• Electronic publications (eBooks, digitized texts, etc)

    Arab World

    Al-Mawsu‘ah al-Shamilah - الموسوعة الشاملة
    This site currently makes more than 5,000 books on various fields of Islamic and Arabic studies available online (and downloadable in a compressed format through a program called المكتبة الشاملة 2.11), all for free. The entire site is in Arabic. The search form and the whole site are very clear and user-friendly. You can also browse the list of books in each discipline (aspects of Muslim theology; the Qur'an and Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir); Hadith; biography of the Prophet; Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) in general and by school and works by specific authors. The site also includes books on Arabic language, literature and history).

    Al-Waraq
    Al-Warāq provides over a million pages of Arabic and Islamic works (the whole site is in Arabic). This is a very good site that provides extensive information on Arabic literature and humanities (philosophy, theology...) and also full-text version of a number of texts for free, you just need to register first.

    Shia Online Library = المكتبة الشيعية
    This online digital library offers ca. 1,900 e-books  related to Shia theology.

    DAR : Digital Assets Repository
    The Digital Assets Repository (DAR) is an institutional repository maintaining the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt)’s digital collections. It provides public access to digitized collections through a web-based search and browsing facility. DAR currently encompasses the largest Arabic book collection. For books that are out-of-copyright, their contents are fully available on the Internet. For books that are in-copyright, Internet users can browse only 5% of the book, with a minimum of 10 pages.

    IFPO Open Archives & Electronic Collections
    The Institut Français du Proche Orient ( French Institute for the Near East ) has put its archives (articles, chapters, e-books, reports, audiovisual archives, etc.) and some of its published books on open-access.

    Shamaa (Arab Educational Information Network)
    Shamaa  is an open access electronic database of literature on education in the Arab countries. It indexes peer-refereed articles, Master thesis and PhD dissertations, books, reports and conference proceedings starting from 2007 in Arabic, English and French languages. The studies include abstracts as well as the full text, whenever available.

    Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library
    A web-based portal for the study of the Middle East, including its history, culture, development, and contemporary face, and within this portal, will integrate existing scholarly digital content to make such material easier to find and use efficiently and freely. (From website)

    Arabic Collections Online
    (ACO) is a major project to create a publicly available, digital library of public-domain Arabic language content drawn from rich Arabic collections of prominent libraries such as the American University of Beirut, Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University and Princeton University. Their aim is to digitize and mount up online more 15,000 volumes (covering all subjects: literature, business, science, and more) from their Arabic language collections.

    Qatar Digital Library (QDL)
    The Qatar Digital Library is making a vast archive featuring the cultural and  historical heritage of the Gulf and wider region freely available online for the first time. It includes archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs and much more, complete with contextualised explanatory notes and links, in both English and Arabic.

    Chronology of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals in Arabic (1800-1900) : A Research Tool (at ZMO):
    This project aims at recensing all periodicals published in Arabic or in Arabic and in another language (like the usual pair of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish) or in Arabic written in a different script (like Judeo-Arabic) during the period from 1800 to 1900​.

    IMA (Institut du Monde Arabe) Bibliothèque numérique
    IMA (France) has created, in partnership with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt), a digital library of out-of-copyright material related to the Arabic Middle East that are freely accessible online. This collection includes more than 1166 books and 19 periodicals titles, among which جريدة أبي نظارة, المقتطف and أبولو. The website has a French and Arabic interface.

    Rashf
    Has over 38,000 Arabic ebooks available for free download. The books cover a variety of subjects and can be searched by book title or author’s name.Users need to register first via their Facebook or Twitter account to access the full-text version.

    Hindawi Books
    ​The Hindawi Association offers nearly a thousand Arabic ebooks to download (as PDF, PUB or Kindle format) ​in a variety of subjects and be searched by keyword, authors' name or title.

    Abou Naddara Collection
    This website offers the complete newspapers published by the Egyptian nationalist James Sanua (يعقوب صنوع, 1839-1912) from 1878 to 1910. In addition, formerly unpublished manuscripts by the same author, articles from newspapers of the period about the journalist and his oeuvre, as well as the decorations he received are also available. Most of the material was directly scanned from the originals published at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, and therefore contains an ample variety of magnificent and colourful lithographs.

    858.MA : An Archive of Resistance أرشيف ثوري
    A unique collection featuring hundred of hours of footage shot and collected in Egypt around the 2011 Revolution are now made publicly available. More than 870 hours of indexed, time-stamped video material along with thousands more photographs and documents present thousands of histories of revolt told from hundreds of perspectives. All footage is published under creative commons.

    MENAdoc Digital Collections
    This is a growing collection of thousands of digitised works related to Middle Eastern, North African, Turkish and Islamic studies. It is hosted and developed by the University of Halle (Germany).

    Etymological Dictionary of Arabic (EtymArab)
    The University of Oslo developed this etymologico-conceptual dictionary of the Arabic language, covering roots and terms of particular significance for the mental and cultural history of the Arabs.

    Digital archive of Arabic cultural and literary journals = أرشيف المجلات الأدبية والثقافية العربية
    This archive offers on open access no less than 179 journals , among which some of the most significant periodicals of the 19th-20th centuries from Egypt (al-Hilal, al-Manar, al-Muqtataf, etc.), Palestine (al-Karmal), Syria (Journal of the Arabic Academy of Sciences), or Tunisia (al-Fikr).
    The collection can be browsed by country of publication, journal title, and author’s name. Visitors can also search for a specific journal title, author’s name of article title, as well as for any keyword in the indexes of all or one journal. Every journal can be browsed by both year and month of publication. The website interface is only in Arabic, and so are the documents archived.

