The “Digital Cairo” sub-project of La fabrique du Caire moderne program is happy to announce that it financed the digitization of early issues of the Egyptian official gazette, held in the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF). Starting with n. 3 (Jumādā al-Ākhar 1244 – January 1829), these early issues of al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyya (the original Ottoman title is Vakayi-i Mısriyye) are in great condition and the BnF quality of scanning is also superb.
The years covered are hijrī 1244-1253 (and a supplement from 1255), that is, 1829-1838 (and the supplement’s date is 1839), roughly the period of the Egyptian occupation of the Syrian provinces by Mehmed Ali’s army and important changes within the Nile valley and the city of Cairo prominently. The most complete collection is in the year 1829 (1244-1245) but there is also a good number of issues available in the period 1830-1833 (1245-1249).
Click here for the calendarial (year-by-year) view of the available issues.
Not unusually in the case of early official journals in Ottoman provinces, this journal is in both Ottoman Turkish and Arabic (see Jara’id chronology), Ottoman being the first language. As our “Digital Cairo” project is based on a selection of urbanism news from this journal we shall publish a detailed description of the journal in the project’s website (under construction).
A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities helped financing the digitization of this important piece of Egyptian and world cultural heritage, accomplished by the BnF digitization office.
(A.M.)
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