A Migration Story from İstanbul to Sofia: The Ottoman Archival Records in Bulgarian St Cyril and Methodius National Library

Abstract

With the Ottoman archival records it hosts, Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria, is the third biggest Ottoman archive center of the world following Istanbul and Cairo. St Cyril and Methodius National Library, which is located here, are extremely important institutions for Turkish history. The national library has more than one million Ottoman archival records. It is possible to come across an archival record concerning a wide geography where Ottoman State reigned. A small part of the archival records in the library consists of the records descended from the Ottoman Empire while retreating from Bulgaria. A great majority of the archival records are made up of the records sold to Bulgaria in 1931 as scrap paper due to a great deal of neglect. This study informs about the Ottoman archival records sold to a paper factory near Sofia as scrap paper by Istanbul Financial Office in May 1931 and then placed in Bulgarian St Cyril Methodius National Library. In this context, this archive was firstly displayed in general St. Cyril and Methodius National Library in Bulgaria; and the department of the National Library Rare Works, which serves within the body of the National Library. After that, the migration story of the Archive of Finance stretching from Istanbul to Sofia, which constitutes a large part of the archival records found in the Rare Works Department, and came here because of big chains of negligence. These developments experienced in this process are discussed in this study.