Middle East & Islamic Studies: a Research Guide: Primary Sources (Original Documents)

• Middle Eastern and Islamic Resources at the Center for Research Libraries (Arabic manuscripts in the British Library; Arabic manuscropts in the library of SOAS, University of London): ASU Libraries is affilated member, therefore all CRL materials are availble for interlibrary loan.

• Memory of Modern Egypt: National Archives of Egypt - Bibliotheca Alexandrina

• POHA The Palestinian Oral History Archive is an archival collection that contains more than 1,000 hours of testimonies with first generation Palestinians and other Palestinian communities in Lebanon. The project will digitize, index, catalog, preserve, and provide access to the digitized interviews.

• World Digital Library: Middle East & North Africa  Collection of print and visual resources. Use limiters in left column to focus search on specific geography, date range, topic or type of resource.

• The Foreign Official Gazette database (FOG) contains records for approximately 650 official gazette titles from countries outside the United States. It serves as a “union list” of holdings within the major collections residing in North America, encompassing both CRL holdings as well as the holdings of five other major libraries.

Middle East Women’s Activism digital archive is a collection of interviews with 96 women of different generations in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, which form the basis of a monograph, entitled, Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women’s Activism in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. All interviews were conducted by Nicola Pratt, University of Warwick, in 2013-2014 as part of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship exploring the relationship between gender and geopolitics in the context of the Middle East. The research received approval from the University of Warwick Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee and consent was given at the time of interview to make this material publicly available. The archive will be of interest to researchers in the fields of gender studies and post-independence social history in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. The interviews consist of women’s personal narratives of their family background and education, how they became involved in public work (al-‘amal al-‘am), information about their activism and how it has changed over time and the impact of/their involvement in major national events, amongst other details." Middle East Women's Activism

Iran : political diaries, 1881-1965 Book Cambridge : Archive Editions, 1997. In English. A key source work for modern Iranian history: this comprehensive series of British political reports not only provides an insight into the complexities and conflicts of Persian politics, but also closely reflects the changing nature of the relations between Britain and Persia revealing the extent of those mutual misunderstandings which sometimes made the relationship a difficult and sensitive one. In 1881, when the first of the diplomatic reports reproduced in this work was written, Persia was being ruled by its 4th successive Qajar Shah, Nasir al-Din. He had come to the throne in 1848 and his was to be the longest reign of that dynasty, being brought to an end by an act of assassination in May 1896. When this series of volumes ends in 1965, the second Pahlavi Shah was still on the throne, but an important religious leader, Rouhalla Khomeini, was writing his first lectures on the theory of Islamic government.

The Iran-Iraq border, 1840-1958 [Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire, England] : Archive Editions, 1989. English "Published in association with the International Boundaries Research Unit, University of Durham."
"The documents published here have been reproduced in approximately equal measure from originals in the Public Record Office and the India Office Library and Records London"

v. 1. Negotiations culminating in the Treaty of Erzeroum, 1840-1847
v. 2. Efforts of Delimitation Commission and preparation of maps of frontier zone, 1848-1873
v. 3. Further delimitation efforts and disputes over Pusht-i-Kuh and Khotour, 1874-1897
v. 4. Ottoman encroachments across northern border and recurrence of Muhammara dispute, 1903-1911
v. 5. Negotiations culminating in the Constantinople Protocol, 1912-1913
v. 6. Demarcation of boundary by Mixed Commission of 1914 and border disputes following the Great War, 1914-1928
v. 7. Disputes over status of Shatt al-ʼArab and validity of Constantinople Protocol, 1929-1934
v. 8. Reference of the Shatt al-ʼArab dispute to the League of Nations and subsequent bilateral negotiations in Tehran and Geneva, 1934-1935
v. 9. Tehran Treaty of July 1937, new efforts to demarcate boundary and future of Basra Port, 1936-1958
v. 10-11. Maps.

Documenting Iran-U.S. Relations, 1978-2015: The collection, U.S. Policy toward Iran: From the Revolution to the Nuclear Accord, 1978-2015, published on December 12, 2019, consists of 1,760 documents and almost 14,000 pages of materials mostly obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or culled from years of research at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and its associated presidential library system.  Additional records come from British archives and other sources and include selected Iranian materials. 

Palestine and Transjordan administration reports, 1918-1948.  Cambridge : Archive Editions. Facsims of eds. originally published by various governmental publishers, 1918-1948.  This 16 volume work presents a comprehensive collection of British administrative reports and associated documents, including extensive material hitherto unknown and unpublished. The series includes the pre-Mandate reports of 1918-1923, the Mandate and Departmental Annual Reports from 1923-1947/8, including the unpublished Mandate Reports for 1940 and 1941, the extensive Survey of Palestine 1946/47 and the formal papers covering the termination of the Mandate in 1948. This is an essential research source for information on British administration in Palestine and Transjordan, on the continuous tensions of the period between the Arab and Jewish populations, on civil disorders and the eventual unworkability of the Mandate.

