While doing my research for my project I discovered many personal documents, issued by many countries and jurisdictions. My family has in its possession birth certificates, marriage certificates and death certificates of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Empire of Bulgaria, Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, and our own Republic of Macedonia. There are many bank documents also from various financial institutions, banknotes from various countries and even more interesting coins (my great-grandma Dzvezda Jovanovikj gave me an interesting present several years ago – a golden French Empirial Napoleon coin and a golden Ottoman lira, part of her family inheritance, with a sentimental, a numismatic, but also with a very real golden value).
Nevertheless, I was fascinated the most by a very elaborate and sophisticated document, a deed issued by the Ottoman government to my great-great-great-grandparent for one of his vineyards. A deed is called “tapu” in Ottoman Turkish and Macedonians call this document “tapija” (pronounces as “tapiya” in English). The document is written in Arabic script and has the seal of the Ottoman royal house on the top and three smaller seals at the bottom, adorned with ornamental decorations around the edges. Given the fact that the Ottomans ruled over the Balkans for more than 500 years, virtually in all of the lands where my ancestors lived, the deed got me thinking about all the secrets about my family hidden in the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul. I may never get a chance to browse through the documents in the Ottoman Archives, but I would like to visit this vault where all the memories about my ancestors are preserved.
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