This month I am back in Tunis to visit the Tunisian National Archives, where I am able to spend a few weeks doing research thanks to an AIMS Short-Term Research Grant (Thanks, AIMS!). I am here because the Tunisian archives house the official correspondence of Saʿīd al-Shammākhī, who was both wakīl for the Bey of … Continue reading Baha’is and Ibadis in the Tunisian Archives | البهائيون والإباضية في الأرشيف التونسي

On 12 September 1878, Hadj Ahmed Ben Othman El Mzabi died in the Valide Sultan hospital in the Sultan Mahmud quarter of Istanbul. He had been working in the Ottoman capital as a confiseur, or 'confectioner,' making sugary sweets. At the time of his death, his wife and children were neither in Istanbul nor in … Continue reading The Mzabi Confectioner of Istanbul: a story from the archives of the 19th century | الحلاوي المزابي في إسطانبول: قصة من أرشيفات القرن التاسع عشر

This week, I am in France at the Centre des Archives diplomatiques de Nantes looking for documents connecting Ibadis in Jerba and Cairo. I did a similar visit in January to the British National Archives (Kew) in London (with generous support of the Humboldt-Yale History Network) where I looked primarily at the correspondence of the … Continue reading Jerba in European Archives: The Ben Ibrahim Family & the Consulates of France and Britain in the 19th century | جربة في الأرشيفات الأوروبية: عائلة “بن إبراهيم” وقنصليات فرنسا وبريطانية في القرن التاسع عشر

While working through the private archive of French Orientalist Roger LeTourneau (d. 1971) at the Archives nationales d'outre mer (ANOM) in Aix-en-Provence last year, I came across an unexpected letter.  [1] The letter was in a folder containing materials used to prepare LeTourneau and H.R. Idris' translation of the Ibadi text known as the Kitāb … Continue reading A Letter from the archive about Sedrata and Abū Zakariyā al-Warjalānī | رسالة من الأرشيف حول سدراتة وأبي زكرياء الورجلاني