Russia and Palestine in the Last Century of the Russian Empire (Based on the Materials of the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia)

The article outlines the main results of the project on the introduction of documents from the holdings of the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia, relating to the history of the Russian presence in Palestine from the early 18th to the early 20th century into scholarly discourse. The greatest interest of researchers of Russian Palestine is a set of documents relating to the organization of the Russian presence in the Holy Land. First of all, these are letters from the heads of the Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission to A.S. Norov. These letters testify to the acute crisis in which the Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem found itself. A.S. Norov’s correspondence with the promi­nent biblical scholar Konstantin Tischendorf in 1857–1864 touches upon a number of important topics, including the financing of the German scholar’s journey to Sinai and Palestine by the Russian government; the acquisition by the Imperial Public Library of a collection of manuscripts belonging to him, and, most importantly, the unknown details of the acquisition of the famous “Sinai Bible”. One of the results of the work on the identification of materials was the discovery of a manuscript created during the Crimean War and related to the “Holyland Case”, which became one of the occasions of armed confrontation between the world powers. The matter concerns an unknown manuscript copy of a translation of a work by the Catholic abbot J.I. Michon. While describing the materials related to the project theme, the members of the research team found a list of translation of the work of the Jerusalem patriarch Chrysanthus Notara “History and Description of the Holy Land and the Holy City of Jerusalem”, which is the most important source on the history of Palestine of the 18th century. In total, as a result of work on the project, the research team prepared 20 publications, in which many valuable sources on the history of the Russian presence in the Holy Land were introduced into the scholarly discourse.