Aims and objectives
The Abdallah Bey Hamza Collection is a private archive of documents belonging to the northern Sudanese trader and landowner, Abdallah Bey Hamza. Abdallah was an influential figure, granted the honorific title of “Bey” by the Ottoman administration. He traded in the major commodities of 19th and early 20th century Sudan, including gum Arabic, cotton and ostrich feathers. His trading activities spanned all regions of Sudan and Upper Egypt, and his career traversed the major periods of modern Sudanese history (roughly 1840-1920). The collection consists in approximately 1500 commercial, financial, legal and personal documents belonging to Abdallah and his brothers.
Outcomes
The Abdallah Bey Hamza Collection comprises a total of 1200 folios, many with multiple sides. This is a rare collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century documents, spanning the major periods in the modern history of Sudan (roughly 1860-1960). A vast number of these documents were in fragments and on the brink of complete destruction. Through the EAP project, we were able to repair the bulk of these documents and to digitse the entire collection. The total number of digital files amounts to 1482 images. The project also allowed us to organise the documents into thematic folders. The documents are primarily in Arabic, although there is one document in Ottoman Turkish and several, from the period of British colonial rule, in English.
The records copied by this project have been catalogued as:
EAP1284/1 مجموعة عبد الله بك حمزة (1860s-1950s)
Due to the cyber-attack on the British Library in October 2023, the archives and manuscripts database is currently inaccessible and we are unable to provide links to the catalogue records for this project.
