Middle East Studies

Arabic Collections Online (ACO) is a publicly available digital library of public domain Arabic language content. Funded by New York University Abu Dhabi, this mass digitization project aims to expose up to 15,000 volumes from NYU and partner institutions over a period of five years

Browse by various LC topics the works on the region consisting of Asia west of Pakistan, northeastern Africa, and occasionally Greece and Pakistan. Works treating collectively the Arabic-speaking countries of Asia and Africa, or of Asia only, are entered under Arab countries.

A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures is a groundbreaking view of Islam that goes beyond conventional theological, nativist, and orientalist approaches, presented in an interactive, open-access born-digital format.

This online resource is a digitization and archival extension of the book The Story of a Place, The Story of a People, a collaborative work published in 2017 by the Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution in collaboration with the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation.

The Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr (Biography of Muḥammad, His Companions and the Successors up to the Year 230 of the Hijra) by Ibn Saʿd (d. 230 A.H./845 C.E.) is the earliest extant biographical dictionary on the life of the Prophet and the early generations of Muslims. It is one of the most important historical works about the first centuries of Muslim society in Arabic

A great many books have been written on the subject ofJewish land-settlement and the Arabs, or the land question inPalestine, but rarely does one have the opportunity to access the primary documents involved. The set consists of the texts of the major pieces of legislation that governed the rural land regime in Palestine between the years 1918 and 1948, as well as the key reports and memoranda produced by British officials during that period. These reports show governmental attempts to understand and control the rights that governed access and management, in some cases details of which exist only in government archives, and a number of which are less well known than they ought to be. Political questions concerned with the dynamics of Jewish land acquisition are also clearly highlighted in relevant laws and memos but overall, the collection provides a broader perspective on land rights, and pays particular attention to continuities with the Ottoman past and some comparison with other colonial contexts.

A searchable database of several hundred classical Arabic texts.

Database of downloadable PDFs of Arabic texts, modern and classical.

Alexandria library database of searchable texts

downloadable library, comprising thousands of Arabic texts.

Searchable database of classical Arabic texts.

A database of Persian historical documents from Iran and Central Asia up to the 20th century.

The Corpus Coranicum project opens up the history of the Qurʾān on various levels: (1) The Manuscripta Coranica database represents the only online catalog of early Qurʾān manuscripts. More than 30,000 images and catalog texts from more than 95 collections provide a preliminary overview of important textual witnesses to the Qurʾan. (2) The database of readings - Variae Lectiones Coranica - lists text variants in transcription as they are known from selected early works of the Islamic scholarly tradition. (3) The database "Texte aus der Umwelt des Korans" ("Texts from the World of the Qurʾān") provides an overview of important source texts. (4) A chronological-literary commentary reads the Qurʾanic text as a proclamation whose content and literary forms changed continously over the period of 23 years and discloses hopes, needs and expections of its addressees. A digital edition of the Cairine text edition (1924) and parts of the concordance of Rafi Talmon (1948-2004) provide access to an important text edition of the 20th century.

The Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME) offers free and open access to the rich cultural legacy of the Middle East and North Africa by bringing together collections from a wide range of cultural heritage institutions. Developed by an engineering team from CLIR and Stanford Libraries, the platform federates and makes accessible data about collections from around the world.

An imaginary circle that encompasses modern day Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel provides the boundaries for this exhibition on the Middle East. The lands beyond the borders of Turkey and Iran are excluded. The catalyst for this exhibition was the inventory of Middle Eastern and Islamic language materials compiled recently by Dr Majid Daneshgar, former lecturer at Theology and Religion at the University of Otago, now University of Freiburg, Germany. On display are a number of Arabic, Urdu, Persian, and Turkish language books and manuscripts. The printed books are scarce; the manuscripts unique. They are mainly from the collection of the Rev. William Arderne Shoults (1839-1887). There are also some modern publications in the exhibition. These are mainly from the library of Charles Brasch (1903-1973), who was an archaeological field assistant at Tell el Amarna, Egypt, from 1933 to 1935.

The Digital Islamic Humanities Project is a research initiative hosted by the Middle East Studies program at Brown University. This site contains a working bibliography, useful resources, a frequently updated blog, and information about our upcoming conference on the Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies.

The Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA) is a digital archive that focuses on Western interactions with the Middle East, particularly travels to Egypt during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. TIMEA offers electronic texts such as travel guides, museum catalogs, and travel narratives, photographic and hand-drawn images of Egypt, and historical maps of Egypt and Cyprus.

During the summer of 1919, a delegation under the leadership of Oberlin College President Henry Churchill King and Chicago businessman Charles R. Crane travelled to areas of the former Ottoman territories. Their mission was to determine the wishes of the people of the region as their future was being determined by the major powers at the Paris Peace Conference. The King-Crane Commission, as it became known, met delegations and invited written petitions from various religious and political groups. This digital collection unifies the archival records of Commission members for the first time

These newspapers and periodicals, many of which have been only partially accessible inside Iran, cover the defining moments from the following three eras:
The premiership of Mohammad Mossadegh and the August 1953 coup d'état against his government (1950-53)
The 1979 Revolution; and
The late 1990s/early 2000s ‘reform era’ of former President Mohammad Khatami.
Containing more than 12,000 pages, the collection is freely accessible without restriction.

H-Egypt is a digital space and resource that is dedicated to the study of Egypt from the early Islamic period to the present. H-Egypt is governed by and designed for scholars of Egypt who are affiliated with universities and research institutes around the globe, including in Egypt itself. It will serve as the locus of an academic community without a home, and provide scholars of Egypt with a natural home on H-Net. It also aims to bridge a gap between scholars in Egypt, mainly writing in Arabic, and those abroad. In addition to publishing latest news and information in the field, H-Egypt team manage, compile, and regularly post lists of available research and teaching resources; monitor leading academic journals and publishing houses for recent articles and books on Egypt; keep our subscribers up to date with ongoing and upcoming scholarly events such as conferences, book talks, workshops, call for papers, roundtables, lectures, etc.; and share any postings on H-Job that may be relevant to our subscribers.

View digital versions of Iranian newspapers and periodicals capturing key historical events as they happened.

This collection includes manuscripts, panels, isolated manuscripts folios, lithographs, incunabula, and contemporary publications (i.e. McGill Institute of Islamic Studies Tehran Branch publications). Dating from the 9th to the 21st century, the materials are primarily in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Turkish and Ottoman Turkish, and cover a wide range of topics related to the Muslim Civilization: religious and exegetical texts (Qur’an, Hadith, etc.), law, medieval sciences (astronomy, medicine, philosophy, etc.), history and geography, language and literature. Special attention should be paid to 9th-11th centuries Qur’anic fragments on parchment, 12th-18thcenturies Arabic calligraphy panels, as well as 15th-19th centuries colourful Indic paintings and Persian miniatures.