    Iran & Afghanistan

    Noor Digital Library = کتابخانه دیجیتال نور
    Portal of more than 8,000 free full-text Persian e-books

    Ganjūr = گنجور
    offers full-text ebooks of the works of the main Persian classical authors

    Ensani : Portal jami' ulum insani پرتال جامع علوم انسانی
    This portal [in Persian only]  offers free search and access to journal articles in social sciences and humanities fields ( literature, economics, history, education, geography, law, psychology, linguistics, social sciences, Islamic science, political science, library science, philosophy and logic, management, women studies, art studies ). Most articles are available as full-text and can be freely downloaded.

    Asnad
    An image database of Persian historical documents from Iran and Central Asia up to the 20th Century.

    Packard Humanities Institute's Persian Literature in Translation project
    offers full-text works of Iranian authors. Indexed by authors and titles.

    Rīrā Kitāb-khānaha-yi āzād-i fārsī = ری‌را — کتاب‌خانه‌ی آزادِ فارسی
    offers the full-text of the works of 34 classical Persian authors.

    Avestan Digital Archive – Search Engine for manuscripts
    The Avestan Digital Archive (ADA) seeks to be a digital archive containing all Avestan manuscripts spread all over the world.

    New York University - Afghanistan Digital Library
    The Afghanistan Digital Library will retrieve and restore works published in Afghanistan between 1870and 1930.

    Preserving and Creating Access to Unique Afghan Records - Afghanistan Digital Collections
    Preserving and Creating Access to Afghanistan Literature from the Jihad Period. This project is currently funded by the University of Arizona Libraries and ACKU. About 5,500 titles (over 600,000 pages) are currently available. ACKU and UAL are processing an additional 300,000 pages. This site includes ANIS, Kabul Times and many other Afghanistan journals.

    Da Afghanistan Kalanay 1933- 1990 (also Known as Sulnama or Afghanistan Yearbook)
    Da Afghanistan Kalani, or Afghanistan Yearbook, is an almanac and yearbook published by the government of Afghanistan from 1933-1990. These digitized volumes offer access to a unique set of volumes of the country's political, social and economic history in Dari/Persian and Pashtu languages.

    Noormags
    Noormags is one of the most reliable and referred database of articles indexed from more than 1450 Persian journals, mainly focused on Islamic sciences and humanities. Registration is free and individual. The database is accessible in Persian, Arabic and English. It can be searched by keyword, titles (of journals or articles), subjects and authors.The articles are viewable for free online but downloading them requires payment.

    Kurdish Studies

    Kurmancî
    Kurdish linguistic magazine, published twice a year since 1987 to spread the results of the linguistic seminars of the Institut Kurde de Paris on problems of terminology and standardisation of the Kurdish language. All issues of this periodical are available on the Site, as well as the Kurdish - French - English - Turkish index of the first 20 issues.

    Turkish Studies

    Reading with Atatürk
    In Turkish. Tour the IU Library of Rare Works where users can download and choose books to read from among 175 works read by Atatürk.

    Ilahiyat Makaleler Veri Tabani
    Database of articles on Islamic Studies published in the journals of various
    Theology faculties in Turkey.

    Ankos : Turkish open access archive project
    Ankos has started the study of creating a national inter-universities common access point. This project has the support of MITOS, the national open access system. As of march 24, 2012, 31132 files were loaded.

    Middle East Technical University Library (METU Library)
    6864 dissertations (from 2003 onwards)

    National Dissertation Center - The Council of Higher Education
    Turkish database containing 315.889 dissertations of which 36346 (= 11,5 %) concern social sciences

    MENAdoc Digital Collections
    This is a growing collection of thousands of digitised works related to Middle Eastern, North African, Turkish and Islamic studies. It is hosted and developed by the University of Halle (Germany).

    Islamic World

    Al-Quran al-Karim : the Noble Quran Online Quranic text, searchable, browsable by chapters. Within a chapter, each verse in Arabic is available as an audio-recording (with a choice of 9 different reciters) and is accompanied by its translation in English (6 different English translations are available) or in 34 other languages, as well as a transliterated version.

    Muslim Philanthropy Digital Library
    Makes widely available a repository of the world’s knowledge on all forms of philanthropy as expressed through original documents, reports, graphics, and registrations, as well as scholarly analysis in Muslim majority countries and communities worldwide. (From website)

    Muslimheritage.com
    Articles on all aspects of Muslim heritage, including many historical images.

    The Quranic Arabic Corpus
    This is an annotated linguistic resource which shows the Arabic grammar, syntax and morphology for each word in the Holy Quran. The corpus provides three levels of analysis: morphological annotation , a syntactic treebank and a semantic ontology .

    Sunnah.com : the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) at your fingertips
    Sunnah.com is  searchable online database of 13 corpuses of Arabic Hadith compilations in Arabic, including the six canonical collections of hadith (Kutub as-Sittah). Each compilation is accompanied of a brief historical introduction and each hadith is accompanied by its translation in English and Urdu, together with an indicator of its"reliability" according to the Islamic rules of hadith studies.

    MENAdoc Digital Collections
    This is a growing collection of thousands of digitised works related to Middle Eastern, North African, Turkish and Islamic studies. It is hosted and developed by the University of Halle (Germany).

  • Gateways & Websites

    Middle East

    Al-Mashriq
    This gateway provides a wide variety of general cultural resources on the NME.

