Public Records Office in the Citadel

During the era of Khedive Abbas Helmi Pasha II (1892 – 1914), several new regulations were issued in 1891, 1902, and 1906. They all aimed to distinguish between different types of documents in Daftarkhana. The different types of preservation types of preservation( whether temporal or permanent) and ways of delivering or receiving documents. The name Daftarkhana was also changed to the Public Records Office by virtue of these regulations and, like its predecessor, it remained in the Citadel.

Until King Fouad established the Historical Records Department in Abdeen Palace in 1932, the Public Records Office remained the only authority to which the task of collecting and preserving documents was assigned. After 1932, some of the documents preserved in the Public Records Office were transferred to the newly-established department. Yet preserving documents remained a shared task between the two archival institutions. With the 1952 Revolution, the National Historical Archives was established to act as a national archive for Egypt, an affiliate to the Ministry of Culture; whereas the Public Records Office remained affiliated to the Ministry of Finance with a restricted task of preserving the documents and records of that ministry as well as permanently-used documents such as land, birth and death records. Though the Public Records Office kept its former location in the Citadel, it could not retain its archival importance as a result of the documents’ transfer to the newly reconstituted National Archives.