This article identifies some of the sources that are helpful for the study of peasant society in mid-nineteenth-century Egypt. In describing each of these sources, which involves specifying the nature of the data documented by a source, it highlights the potential use of each source and its limitations. It concludes that the examination of a combination of archival sources, rather than just one, enables the researcher to address some of the limitations of a particular source, and moreover to avoid developing distorted interpretations.

In the late-nineteenth century, a bookbinder from Bratislava named Stefan Illés relocated to the city of Jerusalem in Ottoman Palestine. There he produced what came to be known as the Illés Relief, a miniature three-dimensional model of his adopted city. In an age of ever-expanding colonial interests in the region and popular curiosity about the Holy City, the Illés Relief toured Europe to great fanfare, leading interested parties in Geneva, Switzerland to arrange its purchase and permanent display in the city, which had been cast by Jean Calvin as the “Protestant Rome.” Presently, the Illés Relief is on view in the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem, nominally on loan since 1984 but without a defined return date. The following is an interview with the art historian and founder and director of ARCH Jerusalem, Maryvelma O’Neil. Our conversation moves from the history and trajectory of the Illés Relief to her own digital humanities work stemming from the Relief, specifically the Virtual Illés Relief Initiative and the Mughrabi Quarter Virtual Archive.1,2 Although the themes of the interview, memory and cultural heritage, suggest agents and events long past, as our conversation reveals, these issues remain relevant today, in the ongoing disposition of Palestinians and destruction of Palestinian life and culture.