    Middle East Studies Internet Resources
    This site is managed by the Middle East and Jewish Studies department of Columbia University (US) and is a real mine of information and various useful links on the Middle East. It is strongly backed by academics and seems to be one of the most reliable and effective sites for resources on NME.

    The Middle East Research Institute – Columbia University

    MENA - The Middle East North Africa Internet Resource Guide
    This is a very comprehensive Internet resource guide for the NME, North Africa and Central Asia, hosted by University of Utah.

    MENALIB
    The Middle East Virtual Library (MENALIB) is an information portal for Middle East and Islamic Studies. It provides access to online information and to digital records of printed and other offline media and thus supports the concept of a hybrid library for Middle East and Islamic Studies.

    AL-BAB
    This site provides a collection of articles and outside links on a wide range of topics related to Middle East studies. The content is a combination of annotated links to websites, links to previously published articles or book excerpts, and original articles and commentary. It provides a large variety of reliable content appropriate for students and researchers at all levels.
    The site's sections include: country briefings for the 22 members of the Arab League; news; reference; and collections of links and articles on specific topics. Along with coverage of political and economic issues, these topics include a number of subjects of interest to arts and humanities students, including: Arabic language; media; architecture; art; cinema; literature; and music. A section of articles on diversity in the Arab world also provides information about ethnic minorities like the Kurds, Berbers and Turkmen, and coverage of special topics like women in the Arab world or gay and lesbian issues.

    Princeton University Library Near Eastern Studies Resources

    Middle East economic survey
    Weekly newsletter on oil and gas sectors in the Middle East but also assessment of political situation.

    Online Middle East Net assessment reports
    Online access to assessment papers on Middle Eastern strategic issues.

    National Library of Israel Digital Library
    Much of this site is in Hebrew, but it also has material accessible to English speakers. It contains over 400 digital books, historic newspapers (mainly Jewish European publications from the 19th and early 20th centuries), 1,500 maps and 6,500 photographs of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel, the National Sound Archives recordings and YouTube videos of cultural events at the National Library.

    The Arab Writers Union
    A site which has well developed since 1999. It gives a useful repertory of contemporary Syrian writers who are or were members of this organization, and a full text version of numbers of their most recent literary works (essays in Arabic literature or society, novels, plays, short stories…)

    Arabic story
    A site devoted to modern Arabic short story and its criticism. There is a brief biography of each author and a sample of his/her work in full text version most of the time. Each section (authors’ repertory, stories, essays in criticism…) is classified by country.

    Iran Review
    Iran Review is an independent, non-governmental and non-partisan website – organization representing scientific and professional approaches towards Iran’s political, economic, social, religious, and cultural affairs, its foreign policy, and regional and international issues within the framework of analysis and articles.

    Home of Egyptian & Arab authors on the Web
    A user maintained webpage, but it seems to be quite reliable and pretty extensive. It is worth to look at when searching for primary information on less well-known Egyptian authors.

    Middle East economic survey
    Weekly newsletter on oil and gas sectors in the Middle East but also assessment of political situation.

    Moroccan Writers Union
    This site gives a useful repertory of contemporary Moroccan writers who are or were members of this organization, and a full text version of numbers of their most recent literary works (essays in Arabic literature or society, novels, plays, short stories...)

    Online Middle East Net assessment reports
    Online access to assessment papers on Middle Eastern strategic issues.

    Zochrot.org
    Zochrot ("remembering" in Hebrew) is an NGO working since 2002 to promote acknowledgement and accountability for the ongoing injustices of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 and the reconceptualization of the Return as the imperative redress of the Nakba and a chance for a better life for all the country's inhabitants.

    Muftah
    Resource description: Muftah is a journalistic platform launched in May 2010 to provide English-speaking audiences with incisive analysis on countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that eschewed the Western media’s focus on terrorism, oil, and Islamism, and highlighted the complex factors that shape and influence regional countries and populations. From the start, Muftah has worked with a large and eclectic group of writers that include academics, practitioners, activists, and members of diaspora communities.

    Bibliothèques d'Orient / Libraries of the Orient
    Is a new trilingual (English, French, Arabic) platform of digital documents (ebooks, archives, maps, photographs, etc) organised in thematic categories (crossroads / communities / religions / politics / knowledge / imaginery / personalities), and contextualised with contributions by French and international scholars. Made up of complementary thematic series, the sites of this collection provide free digital access to documents scattered over various countries and partner institutions. This common heritage is aimed at providing a territory for interdisciplinary and cross-regional research projects.

    Media Use in the Middle East, 2017. A seven-nation survey by Northwestern University in Qatar
    This longitudinal study offers extensive and valuable intelligence about the media that people adopt, use, and prefer as well as their attitudes and opinions about the role, impact, and importance of mediated communication in their lives and the lives of others across the Middle East region.
    The full survey can be downloaded as a PDF too.

    Caucasus and Central Asia

    Silk Road Papers
    A collection of policy-focused studies on the politics and economies of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

    Open Central Asia
    A quarterly magazine published in London covering business, culture and politics in Central Asia and the Caucasus, with a focus on relations between Central Asian and European nations.

    Caucasian Review of International Affairs
    The Caucasian Review of International Affairs (CRIA) is a Germany-based, quarterly peer-reviewed free, not-for-profit and online academic journal which has been published in English since 2006.

    Silkroad foundation

    OXUS Central Asia

    History of Civilizations of Central Asia

    Oriental Express Central Asia
    Central Asia country profiles.

