The Commercial Court in Ottoman Damascus : An Introduction to the Commercial Court Registers in the Center of Historical Documents in Damascus

<p>The aim of this article is to introduce the Commercial Court Registers of Damascus in the Ottoman period, which are kept in the Center of Historical Documents in Damascus (Markaz al-watha'iq al-ta'rikhiya bi-Dimashq) on the basis of my experience in this Center. I worked there from July 1999 to July 2001 as an archivist, with the aids of JICA, and was responsible for setting up of a database of the documents in this Center. In this time I dealt with the registers of the Commercial Court, which had little been used for historical studies. The "comercial court" registers are numbered from 1 to 156 but they are muddled up with registers of other courts (28 volumes of Courts of First Instance, 10volumes of Courts of Arbitration, etc.). I found that 99 of those 156 volumes were really registers of the Commercial Court of Damascus. They can be classified as the below: 1, daftar al-istid'a': 8 vols. 2, daftar al-jalab: 3 vols. 3, daftar al-sanadat: 7vols. 4, jarida al-dabt: 44 vols. 5, daftar al-qararat: 12 vols. 6, sijill al-i'lamat: 20 vols. 7, daftar al-hasilat: 3 vols. 8, Others: 2 vols. General information Age: These registers cover a period of about 30 years from 1885 to 1918 when Syria became independent of the Ottoman rule. Calendar: Dates used in those registers are basically on the Rumi calendar, although the Hijri calendar and rarely the Christian calendar are used too. Each case in registers is numbered consecutively and updated every Rumi New Year. Language: The page headings of almost all registers are printed in Ottoman-Turkish. While descriptions are usually written in Arabic but some types of registers are written in Ottoman-Turkish (see the below). The Civil Court Law issued in 1879 prescribes various types of registers of commercial courts according to the judicial process as the below. At first when a plaintiff send in his bill of complaint to the court, the date and counts are entered in the daftar al-istid'a' [art. 15-22]. This bill of complaint is copied and sent to a defendant. Next, The date of first instance is fixed according to the order in the daftar al-istid'a' and summonses are sent to both parties. In this time contents of the summons are written down in the daftar al-jalab [art. 23-34]. Then, the trial begin in the fixed date. The protocols (dabt) are kept with the president of the court during the trial, then they are fair-copied and bound as a book. This is the jarida al-dabt. All documents and certificates submitted to the court during the trial are entered in the daftar al-sanadat. The adjudication is written down in the daftar al-qararat when the judgment comes out, and the judgement paper (i'lam) issued to the parties is recorded on the sijill al-i'lamat. The Civil Court Law prescribes how to deal with the court registers. All registers are bound, then the president's seal is put on the top edge of each page and the page number is written below it. These registers are used after that the president and the scribe ascertain the total number of pages, write down it on the top and end of pages, and put their signatures and seals there [art. 6]. Detailed accounts of each type of registers are given below. 1, daftar al-istid'a': vol. 13, 23, 27, 35, 41, 48, 49, 55. Bills of complaint and their contents (the date, names of a plaintiff and a defendant, their nationalities and addresses, cause of action, name of the official who accept it) are recorded with numbering [Civil Court Law art. 6]. These registers actually contain this information in addition to numbers of sheets, signature of the scribe (katib al-dabt) and the result of suit. The space for a result of suit is filled with the date of judgment or that of registration on sijill al-i'lamat and registration number on it. If a case is called off, this space is blank. The registration number on this register is</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>