Digital Palestinian Archive "The Birzeit University Digital Palestinian Archive (BZUDPA) is dedicated to documenting the life of Palestinians and their institutions over the past century, from Ottoman times to the present.The project, launched in 2011, aims to preserve a large variety of documents, written and audio-visual, relating to the history of the Palestinian people over the past century, and donated by individuals, families and popular organizations. Birzeit, as a national university, is fully committed to placing its technical and academic resources at the service of this project, which continually digitizes, places online and makes available a wide variety of documents. "

Official Gazette Issued by Palestinian National Authority. Palestinian Official Gazette since 1994 after the Palestinian National Authority assumed its responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Legislations are arranged in chronological order according to the Official Gazette publications, i.e. according to issue number and date. 

Records of the Hashimite dynasties : a twentieth century documentary history [Great Britain] : Archive Editions, 1995. English
Some text in French. Records of the Hashimites is a rare and valuable publication, an encyclopaedia of authentic historical documents, tracing in detail through 15 volumes the destiny of the Hashimites, the most ancient and distinguished family in the Middle East. Through painstaking and expert research in government and private files, the editor and his assistant editor have located diaries, secret reports and a wealth of previously unpublished correspondence. These documents are now reproduced in exact facsimile to make available for your library and your own research the primary documents and archival evidence for the history of the Hashimites. Records of the Hashimites focuses on the 20th century and provides the reader with a detailed study of the convergence of Hashimite and British interests that led to the Arab Revolt in the First World War and the establishment of Hashimite rule in Iraq, Jordan and, briefly, Syria following the defeat of Turkey. Of the many hundreds of documents collected and made public in this great work, some of them ancient, many of them normally hidden or scattered in obscure archives, some of great political importance and all of historic interest - here we give you a glimpse of the sequence and contents of these 15 volumes. The following are merely a few highlights from the c. 10,000 pages of this modern reference work for Hashimite history.

Records of the Hijaz, 1798-1925 [Cambridge?] : Archive Editions, ©1996. English This important regional study provides historical research materials on the Hijaz province before its incorporation into the modern Saudi Kingdom. This work is therefore an essential complement to our companion works on Saudi and Hashimite history. Records of the Hijaz addresses aspects of Ottoman rule, Turkish-Arab relations, administration under Egyptian occupation, and power struggles within the ruling regime. Political, commercial, regional and tribal affairs are all covered and there is extensive material on the main cities of Jeddah, Yenbo, Mecca and Medina.

Records of Jerusalem 1917-1971 [Great Britain] : Archive Editions, 2002. English  A documentary history of the city of Jerusalem, concentrating on the half-century from 1917 to 1971, with some reference to earlier circumstances. The starting point of this collection accompanies the end of Ottoman rule in the Near East and the establishment of British military control in Jerusalem in the eventful year of 1917. As far as possible an attempt has been made to provide research resources specific to Jerusalem and excluding material relating to Palestine in general. Broader questions including the territorial limits and administration of Palestine and the origins of the state of Israel are covered in other related titles. However, it is impossible to disentangle such material entirely and after 1917 the echoes of the Arab–Jewish struggle form a continuous background to the development of the city.

The Zionist movement and the foundation of Israel 1839-1972 Farnham Common : Archive Editions, 2004. English These ten volumes draw together documents found in the British National Archives to trace the origins and development of the Zionist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, with specific reference to the idea, and eventually the goal, of establishing a Jewish homeland. Material is relatively sparse in the 19th century and volume 1 is rather an historical volume covering the rise of Zionism, including the work of Theodor Herzl and the first Zionist Congress at Basle, ending in 1916 with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The bulk of the material, volumes 2 to 8, relates to the years 1916-1948 when the Zionist debate raged, the movement became factionalised, split, and eventually, partly because of events surrounding World War II, achieved its goal of the creation of Israel. Volume 10, like volume 1 ranges over a greater number of years in less detail, covering the period after the creation of Israel in 1948 to the most recent releases by the British government from 1972, when the main question for Zionism, perhaps, was whether it still had a role to play beyond the inception of the State.

Land legislation in Mandate Palestine Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge Archive Editions, 2009. In English and French. A great many books have been written on the subject of Jewish land-settlement and the Arabs, or the land question in Palestine, but rarely does one have the opportunity to access the original documents among which the research has been made. This new collection of original documents from Cambridge Archive Editions allows scholars to form their own opinions on this most controversial, and critical, series of events.