    Islamic World

    Islam, Islamic Studies, Arabic, and Religion
    A site developed by Professor Alan Godlas of the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia, with lots of links related to Islam and Islamic studies

    About Afghanistan - A culture guide
    This website is maintained by an American citizen who lived in Afghanistan for a decade. It offers an insider's [non-academic] insights and tips about Afghanistan, culture, travel advice, and living and working there.

    SHARIAsource
    Is a flagship research venture of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. Its platform houses primary sources of Islamic law, organizes the people to critically analyze them, and promotes research to inform academic and public discourse about Islamic law. The research portal offers cutting-edge content and context on Islamic law to academics, journalists, and policy makers.

    Islam Awakened
    This portal offers the possiblity to easily compare 54 translations of the Quran in English, by indexing all 6,236 verses of the Qur'an (not counting the "Bismillah"s in 112 verses) and rendering each verse on a separate page in Arabic and with all currently available translations of the meanings into English.

  • Blogs

    AMIR (Access to Middle East and Islamic Resources)

    HAZINE
    A guide for scholars researching the Middle East and beyond: archives, libraries, museums, and other research centers with material on the Middle East are stored and described on this very useful blog. At the moment it focuses on resources on the Ottoman Empire. (editors: Nir Shafir | Christopher Markiewicz).

    Mideast Youth
    A digital network of blogs, social networking sites and media outlets to keep up to date with what Middle Eastern youth are saying, writing and doing.

    Ottoman History Podcast : a weekly internet radio program in English and Turkish offering interviews with scholars and researchers on emerging topics in the study of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East (editors: Chris Gratien | Emrah Safa Gürkan)

    Afternoon Map : a cartography blog dedicated to presenting quality maps with a maximum pixel-to-word ratio (editor: Nicholas Danforth)

    Tozsuz Evrak : a close to the source document blog displaying primary sources and archival materials intended for use by researchers (editors: Samuel Dolbee | Chris Gratien)

    Stambouline : a history blog where travel and art/architecture of the Ottoman Empire meet (editor: Emily Neumeier)

    tajine : an academic blog and podcast about the Maghreb (editors: Graham Cornwell | Alma Heckman | Chris Gratien)

    The Wild Field : a podcast about the history of the Eurasian Steppe and its surroundings (editor: Michael Polczynski) - See more at Ottoman History Podcast

    Registan
    Registan is a cross between think-tank and blog, maintained by a network of academics and practitioners dedicated to making social, political, and cultural knowledge on Eurasia relevant and useful to governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations.

    Arabic Literature (In English)
    This fresh and well-documented blog about contemporary Arabic literature is edited by Marcia Lynx Qualey, a writer and reader based in Cairo, Egypt. It is supported and contributed by several Arabic-speaking and English-speaking writers.

    Middle East/North African Lit
    The books discussion group is part of Goodreads , one of the largest site for readers and book recommendations. This group is for those who enjoy reading books written by those who originate from the Middle East/North Africa. Books include fiction and non-fiction. Registration is free.

    De-Colonizer
    De-Colonizer is an alternative research center and art laboratory on Palestine/ Israel, aiming to bring to the wider audience possible new academic-level knowledges and tools by putting them into the public space with creativity. De-Colonizer is named for the eponymous blog created by Eitan Bronstein Aparicio, who founded the NGO Zochrot.

    Muftah
    Resource description: Muftah is a journalistic platform launched in May 2010 to provide English-speaking audiences with incisive analysis on countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that eschewed the Western media’s focus on terrorism, oil, and Islamism, and highlighted the complex factors that shape and influence regional countries and populations. From the start, Muftah has worked with a large and eclectic group of writers that include academics, practitioners, activists, and members of diaspora communities.

  • Middle Eastern digitization projects

    Digital Projects around the World:

    Abdul Hamid II Collection (Library of Congress)
    This monumental collection portrays the Ottoman Empire during the reign of one of its last sultans, Abdul-Hamid II. The 1,819 photographs in 51 large-format albums date from about 1880 to 1893.

    Abou Naddara Collection
    This website offers the complete newspapers published by the Egyptian nationalist James Sanua (يعقوب صنوع, 1839-1912) from 1878 to 1910. In addition, formerly unpublished manuscripts by the same author, articles from newspapers of the period about the journalist and his oeuvre, as well as the decorations he received are also available. Most of the material was directly scanned from the originals published at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, and therefore contains an ample variety of magnificent and colourful lithographs.

    Afghanistan: The Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection at the University of Nebraska-Omaha
    History of the Collection: In 1974, the University Library received Arthur Paul's private collection of Afghanistan materials consisting of some one thousand items in Persian, Pashto and English languages. Mr. Paul [1898-1976] served as an economic advisor to the Royal Government of Afghanistan from 1960 to 1965.

    Alexandria Bombardment of 1882 Photograph Album
    The Alexandria Bombardment of 1882 Photograph Album digital collection was originally compiled by Italian photographer Luigi Fiorillo. This unique resource documents the British naval attack on 'Urabi Pasha's nationalists, who revolted against Taufik Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt, from 1879 to 1882. Fiorillo’s fifty page album records damage to Alexandria's neighborhoods, particularly the harbor and the fortress district. The images trace the development of episode from the arrival of the British fleet to the destruction of the emerging downtown district. Further, the photographs show the artillery and forts used by the resistance. The album also features portraits of the key players in the bombardment, including 'Urabi Pasha, Khedive Taufik, Admiral Seymour, and Sir Wolseley.

