Explore the Diary Viewer
From the Diary Viewer page, you can choose to engage with a collection of Joseph Svoboda’s diaries. All together, these diaries record Joseph’s actions in Iraq between 1897 and 1899. Within each diary, you will be able to view scans of the original handwritten manuscripts and our easy-to-read digitized transcriptions.
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Explore the Timeline
The Events Timeline describes the major happenings of Joseph Svoboda’s 47th handwritten diary which spans from February 1897 to June of the following year. The events of the diary are categorized according to their subject, including family events, international affairs, and pandemics.
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The Svoboda Family
The Svoboda family’s life in Ottoman Iraq began with Joseph’s parents, Anton Svoboda and Euphemie Muradjian. Joseph and his wife Eliza continue the heritage of this Austro-Hungarian Christian family living in Baghdad. Joseph’s son Alexander also participates with the family’s business of river trade.
ViewAbout the Diaries
This website presents selected diaries by Joseph Svoboda and a travel journal by his son, Alexander Svoboda. The Svoboda family lived in Baghdad from the early nineteenth century until the late twentieth centuries, part of a small but vibrant European community in cosmopolitan Ottoman Baghdad. The diaries document the life of Joseph through detailed daily entries spanning over 40 years, from 1862 to his death in 1908, offering a day-to-day view of life at the confluence of European and Ottoman worlds during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. The travel journal by Alexander documents his 1897 journey from Baghdad to Paris.
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Highlighted Features
Diary Viewer
View images of the Joseph Mathia Svoboda diaries along with their transcriptions side-by-side. This is recommended for those who want to look at the diaries with their contents in detail.
Image Gallery
Learn about the diaries and their surrounding context through visuals in the Image Gallery! It displays pictures from the time period and the setting of the Joseph Mathia Svoboda diaries.
Rivermap
Explore our interactive Rivermap to learn about the locations that Joseph stopped at on his journeys, as well as the history, geography and shipping along the Tigris River! (This link will take to you to an external website.)
Events Timeline
Scroll through our Events Timeline to gain perspective on when important events mentioned in Joseph’s diaries took place.
Travel Journal Viewer
The Travel Journal Viewer allows you to view the transcriptions from the Alexander Svoboda travel journal in Arabic, along with the English translation for the journal, side-by-side.
Persons Index
The Persons Index displays short biographical information for people that are commonly mentioned in the diaries. Check it out to become more familiar with the people Joseph mentions and interacts with.