The human activity in l’Horta during the centuries has left behind an important number of documents. These documents cover a varied range of topics such as the local administration, its relationship with the State administration, taxes, the irrigation organisation, the religious life, agricultural works, trade or craftworks. In recent rimes, they also address factory production, fishing in the Albufera, popular festivities, the cultural and artistic life as well as public and private life. All these topics have been preserved in thousands of documents located in the historical archives.
Because of historical reasons, most of these documents and written testimonies have been preserved since the 13th century, during the rule of James I of Aragon. There are not many written references left from the Roman and Al-Andalus periods. In addition, the documents from these periods focus on the city of Valencia and not the county of l’Horta.
Since the 12th century and specially the 13th century, the number of written documents that have been preserved increases exponentially and nowadays it is complex to calculate their quantity, although there are millions of them. In addition, most of them are located in the main Valencian archives (l’Arxiu del Regne de València, l’Arxiu Municipal de València, l’Arxiu de protocols del Col·legi del Patriarca, l’Arxiu de la Catedral...) and their content is not fully catalogued.
This is the reason why the interested people will only be able to find a selected sample of some of the main documents of the history of l’Horta, which may be representative of different aspects that have been addressed previously.