    America University Of Beirut Jafet Library: Poster Collection
    Political posters collected between the 1960s and the 1980s.These posters were collected from their original sources or from the American University of Beirut campus where they were posted. This collection covers two main topics:
    The Palestinian Question & Lebanon and the Lebanese Civil War

    Ancient Near East Photographs (University of Washington)
    This collection, created by Professor Scott Noegel, documents artifacts and archaeological sites of the ancient Near East. While the majority of the collection depicts structures and sites dating from 3000 BCE to 200 CE, the collection also has images of more recent sites, such as the al-Azhar Mosque and the modern creation, Lake Nasser. (From Website)

    Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library
    A web-based portal for the study of the Middle East, including its history, culture, development, and contemporary face, and within this portal, will integrate existing scholarly digital content to make such material easier to find and use efficiently and freely. (From website)

    Arabic Papyrus, Parchment, and Paper (University of Utah)
    The bulk of the collection originated in Egypt, in addition to a small group of fragments from the University of Chicago. A large number of pieces date to the period between 700 and 850 CE. The collection includes a significant number of documents from the pre-Ottoman period and thus offers unique source material on the political, economic, religious and intellectual life of Egypt during the first two centuries of Islamic rule and the period up to Ottoman domination. (From Website)

    Arts of the Islamic World (Freer and Sackler Galleries)
    The Freer and Sackler galleries have one of the finest collections of Islamic art in the United States, with particular strengths in ceramics and illustrated manuscripts.

    Asnad
    An image database of Persian historical documents from Iran and Central Asia up to the 20th Century.

    Azerbaijan History Portal
    Contains electronic versions of books, documents and other sources about the history of Azerbaijan.

    Cambridge Digital Library: Islamic Manuscripts
    The Foundations of Faith Collection will include important works from many religious traditions, particularly Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. They include some of the earliest Qur'anic fragments on parchment, the first known Qur'anic commentary written in Persian, an important selection of devotional works and mystical treatises and an outstanding collection of theological works including the unique extant copy of the Kitāb al-Tawhīd by al-Māturīdī. (From website).

    Champollion and Rosellini Egyptian Expeditions (Oxford Library)
    The works of the Champollion and Rosellini expeditions are invaluable and irreplaceable because they contain information and illustrations of Egyptian monuments made early in the exploration and exploitation of that country. They are two of the oldest and most important publications to include accurate copies of reliefs and inscriptions and are still regularly consulted for many of them. (From Website)

    CIA Documents: Middle East & South Asia Collection

    E.W. Blatchford Collection of Nineteenth Century Photographs (American University of Beirut)

    Brooklyn Museum - Arts of the Islamic World

    Fihrist: Oxford and Cambridge Islamic Manuscripts Catalogue Online

    Contains over 3,000 digitized manuscripts from the Oxford and Cambridge collection of manuscripts. Both libraries have been collecting Islamic manuscripts since the 17th century and still continue to acquire manuscripts by donation or through purchase.
    There are many early and rare items with broad subject coverage including:
    * Literature * Religion * Philosophy * Poetry * Mathematics * Astronomy * Medicine

    Golha Project
    A searchable encyclopaedia of Persian poetry and music with audio recordings of all of the Golha radio programs. The programs known generally as Golha, ‘Flowers [of Persian Poetry and Song],' were a series of weekly radio programs aired on Iranian radio between 1956 and 1979.

    Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine (Brown University)
    The Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine project seeks to collect and make accessible over the Web all of the previously published inscriptions (and their English translations) of Israel/Palestine from the Persian period through the Islamic conquest (ca. 500 BCE - 640 CE). (From Website)

    Iranian Oral History Project (Harvard University)
    The collection consists of the personal accounts of 134 individuals who played major roles in or were eyewitnesses to important political events in Iran from the 1920s to the 1980s. (From Website)

    Islamic Heritage Project (Harvard University)
    Through the Islamic Heritage Project (IHP), Harvard University has cataloged, conserved, and digitized hundreds of Islamic manuscripts, maps, and published texts from Harvard’s renowned library and museum collections. (From Website)

    Islamic Manuscripts at Michigan
    This site is part of an ongoing project to fully catalogue the Islamic Manuscripts Collection at the University Of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

    IMA (Institut du Monde Arabe) Bibliothèque numérique
    IMA (France) has created, in partnership with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt), a digital library of out-of-copyright material related to the Arabic Middle East that are freely accessible online. This collection includes more than 1166 books and 19 periodicals titles, among which جريدة أبي نظارة, المقتطف and أبولو. The website has a French and Arabic interface.

    Library of Alexandria Digital Assets Repository
    A system developed at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Library of Alexandria, to create and maintain library's digital collections. (From website)

    Mamluk Bibliography Online
    The Chicago Online Bibliography of Mamluk Studies is an on-going project of the Middle East Documentation Center at the University of Chicago, the aim of which is to compile comprehensive bibliographies of all primary sources relating to the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Syria, as well as all research and discussion--scholarly and popular--germane to the subject. (From Website)

    Memory of Modern Egypt
    A portal to Egyptian culture including (22,000+) archives, (60,000+) images (ci 2000) films, sound recordings, speeches, newspapers, maps, coins, posters, etc. All content in Arabic.

