Open Access Databases: Arabic, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies

The project is designed both to develop a methodology suited to the region, discover, record, monitor and illuminate settlement history in the Near East. The archive currently consists of over 115,000 (mainly aerial) images and maps, the majority of which are displayed on the archive’s Flickr site. Although principally focused on Jordan, in which there has been an annual programme of flying since 1997 (The Aerial Archaeology in Jordan (AAJ) Project), high resolution satellite imagery on Google Earth is now permitting research on neighbouring countries.

Digital collection drawn from the holdings of Akkasah, Center for Photography at NYUAD. Akkasah, the Center for Photography at New York University Abu Dhabi, is home to an archive of the photographic heritage of the Middle East and North Africa. The Center is dedicated to documenting and preserving the diverse histories and practices of photography from the region, and our growing archive contains at present over 60,000 images. Akkasah undertakes and supports research on Middle Eastern and North African photography, as well as on cross-cultural and transnational aspects of photography, through conferences, colloquia and publications, and through the research fellowship program of the NYUAD Institute. It also commissions new documentary projects from contemporary photographers that are archived alongside the Center’s historical collections, and it is establishing a special collection of photographic albums, as well as of original photobooks from around the world.

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. NYU and the partner institutions (including American University of Beirut) are contributing all types of material—literature, business, science, and more—from their Arabic language collections. ACO will provide digital access to printed books drawn from rich Arabic collections of prominent libraries.

The Database of Arabic Literature in Western Research (DAL) is an easy-to-use, searchable, internet-based bibliographic database of Arabic literature in western research. Search Keyword and other Browse links on the left hand bar, as well as Simple Search and Advanced Search, provide easy access to detailed, annotated and content-enriched bibliographic records of books, articles, chapters of books and reviews written in English since the movement of translation and commentary of Arabic literary texts first began in the West.

Database of Ottoman Inscriptions (DOI) is searchable digital database comprising information about, as well as transliterations and pictures of, all the Turkish, Arabic and Persian architectural inscriptions created in the Ottoman lands during Ottoman times.

The Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament is a long-term project at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. It fills a huge lacuna, as no modern edition of the Bible in Coptic exists. The project aims to provide a complete documentation of the manuscript evidence, digital editions of all OT manuscripts, critical editions of all OT books, corpus-linguistic analyses and translations into English, German and Arabic.

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.

Compiled and published by the Centre for The Great Islamic Encyclopaedia, the Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Buzurg-i Islāmī has been described as one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date sources on Islam and the Muslim world. Quranic Studies, Doctrines, Theology (Kalam), Jurisprudence, Principles of Jurisprudence, Hadith, Elements, Islamic figures, Ethics, Religions, Heresiography, Logic, Philosophy, Mysticism, Literature, Art, Anthropology, Architecture and Islamic Monuments, History, Geography, Mathematics, Astronomy and Medicine are all subjects covered by the encyclopaedia. An abridged English edition is being provided by Brill, in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies.

In 2008 Egypt witnessed a remarkable experience rich in political and democratic practices, and the sites captured back then should be revisited in the context of current events. In Spring 2008 the April 6 Youth Movement, an Egyptian activist group established to support the workers in an industrial town, appeared in local politics as an active force. It was followed by other opposition movements calling for democracy, social justice, free and fair elections and civil resistance. The group would later feature prominently in the Egyptian protests of 2011. Other prominent websites in this archive include The Muslim Brotherhood which rose to power in 2012 before their downfall again in 2013. The Kefaya (Enough) movement was a group of various political forces aimed to establish a new government in Egypt in opposition to the Mubarak regime, and was a prominent opposition movement in Egypt’s early 21st century history. Important events in 2008 which had a large effect on political discourse concerned Egyptian gas exports to Israel which sparked large protests within the country. All in all, this collection of websites represents emerging expressionism by Egyptian political parties and movements, along with blogs and news media sites of the time. These sites may be considered a form of virtual ephemera, appearing prior to the advent of popular social media channels.

A major marker in the country’s political history, the Egyptian elections of 2012 received global coverage and witnessed a proliferation of political platforms advertised on websites associated with various parties and distinguished political personalities. Perhaps for the first time, popular social media channels covered the events on a daily basis, thus providing documentation of what was happening on the ground and people’s opinions of it. This collection of websites includes many of these Egyptian parties’ websites, in addition to the coverage of major news agencies and social media outlets. As a result, this collection provides a comprehensive overall picture of this historic event as it unfolded and the ensuing developments.

The CEDEJ (Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation Economiques, Juridiques et Sociales) and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina have digitized more than 800,000 articles in Arabic, English and French, 40 years of Egyptian political, cultural and economic life - from the mid-1970s until 2010. This work was carried out from 24 Egyptian and Arabic newspapers - daily and weekly - including 13 print and 11 digital media. Through these scanned articles, we can follow the evolution of swathes of contemporary Egyptian society.