The political history of Palestine under British administration Great Britain. New York : Reprinted by British Information Services, 1947. English. Memorandum by His Britannic Majesty's Government presented in 1947 to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, published at Jerusalem, 1947.

Mandate for Palestine United States. Department of State. Division of Near Eastern Affairs, author Book Washington : United States Government Printing Office, 1927. English Correspondence referring to economic rights in mandated territory. Principal documents
American-British Palestine Mandate Convention of December 3, 1924.

Cairo Gazetteer : un thesaurus pour l'identification des monuments du Caire Au XIX^e siècle, le voyage au Caire, deuxième ville après Rome pour l’exceptionnelle concentration de ses monuments, faisait partie du « grand tour » de nombreux artistes et architectes. Avec les édifices andalous et persans, l’architecture du Caire médiéval occupe une place centrale dans la découverte de l’art islamique. Les institutions patrimoniales européennes conservent ainsi des collections d’œuvres graphiques et photographiques de très grande valeur, dont l’intérêt est à la fois scientifique, artistique et, en raison de la disparition progressive de ce patrimoine architectural, historique. Ces fonds rassemblent parfois la seule documentation encore subsistante sur des édifices disparus, très dégradés ou radicalement transformés. Ces collections riches, variées et au caractère souvent unique restent cependant à peu près invisibles et inexploitées faute d’une indexation appropriée. Ce type de corpus soulève des difficultés particulières de traitement en matière d’identification et d’indexation, en raison des multiples variantes issues de la translittération, en caractères latins, des toponymes arabes. Il existe en effet de très nombreuses disparités dans l’orthographe des noms des monuments et cette « cacographie » demeure problématique pour le traitement documentaire et l’interopérabilité des données. Le laboratoire InVisu a donc établi un référentiel sur les monuments du Caire, sous la forme d’une table de concordance qui recense les variantes orthographiques des toponymes, et qui permet d’identifier, de décrire et de localiser les 600 édifices classés du Caire. Les monuments ont été localisés dans la base de données géographiques GeoNames (plus de 400 monuments créés), ce qui a permis de générer leurs coordonnées géographiques et d’exposer une partie des données de ce référentiel dans le Linked Open Data. Le projet Cairo Gazetteer vise la mise à disposition, au niveau de la communauté européenne des humanités numériques, de l’intégralité de ce référentiel en le publiant au format SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System).

Arabian Gulf Digital Archive Primary source documents about the Arabian Gulf Open to all  The Arabian Gulf Digital Archive (“AGDA”) is an online archive that has been created to showcase historical and cultural material that tells the history of the Arabian Gulf. Offers digital material that spans two centuries, documenting events and personalities that have shaped and defined the region. AGDA contains, among other things, letters, memos, transcripts, photos and official correspondence from leaders and governments that shaped the events of their time. It’s a free and open resource for students, researchers, enthusiasts and anyone who is curious to explore the rich and varied past of the Arabian Gulf.

Landscapes and monuments: Iran to Spain

Garth Fowden is a historian of first millennium CE Eurasia, who in pursuit of his interests has travelled extensively in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa. For the greater part of his career he has lived and worked in Greece. This site presents a digitized version of the photographic archive he developed while conducting research on the landscapes and monuments of these regions. . The main regions covered are Greece, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iran and Yemen, and less extensively Spain, Italy, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt. Within each site, the photographs are arranged in a sequence designed to convey some sense of a physical visit, sometimes starting and/or ending with more general shots of the surrounding landscape and of the routes that traverse it. Photographs taken on site are occasionally supplemented by items from museums or print publications designed to make the collection more suitable for teaching purposes.

Bibliothèque diplomatique numérique [FRANCE] Ministère français de l'Europe et des affaires étrangères (MEAE).  Histoire diplomatique * Documents diplomatiques * Ministères des Affaires étrangères * Des diplomates : formation, récits et portraits * Droit international * Traités, accords et conventions * Protectorats et mandat français * Publications officielles étrangères ou intergouvernementales.

Iranian Oral History Project | Harvard Library  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. Of these, 118 narratives have been digitized and are available to researchers through this database.

A select chronology and background documents relating to the Middle East : [prepared for the] Committee on Foreign Relations,  United States Senate. (2d rev. ed.) - 94th Congress, 1st Session, 1975

The contemporary Middle East : a documentary history Felton, John. — c2008 Washington, D.C. : CQ Press, c2008.

The modern Middle East : a sourcebook for history 2006 Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006.

A documentary history of modern Iraq c2012 Gainesville : University Press of Florida, c2012.

Modernist Islam, 1840-1940 : a sourcebook 2002 Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2002.

Liberal Islam : a source book  1998 New York : Oxford University Press, 1998.