    Middle East 1916-2001 : A Documentary Record from the Avalon Project (Yale University)

    Middle East Water Collection (OSU Library)

    The Middle East Water Collection provides access to roughly 9000 items on political, socio-economic, demographic, and legal issues of water in the Middle East. Materials include data, books, journal and newspaper articles, and documents published in the Middle East, Europe, and North America originating from a variety of publishers and national and multinational agencies and organizations. (From website)

    Moroccan National Library Digitization Projects
    In Arabic and French

    Muslim Philanthropy Digital Library
    Makes widely available a repository of the world’s knowledge on all forms of philanthropy as expressed through original documents, reports, graphics, and registrations, as well as scholarly analysis in Muslim majority countries and communities worldwide. (From website)

    Near Eastern Manuscripts: Caro Minasian Collection Digitization Project

    Photographs and Prints of Egypt and Syria (New York Public Library)

    President Gamal Abdel Naser Collection
    In English, Arabic, and French.

    Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts

    Qajar Iran Digital Archive
    Explore the lives of women during the Qajar era (1796-1925) through a wide array of materials from private family holdings and participating institutions. Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran provides bilingual access to thousands of personal papers, manuscripts, photographs, publications, everyday objects, works of art and audio materials, making it a unique online resource for social and cultural histories of the Qajar world.

    Reading with Atatürk
    In Turkish. Tour the IU Library of Rare Works where users can download and choose books to read from among 175 works read by Atatürk.

    Saudi Aramco World Digital Archive

    ShahreFarang
    ShahreFarang is the Iranian version of peep boxes, a form of entertainment provided by wandering showmen. Shahre Farang were made of metal in the shape of an oriental castle with several holes. ShahreFarang.com is hoping to bring you visual treats. It is the brain child of two Iranian designers & culture vultures, Mehrdad Aref-Adib and Surena Parham. (From website)

    Tehran Propaganda Murals (Harvard University)
    This selection of over 130 propaganda murals photographed in the capital city during the summer of 2006 is among the first “born digital” special collections to come to the library and represents one of the first efforts to systematically document such public murals. (From Website)

    The Middle East in Early Prints and Photographs
    A collection of materials from the New York Public Library. The collection contains classics of illustrated travel and regional archaeology, as well as the Library's earliest works of photography in the Middle East region.

    The Minassian Collection of Qur’anic Manuscripts
    This database catalogues the holdings of over 200 Qur’anic manuscript folios dating from the 9th to the 16th centuries housed within the special collections of the Brown University libraries.

    The Palestine Poster Project
    Contains posters from the 1970's-present.

    The Suez Crisis (Oxford Digital Library)
    This special online exhibition has been developed to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Crisis. The exhibition draws from the Bodleian's rich holdings of modern political papers to provide an 'insider's viewpoint' of Suez from politicians, diplomats, civil servants and leading public figures. (From Website)

    The Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA)
    A digital archive that focuses on Western interactions with the Middle East, particularly travels to Egypt during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (From website)

    Underwood & Underwood Egypt Stereoviews
    101 images of Egypt commissioned by the Underwood & Underwood publishing company in the 1890s. The photographs, originally sold as a boxed sets, document 19th century Egyptian culture and the history of travel in the Middle East. The wide geographic scope of its subjects spanning along the Nile River, the Suez Canal towns and the Egyptian deserts render a thorough introductory visual representation of Egypt as opposed to the contemporaneous amateur and subjectively compiled albums of its time. Of particular interest are the brief descriptions and the six language translated captions on the back of each card which, content wise, often contain inaccuracies that may be interpreted as colonial approaches on the part of the publishing company. (From website)

    UNESCO Digital Library Majaliss
    In Arabic. The project Majaliss aims at ensuring the availability of classical works of Arabic literature to a large public in an easily accessible digital format and addresses the short-term needs for reading, editing and printing Arabic texts.

    Universitaets-und Landesbibliothek of Sachsen-Anhalt in Halle, Germany

    Yale-SOAS Islamic Manuscript Gallery (YS-IMG) Digitization Project
    This project, funded by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and NEH (U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities) Transatlantic Digitisation Collaboration Grants, is a pilot to create an archive of and a gateway to Islamic manuscripts.  The materials selected comprise important manuscripts, related manuscript catalogues and language dictionaries held separately in their two library collections.

    World Digital Library
    Makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world. (From website)

    Arabic Collections Online
    (ACO) is a major project to create a publicly available, digital library of public-domain Arabic language content drawn from rich Arabic collections of prominent libraries such as the American University of Beirut, Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University and Princeton University. Their aim is to digitize and mount up online more 15,000 volumes (covering all subjects: literature, business, science, and more) from their Arabic language collections.

    Qatar Digital Library (QDL)
    The Qatar Digital Library is making a vast archive featuring the cultural and  historical heritage of the Gulf and wider region freely available online for the first time. It includes archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs and much more, complete with contextualised explanatory notes and links, in both English and Arabic.

    Bibliothèques d'Orient / Libraries of the Orient
    Is a new trilingual (English, French, Arabic) platform of digital documents (ebooks, archives, maps, photographs, etc) organised in thematic categories (crossroads / communities / religions / politics / knowledge / imaginery / personalities), and contextualised with contributions by French and international scholars. Made up of complementary thematic series, the sites of this collection provide free digital access to documents scattered over various countries and partner institutions. This common heritage is aimed at providing a territory for interdisciplinary and cross-regional research projects.

    MENAdoc Digital Collections
    This is a growing collection of thousands of digitised works related to Middle Eastern, North African, Turkish and Islamic studies. It is hosted and developed by the University of Halle (Germany).