The Encyclopædia Iranica is dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent. The academic reference work will eventually cover all aspects of Iranian history and culture as well as all Iranian languages and literatures, facilitating the whole range of Iranian studies research from archeology to political sciences. The Encyclopædia is an international, collaborative project, based at Columbia University in the City of New York.

This catalogue provides a searchable interface to basic manuscript descriptions from some of the major manuscript collections in the UK. Fihrist aims to become a union catalogue for manuscripts in Arabic script. FIHRIST is not a digital Library.

The project Historians of the Ottoman Empire aims at filling an extensive gap in the field of Ottoman Studies by offering scholars a major bio-bibliographical reference book on Ottoman historians. In contrast to earlier similar projects in the field, Historians of the Ottoman Empire intends to comprise all the historians who have lived and produced within the geographical limits of the Ottoman Empire -- regardless of the language in which they wrote. The reference book will thus cover works of history primarily in Turkish, but also in Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Greek, and other languages. The Historians of the Ottoman Empire is intended to be a major reference work for scholars and students of the Middle East, North Africa, South-East Europe, and the Caucasus, as well as for non-specialists interested in the histories and cultures of these regions.

Citations, some with abstracts or tables of contents, to literature on on Islamic medical and scientific ethics. Database covers attitudes and practices on ethical issues within the Muslim world, from many disciplines and publication types including journals, newspapers, books, bills, laws, court decisions, reports, and audiovisuals.

The Islamic Painted Page database enables you to locate printed reproductions, commentaries and weblinks for thousands of Persian, Ottoman, Arab and Mughal paintings, including illuminated "carpet" pages, decorated Quran pages, and book bindings from over 310 collections all over the world.

The Neo-Assyrian capital of Nineveh in northern Iraq, from the mid-7th century BC, is the earliest attested site of courtly scientific patronage in world history. This website presents the scholars' letters, queries, and reports to their kings and provides resources to support their use in undergraduate teaching. Since the summer of 2008 it also gives access to court poetry, royal prophecies, and correspondence from temple personnel to the king.

The Manar al-Athar website, based at the University of Oxford, is the inspired creation of Judith McKenzie (1957–2019). It provides high resolution, searchable images for teaching, research, and publication. These images of archaeological sites, buildings and art, cover the areas of the former Roman empire which later came under Islamic rule, such as Syro-Palestine/the Levant, Egypt and North Africa, as well as some bordering regions, such as Georgia and Armenia. The chronological range is from Alexander the Great (i.e., from about 300 BC) through the Islamic period. It is the first website of its kind providing such material labelled jointly in both Arabic and English.

The Islamic Studies Library Collections at McGill University include over 750 lithographed volumes printed in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century in the Middle East (Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Turkey), North Africa (Morocco), and South Asia (India, Pakistan).

With a preliminary release of over 100,000 pages from 15 titles, the MENA Newspapers collection will eventually encompass up to 500,000 pages of historical news content providing unique insights into the history of individual countries, as well as broad viewpoints on key historical events from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. Content in MENA Newspapers is predominantly in Arabic, but also includes key titles in English and French.

A collection of 27 public access books from UC Press e-Books Collection, 1982-2004.

The initial aim of this project was to photograph, transcribe and translate the unpublished inscriptions in pre-1800 monuments in Cairo. In addition it was hoped to record those inscriptions, published or not, most in danger of disappearing because of their fragile state of conservation. The inspiration for the project came from the parlous state of many of Cairo’s monuments at the time. Cairo has the richest legacy of pre-modern monuments of any city in the Islamic world. Over four hundred are listed as worthy of protection by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, ranging from the eighth to the nineteenth century, and from simple mosques to complexes which are among the world’s architectural masterpieces.

Extensive database of references to theses, books, articles, papers and projects relating to research into Ottoman-Turkish culture, available in English and Turkish versions. The bibliography aims to serve as the principal reference for scholars working on Turkey and the Middle East, and for specialists studying other medieval and early/modern literatures.

The University of Heidelberg is engaged in an ambitious programme of digitising resources for the study of ancient Egypt and the ancient Near East. The Propylaeum repository is their open access gateway to those resources.

The Visual Resources Collections at the University of Michigan houses the Islamic manuscript record archive of Dr. Marianna Shreve Simpson (PhD, Harvard University, 1978). The Simpson collection encompasses the history of Islamic book arts, with a particular focus on illustrated manuscripts produced between 1300 and 1600 CE. Containing over 500 documentation records and approximately 4,800 images (prints, color slides, digital images, and microfilms), the archive represents almost four decades of manuscript study in libraries, museums, and private collections throughout the world.

The Khayrallah Center for Lebanese American Studies (KCLDS) Archive is the foundational work of its cultural projects. It houses primary resources collected from Lebanese-Americans, cultural institutions and research on immigrants in the Americas. While a great deal of the archive is freely available online, some collections are only partially available, while others are restricted to researchers.