No 3 (2024)

The article offers a general overview of the process of formation of the Jericho Expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and its activities since the 2010s. It shows the development of the tasks of this small group of scientists, gathered to carry out field work during the construction at the site of the Museum and Park Complex of the Russian Federation in Jericho. Publishing and analytical activities, interaction with the RFBR system later renamed to the Russian Scientific Information Centre (RSIC) and main achievements are presented. The expansion of its tasks to include work on the Russian presence and, in particular, participation in the life of Jerusalem in the middle of the second half of the 19^th century, the study of Byzantine and Islamic materials in Jericho, the study of the early museum collections of Russian representatives in the Holy Land, and a wide range of general topics is highlighted. The emphasis is placed on the influence of the expedition on the development of interest in eastern Mediterranean themes for the study of the Northern Black Sea region, as well as the inclusion among the practical tasks of the expedition of a historiographical survey of the antiquities of the “Russian sites”.

The article provides an overview of the early Byzantine testimonies about Jerusalem and other centers of the Holy Land in the period before the Arab conquests of Palestine. The review considers the data about the Byzantine Middle East in comparison with chronologically close to them materials of the Latin and Oriental texts, to which special publications are devoted. The article was written when working on the topic of the state task of the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the Program of Fundamental Scientific Research in the field of “Russia and the Middle East: Historical, Political and Cultural Contacts and Interrelations” of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and International Non-Profit Organization “Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society” in 2024.

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 18^th to the early 20^th 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 18^th 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.

Following a series of reforms in the mid-nineteenth century, land legislation emerged in the Ottoman Empire that allowed for the de jure formalization of foreign real estate that had previously been formed de facto. Russian Palestine, which emerged in fierce confessional competition in the mid-19^th century and included the Palestinian acquisitions of Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin, 1817–1894), head of the Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission (ROEM) in Jerusalem, depended on foreign policy conditions and the positions of Russian state institutions. The lack of strategy and systematic work in the use of the property factor in foreign policy, as well as the sentiments in the Russian power structures in the Middle East led to omissions. The article shows how Archimandrite Antonin's right decisions, made in spite of the opinion of Foreign Ministry officials, influenced the way of real estate registration, thanks to which churches, monasteries, pilgrimage metochions and land plots were largely preserved and today belong to Russia and the Russian Church.

The article attempts to reconstruct the unknown scientific biography of one of the pioneers in the study of Palestine, the first Prussian consul in Jerusalem, E.G. Schultz. Based on the analysis of the materials involved, the participation of the Prussian government in setting scientific tasks and providing conditions for the scientific study of the Biblical region is shown. Systematic collection of information and fixation of monuments of the Age of the Crusades make is possible to draw a conclusion about the existence of Prussian property interests in the Holy Land, which were based on archaeological evidence. The works of other German scholars involved in the governmental program of research in the Holy Land, together with E.G. Schulz, have been used as sources to clarify the contribution of the consul to the study of biblical topography and Israeli monuments in Galilee, as well as his role in the construction of new modern maps of the area.

The article is based on the scientific research “The History of Russian Orthodox Pilgrimage in the 21^st century”, which was conducted supported by the RSIC grant and, as the author intended, is a continuation of his famous monograph “The History of Russian Orthodox Pilgrimage in the 10^th – 17^th centuries”, published in 2007.

The article addresses issues related to the history of Russian Orthodox pilgrimage to the holy sites of Universal Orthodoxy in the 21^st century. In the millennial history of Russian Orthodox pilgrimage, the pilgrimage in the 21^st century occupies a special place and differed in many respects from the previous centuries, first of all, by its massiveness. Based on the analysis of archival and literary sources, the reasons for the significant increase in pilgrimage flows to the Holy Land in that period are analyzed. The author proposes to consider the main aspects of the history of pilgrimage in the 21^st century from the perspective of both domestic and foreign policy of the Russian Empire. The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society played a special role in the development of pilgrimage in the second half of the century.

The process of reconstruction of the great dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the so-called “Dome Case” – is the most important project of Russian-French cooperation in the second third of the 19^th century. In the conditions of acute rivalry between the great powers in the Holy Land during the aggravation of the Eastern Question, caused by the dispute over the holy sites between the main Christian confessions (Orthodox Greeks, Catholics and Armenians), at the initiative of Russian secular and church diplomats, the repair of the Great Dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was carried out. The article traces several stages of this process – from the aggravation of the dispute over the holy sites (1830s) to the agreement between France, Russia and the Ottoman Empire on the joint repair of the Dome (September 5, 1862). The role of Russian diplomacy in the successful completion of the “Dome Case” is shown, despite the opposition of French diplomacy and confessional rivalry.

The relevance of the study is defined by the fact that this project, which was an outstanding example of international cooperation, has barely been reflected in the historiography. Meanwhile, the study of the experience of cooperation between Russia and France in the Middle East region is of great importance in present-day conditions.