  • News

    World-wide newspapers 1996- (including UK) on Access World News

    UK Newspapers on Lexis Library

    19th century British Library newspapers (48 selected national, regional & local titles)

    ICON
    The ICON Database of International Newspapers is a freely accessible electronic resource intended to provide reliable information on newspapers published outside of the United States, and available in North American libraries and in selected libraries outside North America. It includes bibliographic descriptions of titles as well as specific information on institutions’ holdings of the same.

    Arab and world newspaper
    This website draws a fairly exhaustive list of links to the main newspapers of the Arab world, sorted by country. There is also a list of some Arabic radio stations with links to them under the “radio” section.

    Mafhoum - Database for the Arab world News and Media
    provides a list of newspapers by country of publication and links to their website.

    MideastWire.com
    This is a database that allows advanced search in their archives of news from Arabic newspapers translated into English (reaching back to 2005)

    Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN)
    AMIN is an independent Palestinian NGO that was founded in Jerusalem in 1996 and that promotes the development of anindependent public media sector in Palestine.

    Mada Masr
    Mada Masr is an independent Cairo-based news website, which started publishing in 2013, in the midst of popular protests and the ensuing political polarization. It aims at providing objective and professional journalism that constantly challenges and presents all sides of the story, offering quality in-depth and nuanced news coverage, analysis and opinion.

    Abou Naddara Collection
    Resource description: This website offers the complete newspapers published by the Egyptian nationalist James Sanua (يعقوب صنوع, 1839-1912) from 1878 to 1910. In addition, formerly unpublished manuscripts by the same author, articles from newspapers of the period about the journalist and his oeuvre, as well as the decorations he received are also available. Most of the material was directly scanned from the originals published at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, and therefore contains an ample variety of magnificent and colorful lithographs.

    Islamic Republic news agency

    Institute for War and Peace Reporting
    A British NGO for training journalists with excellent news sites on Afghanistan, Caucasus and Central Asia

    International Crisis Group
    issues reports and briefs on various conflicts around the world

    Eurasia.net.org
    EurasiaNet.org provides information and analysis about political, economic, environmental and social developments in the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as in Russia, Turkey, and Southwest Asia.

    Central Eurasia page

    Transitions online

    Freedom House –Nations in transition

    Nezavisimaya gazeta (News in Russian)

    See www.thepaperboy.com for newspapers on the net

    Ferghana.news : Information Agency
    Ferghana.Ru news agency is one of the most popular information resources regarding the Central Asian countries of the former USSR.
    It monitors print and electronic media outlets in Russia and Central Asia, offers reviews and on-line reports on current events, analytical surveys & marketing studies, as well as many links to information resources on the region.
    NB: The interfaces in Russian and Uzbek offer more resources than the English one.

    Al Monitor
    Outlet for current events reporting and feature articles about regions in the Middle East. Categorized by country: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey.

    A Chronology of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals in Arabic (1800-1900) : A Research Tool
    This website provides a chronology of nineteenth-century periodicals in Arabic. It is meant to include all periodicals published in Arabic or in Arabic and in another language (like the usual pair of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish) or in Arabic written in a different script (like Judeo-Arabic) during the period from 1800 to 1900. Those periodicals comes with a brief description (date(s) of publication editor/publisher,  languages, superceding titles, etc.)  as well as the institutions holding them.Periodicals are browsable either chornologically or alphabetically, and are indexed by persons, organizations, locations and holding institutions.
    A useful bibliography is adjoined.

    Media Use in the Middle East, 2017. A seven-nation survey by Northwestern University in Qatar
    This longitudinal study offers extensive and valuable intelligence about the media that people adopt, use, and prefer as well as their attitudes and opinions about the role, impact, and importance of mediated communication in their lives and the lives of others across the Middle East region.
    The full survey can be downloaded as a PDF too.

  • Image Collections

    IFPO Open Archives & Electronic Collections
    The Institut Français du Proche Orient ( French Institute for the Near East ) has put its archives (including  audiovisual ones) and some of its publications on open-access.

    Muslimheritage.com
    Articles on all aspects of Muslim heritage, including many historical images.

    Abdul Hamid II Collection (Library of Congress)
    This monumental collection portrays the Ottoman Empire during the reign of one of its last sultans, Abdul-Hamid II. The 1,819 photographs in 51 large-format albums date from about 1880 to 1893.

    Abou Naddara Collection
    This website offers the complete newspapers published by the Egyptian nationalist James Sanua (يعقوب صنوع, 1839-1912) from 1878 to 1910. In addition, formerly unpublished manuscripts by the same author, articles from newspapers of the period about the journalist and his oeuvre, as well as the decorations he received are also available. Most of the material was directly scanned from the originals published at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, and therefore contains an ample variety of magnificent and colourful lithographs.

    Alexandria Bombardment of 1882 Photograph Album
    The Alexandria Bombardment of 1882 Photograph Album digital collection was originally compiled by Italian photographer Luigi Fiorillo. This unique resource documents the British naval attack on 'Urabi Pasha's nationalists, who revolted against Taufik Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt, from 1879 to 1882. Fiorillo’s fifty page album records damage to Alexandria's neighborhoods, particularly the harbor and the fortress district. The images trace the development of episode from the arrival of the British fleet to the destruction of the emerging downtown district. Further, the photographs show the artillery and forts used by the resistance. The album also features portraits of the key players in the bombardment, including 'Urabi Pasha, Khedive Taufik, Admiral Seymour, and Sir Wolseley.

