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Levantine LivesFR

Levantine LivesA Historical Atlas of Christian Communities in the Ottoman Holy Land, 1500-1799

A world, act by act.

Why this atlas exists

Levantine Lives exists to open the lives of the Christians of the Ottoman Holy Land to as many people as possible. Who they were, what they went through, how they changed. What they lived through remains scattered. The Church recorded it in its registers, the Ottoman court in its rulings, the convent in its accounts, travellers in their narratives. Levantine Lives is the only database to bring these worlds of sources together, act by act.

The corpus grows collection by collection. New registers, new rulings, new accounts, new narratives join the first ones as the research advances. The opening is planned for the first quarter of 2027.

  • Families

    2,628 families reconstructed, every link backed by its act

  • Events

    84 epidemics, wars and affairs, 532 people linked to them

  • Decade by decade

    30 decades documented by 41 registers and 31 books

  • Places and collections

    32 parishes, villages and quarters, read in 72 archival collections

What the atlas holds

  • 125,752published acts
  • 659,073names found in the acts
  • 14,669reconstructed people
  • 84documented events

Figures as of 5 October 2026.

Four examples

  • An act · Bethlehem, 1653

    Catharina, daughter of Franciscus

    The act gives plague as the cause of her death. Excommunicated for uniting with Isahac without a blessing, she is buried outside the new cemetery.

  • A life · Bethlehem, 1656

    Franciscus, son of Isa, known as Abu Khalil

    He testifies before the Custody: “I, Francesco, aged 65, father of Caterina…”. His burial act calls him Turcimannus.

  • An event · Bethlehem, 1740-1741

    The Bethlehem war

    It all begins with a collapsed oven. On 23 March 1740, in Bethlehem, a little girl named Margarita dies under its ruins after heavy rains. At Christmas, the feast cannot be held with its solemnities: the friars left in the convent celebrate it in the Grotto.

  • A story · Bethlehem, 1781

    The leaven rite

    The priest comes to check at the door: nothing. The moment his back is turned, the leaven goes on the capital.

What we are working on right now

  • In progress

    • Parish registers: 50% of acts linked to a record
    • Sharia court registers: 4.9% of acts linked to a record

  • The latest corrections

    • Jerusalem 5 October 2026
    • Bethlehem 5 October 2026
    • Saint Saviour’s Church (Jerusalem) 5 October 2026

  • Coming next

    • 28 Jerusalem court registers being transcribed
    • 2 Ottoman fiscal censuses, from 1527 to 1562, being examined
    • 3 manuscript account books from the Franciscan convent, 208 pages, being transcribed
    • 152 works in the library, examination under way

Who builds this atlas

Levantine Lives is a French non-profit association (loi 1901). Its purpose: making the lives of the Ottoman Holy Land’s Christians accessible, with the provenance of the sources that establish them. The programme is led by two researchers: Thomas Issa directs the research, Munevver Esma Oztop handles its Ottoman palaeography. Four instruments assist them: transcription, identities, events, economic data. Each proposes, a person decides.

Meet the team and the project

Support the research

Hundreds of thousands of pages are still waiting to be read

Your donation funds their reading: transcribing, translating and linking every act.

Secure payment on HelloAsso.

Write to us

Research under way, a collection to point out, a question about your family, or to be notified of the opening: leave us a note and your address.

Your subject, the collections or years you work on, and what you are looking for in the atlas.

If you are writing about your family

Questions we are often asked

  • When will the atlas be available?

    Levantine Lives opens in the first quarter of 2027. We are still linking the mentions of each person from one act to the next: as of 5 October 2026, 50% of the acts in the parish registers are already linked to a record.

  • How much data will the atlas hold?

    As of 5 October 2026: 125,752 acts, 14,669 people and 2,628 families, from 1500 to 1799. Every register transcribed adds to them.

  • Which collections does it cover?

    The parish registers of St Saviour's in Jerusalem, St Catherine's in Bethlehem and ʿAyn Kārim, the Jerusalem sharīʿa court, chronicles, Ottoman tax registers and convent accounts: 72 collections to date.

  • In which languages?

    The site reads in French and English. The acts keep the languages of their sources: Arabic comes first, with more than half of the published acts. More than seven published acts in ten are in Arabic, Latin or Italian. Most of the rest are in French, Dutch, Spanish, English and German.

  • What will I be able to do with it?

    Search for a person by name, follow them from one act to the next and go back to the folio that records them. Franciscus, dragoman of Bethlehem, can be followed this way from the priest’s register to a chronicler’s pages.

  • Will I be able to cite an act or a record?

    Yes. Every record already carries its permanent link, and its own citation comes with the opening. The programme can be cited today: the reference is just below.

  • Will I be able to reuse and share the data?

    Yes, under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence: free to share and adapt, with credit, for non-commercial use and under the same licence. The original acts are in the public domain. They are kept by the parishes and institutions in whose care they remain, and we thank them.

  • Will access be open?

    Yes. Consultation will be open, as this page and the Atlas, Method and About pages are today.

  • How can I follow progress or be notified?

    The block “What we are working on right now”, higher on this page, follows every corpus update (latest: 5 October 2026). To be notified of the opening, write to us just above and choose “Notify me when the site opens”.

  • How can I contribute or point out a collection?

    Write to us just above and choose “Contribute to the corpus” or “Institutional scientific partnership”. Archives, Churches, researchers: every new collection links more lives together.

How to cite

Levantine Lives Association. Levantine Lives: A Historical Atlas of Christian Communities in the Ottoman Holy Land, 1500-1799. 2026. https://levantinelives.org.