Historical Document and Narrative

Case Study of Two 17th Century Documents From the Sicil of Jerusalem Kadis on the Debts of the Serb Community in Jerusalem

Abstract

This paper uses a narratological approach to present two documents from the sicil of Jerusalem kadis. The documents date back to the mid-17th century and deal with court disputes related to the problem of settling debts by the Serb monastic community in Jerusalem after it ceased being an independent community and came under the jurisdiction of the Greek community. The pa­per analyses the internal architecture of the documents and their narrativity, the issue of the narrator, ”actors and characters”, the problem of focalisation, co­herence and narrative continuity in the documents. Narratological approaches are also combined with both micro-historical and cultural premises to examine the relationship between the sicil documents and the ”real world”, i.e. the possibility of applying narrative implication to read the sicil documents and the relationship between written and oral text in the sicils.