    America University Of Beirut Jafet Library: Poster Collection
    Political posters collected between the 1960s and the 1980s.These posters were collected from their original sources or from the American University of Beirut campus where they were posted. This collection covers two main topics:
    The Palestinian Question & Lebanon and the Lebanese Civil War

    Ancient Near East Photographs (University of Washington)
    This collection, created by Professor Scott Noegel, documents artifacts and archaeological sites of the ancient Near East. While the majority of the collection depicts structures and sites dating from 3000 BCE to 200 CE, the collection also has images of more recent sites, such as the al-Azhar Mosque and the modern creation, Lake Nasser. (From Website)

    Arts of the Islamic World (Freer and Sackler Galleries)
    The Freer and Sackler galleries have one of the finest collections of Islamic art in the United States, with particular strengths in ceramics and illustrated manuscripts.

    Asnad
    An image database of Persian historical documents from Iran and Central Asia up to the 20th Century.

    E.W. Blatchford Collection of Nineteenth Century Photographs (American University of Beirut)

    Egyptian Lantern Slide Collection (Brooklyn Museum)

    Memory of Modern Egypt (In Arabic).

    IMA (Institut du Monde Arabe) Bibliothèque numérique
    IMA (France) has created, in partnership with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt), a digital library of out-of-copyright material related to the Arabic Middle East that are freely accessible online. This collection includes more than 1166 books and 19 periodicals titles, among which جريدة أبي نظارة, المقتطف and أبولو. The website has a French and Arabic interface.

    Photographs and Prints of Egypt and Syria (New York Public Library)

    President Gamal Abdel Naser Collection
    In English, Arabic, and French.  This site includes a number of digital audio-visual documents on the Leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, accompanied with detailed search options. This includes several audio-visual documents, including: 51,512 photographs, 1,124 portraits, 1,359 audio-visual and read speeches, 1,209 documentaries, in addition to the Nasser and Culture collection, which includes plastic and applied arts, songs of the revolution, poetry, and Nasser’s writings.

    Qajar Iran Digital Archive
    Explore the lives of women during the Qajar era (1796-1925) through a wide array of materials from private family holdings and participating institutions. Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran provides bilingual access to thousands of personal papers, manuscripts, photographs, publications, everyday objects, works of art and audio materials, making it a unique online resource for social and cultural histories of the Qajar world.

    Saudi Aramco World Digital Archive
    Saudi Aramco World Digital Image Archive contains more than 40,000 images in one of the world's largest archives specializing in historic and current images of the Middle East and the Islamic world.

    ShahreFarang
    ShahreFarang is the Iranian version of peep boxes, a form of entertainment provided by wandering showmen. Shahre Farang were made of metal in the shape of an oriental castle with several holes. ShahreFarang.com is hoping to bring you visual treats. It is the brain child of two Iranian designers & culture vultures, Mehrdad Aref-Adib and Surena Parham. (From website)

    Tehran Propaganda Murals (Harvard University)
    This selection of over 130 propaganda murals photographed in the capital city during the summer of 2006 is among the first “born digital” special collections to come to the library and represents one of the first efforts to systematically document such public murals. (From Website)

    The Middle East in Early Prints and Photographs
    A collection of materials from the New York Public Library. The collection contains classics of illustrated travel and regional archaeology, as well as the Library's earliest works of photography in the Middle East region.

    The Palestine Poster Project
    Contains posters from the 1970's-present.

    The Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA)
    A digital archive that focuses on Western interactions with the Middle East, particularly travels to Egypt during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (From website)

    Underwood & Underwood Egypt Stereoviews
    101 images of Egypt commissioned by the Underwood & Underwood publishing company in the 1890s. The photographs, originally sold as a boxed sets, document 19th century Egyptian culture and the history of travel in the Middle East. The wide geographic scope of its subjects spanning along the Nile River, the Suez Canal towns and the Egyptian deserts render a thorough introductory visual representation of Egypt as opposed to the contemporaneous amateur and subjectively compiled albums of its time. Of particular interest are the brief descriptions and the six language translated captions on the back of each card which, content wise, often contain inaccuracies that may be interpreted as colonial approaches on the part of the publishing company. (From website)

    Bibliothèques d'Orient / Libraries of the Orient
    Is a new trilingual (English, French, Arabic) platform of digital documents (ebooks, archives, maps, photographs, etc) organised in thematic categories (crossroads / communities / religions / politics / knowledge / imaginery / personalities), and contextualised with contributions by French and international scholars. Made up of complementary thematic series, the sites of this collection provide free digital access to documents scattered over various countries and partner institutions. This common heritage is aimed at providing a territory for interdisciplinary and cross-regional research projects.

    858.MA : An Archive of Resistance أرشيف ثوري
    A unique collection featuring hundred of hours of footage shot and collected in Egypt around the 2011 Revolution are now made publicly available. More than 870 hours of indexed, time-stamped video material along with thousands more photographs and documents present thousands of histories of revolt told from hundreds of perspectives. All footage is published under creative commons.

  • Multimedia sources

    See also Media and Film Studies

    Layla the Chaste
    This website was created by Marlé Hammond, Senior Lecturer in Arabic Popular Literature and Culture at SOAS University of London, and is devoted to the topic of the Arabic epic of Layla Bint Lukayz, a supposedly pre-Islamic woman poet also known as Layla al-'Afifa (Layla the Chaste). All aspects of her epic related in modern popular songs and films are explored in this website, which provides a great insight in Arabic popular literature and culture.