services and the long Risorgimento” (September 29-30).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lucia Rostagno, La diplomazia italiana e il nazionalismo palestinese (1861-1939), Roma: Bardi, 1996

Nir Arielli, Fascist Italy and the Middle East, 1933–40, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Gianni Scipione Rossi, Serafino Mazzolini – Mussolini e il diplomatico. La vita e i diari di Serafino Mazzolini, un monarchico a Salò, Catanzaro: Rubbettino, 2005

Ambasciate, legazioni e consolati italiani all’estero del Ministero degli affari esteri, Rome: Tipografia riservata del Ministero degli affari esteri, 1950-1957

Antonella Di Domenico, Il fondo del Consolato generale di Gerusalemme nell’Archivio storico del Ministero degli affari esteri. Strutture originarie e versamenti, BA dissertation, University of Rome – La Sapienza, 2015

Antonella Di Domenico, Elenco del I versamento del fondo del Consolato Generale di Gerusalemme (1843 – 1925)

Posts, Research, Seminars

Open Jerusalem at the French School in Rome

Ecole française de Rome

Stéphane Ancel, Antonella Di Domenico, Roberto Mazza and Maria Chiara Rioli are among the speakers at the workshop organised by the French School in Rome (September 29-30 2016) on the Italian consulates during the “long Risorgimento” (18th-19th century).

They will present their work on the fond of the Italian Consulate in Jerusalem, aiming at inventorying and analysing these undisclosed records, in the framework of the partnership between Open Jerusalem and the Historical Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

See the full programme here.

International Symposium, Posts

International Symposium (10-12 May 2016) – Programme

programmeprogram2

Download the full programme

The Open Jerusalem project (full title: Opening Jerusalem Archives: For a connected history of citadinité in the Holy City, 1840–1940) is funded by the European Research Council (starting grant) from 2014 to 2019 and based at the Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée University in France. The project is directed by Vincent Lemire and run jointly with the researchers of the core team: Stephane Ancel, Yasemin Avcı, Leyla Dakhli, Angelos Dalachanis, Abdul-Hameed al-Kayyali, Falestin Naili, Yann Potin and Maria Chiara Rioli. Additionally, so far more than forty scholars from Europe, the Middle East, the United States and Canada have been involved in the project.

The Open Jerusalem project aims to unlock and connect different archives and sources in order to investigate the ordinary, entangled history of a global city through the lens of the concept of urban citizenship (citadinité). Citadinité is for a city what nationality is for a country and materializes itself in institutions, actors and practices. The project provides a bottom–up history of Jerusalem, a perspective that has been neglected by historians of the city, who have been generally preoccupied with ideological and geostrategic issues. This history is also a connected one because, within a complex documentary archipelago, the researchers seek points of contact revealing the exchanges, interactions, conflicts and, at times, hybridizations between different populations and traditions. The project is characterized by the scientific quality of its research tools, the close attention it pays to local archives and its unbiased openness to all demographic segments of the Holy City’s population. The transition of the project from an archival into an academic one is proceeding in three concurrent phases: the first involves creating an overview of the available resources, the second the organization of inventories and their presentation in a web portal and the third the development of a new urban history of Jerusalem from 1840 to 1940 through books and several other publications.

The project’s first international symposium, entitled “Revealing Ordinary Jerusalem (1840-1940): New archives and perspectives on urban citizenship and global entanglements,” is taking place at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies in Rethymno (Greece) on 10-12 May 2016. It aims to serve as a forum for deepening discussions and initiating scientific debates, with contributions from members of the Open Jerusalem team, scholars specializing in related topics, urban historians and specialists of the region.