LibGuides: HIS 4355: History & Politics of the Middle East: Primary Sources

Primary Source Overview

A primary source is a record of a person, event, or occurrence created by an eyewitness or a participant's version of an event. Primary sources allow researchers to gain better insight into historical figures and events.
Primary sources emphasize the lack of intermediaries between the things or events being studied and reports of those things or events based on the belief that firsthand accounts are more accurate.
Examples of primary sources include diaries, letters, notes from lab experiments, research data, photographs, blogs, e-mails, maps, scrapbooks, Facebook pages, poetry, artwork, birthday cards, office records, and artifacts.

Recommended Primary Source Databases

Middle East and North Africa : World Digital Library
The World Digital Library (WDL) was a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, with the support of UNESCO, and contributions from libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations around the world.
Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME)
(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.

JSTOR
JSTOR offers journals, ebooks, and primary source collections, allowing researchers to retrieve high-resolution scanned images as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated. The resources archived in JSTOR span many disciplines.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Comprising more than 9 million items that document U.S. history and culture, the site is organized into more than 100 thematic collections based on their original format, their subject matter, or who first created, assembled, or donated them to the Library. LC's Digital Collections provides free and open access to manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. Collections may be browsed individually, searched individually (including full-text searching for many written items), or searched across multiple collections.
National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government within the executive branch, charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records.

Recommended Primary Source Collections for Middle Eastern Studies

American University in Cairo: Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library
The digital library supports research and teaching in the arts, culture, and society of Egypt and the Middle East by providing online access to unique cultural heritage resources. It Includes photographs, maps, oral histories, video recording and much more.
American University of Beirut: Middle Eastern Digital Collections
This is a general guide about digital collections, highlighting major digital collections at AUB as well as selected Middle Eastern digital collections around the world.
Library of Congress - African and Middle Eastern Division: Digital Collections
Digital Collections from the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress. Sample collections are: Egypt 2008 Web Archive, Manuscripts in St. Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai and Selections of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy.
Internet Islamic History Sourcebook
Includes scholarly articles and primary source documents in a variety of subject areas.
Brown University Library: Middle East Studies
Scholarly and research related resources for the region stretching from North Africa to Iran
The Middle East Institute-Oman Library: Digital Collections
The Oman Library’s online collection is a web-based digital collection of the library’s rare books and manuscripts, consisting entirely of subjects related to Middle Eastern Studies. The topics of the rare collection range from history and culture to works of fiction from the early twentieth century. The collection includes materials in seven different languages -- English, Arabic, French, Farsi, Urdu, Ottoman Turkish, and Turkish -- and publications spanning the period from 1700 to 1921. In addition to rare books, MEI has included a number of its own published works in the digital collection. These Middle East Institute publications span from the 1960s to 2004.
McGill Library: World Islamic & Middle East studies
This guide focuses on primary and secondary sources for the study of the Middle East, both modern and contemporary. It is tailored to the courses offered by the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies

HIS 4355: History & Politics of the Middle East

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Primary Source Overview

Recommended Primary Source Databases

Recommended Primary Source Collections for Middle Eastern Studies