UTM Primary Sources: Digital Collections

[Brill Reference] Sirāj al-tawārīkh or The History of Afghanistan was commissioned as an official national history by the Afghan prince, later amir, Habib Allah Khan (reigned 1901-1919). The author, Fayz Muhammad Khan, better known as “Katib” (The Writer), was a scribe at the royal court. For more than twenty years, he had full access to government archives and oral sources and thus presents an unparalleled picture of the country from its founding in 1747 until the end of the nineteenth century.

[Adam Matthew] It encompasses the era of “The Great Game” — a political and diplomatic confrontation between the Russian and British Empires for influence, territory and trade across a vast region, from the Black Sea in the West to the Pamir Mountains in the East. It comprised of correspondence, intelligence reports, agents’ diaries, minutes, maps, newspaper excerpts and other materials from the Foreign Office (FO) 65, FO 106, FO 371 and FO 539 series. Highlights:
— Letters to and from the Shahs of Persia and the Emirs of Afghanistan
— War diaries of the Kurram Field Force and dispatches from Lord Roberts
— Material relating to early Soviet military takeover of Bukhara, and early Soviet relations with Afghanistan
— Correspondence from national governments including Russia, Persia, Afghanistan and British India
— Correspondence on Francis Younghusband’s expedition to the Pamirs
— Russian activities and events in Afghanistan and on the North-Western Frontier

[East View] mainly 20th Century
Original documents of the National Archives (UK) in facsimile include numerous maps, on the national heritage and political development of many countries, particularly the Near and Middle East.
Several books are about Slavic, Balkan and Caucasus, and East and Southeast Asia, for example, History of the Indian Navy (1631-1863)

For example, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria.
The Special Focus Collections includes Islamic Law, Judicial (1962—72, Muslim marriage and divorce law reports 4v.) and Treatises.

Spanning the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the recent IAEA inspections of Iraq's nuclear program, Nuclear Nonproliferation offers researchers the most complete set of primary source materials to U.S. nonproliferation policy available.
See Part II: U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation 2, Part I: From Atoms for Peace to the NPT, 1954-1968

Oxford Islamic Studies Online product site has been retired. Titles were added to Oxford Reference:
— The Oxford Encyclopedias of the Islamic World: Digital Collection
— Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook
— Makers of Contemporary Islam
— The Islamic World: Past and Present
— The Oxford History of Islam
— Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
— Modernist Islam, 1840-1940: A Sourcebook

PERIOD COVERED: 1000–1990
Language: Arabic with English interface
The collection covers variety of disciplines from important Arab writers, spanning fields from feminism and social theory, to classics of literature, history, and the sciences, and these works formed the crucible for Arab culture, religion, philosophy, and political thought.

PERIOD COVERED: the 18th century through the 21st century
Resources cover Arab Revolt, 1916-1919, Zanzibar Revolution, 1964, Egyptian Revolution, 1952, Iranian Revolutions 1953-1979, Great Syrian Revolt, 1925-1927, Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-1939, and so forth.

PERIOD COVERED: 1820–1914
Language: Arabic with English interface
The collection focuses on Egypt and Syria. These eBooks provide insight into the development of Egypt and the Arab world during the most profound period of industrialization, modernization, the end of the Ottoman Empire, and relations with the colonial powers of the West.

Contributor: Hull University Archives
This collection is drawn from the personal papers of Mark Sykes (1879-1919), a politician and diplomatic advisor famous for his role in the partition of the Middle East around the period of the First World War. He is best known for his role in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, which was a secret treaty between European powers that divided up the Ottoman Empire in the face of its impending collapse.
— Foreign affairs and travel, 1888-1919
— Papers regarding the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Zionist movement, and British policy in Islamic countries, 1914-1918
— Papers of Sir Mark Sykes formerly on display at Sledmere House, 1915-1917
— Miscellaneous other papers

[Harvard Library] Materials in Islamic Heritage Project digital collection date from the 10th to the 20th centuries and represent many:
— regions, including Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and South, Southeast, and Central Asia;
— languages, primarily Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish; also Urdu, Chagatai, Malay, Gujarati, Indic languages, and several Western languages;
— and subjects, including religious texts and commentaries; Sufism; history, geography, law, and the sciences (astronomy, astrology, mathematics, medicine); poetry and literature; rhetoric, logic, and philosophy; calligraphy, dictionaries and grammar, as well as biographies and autobiographical works.

[East View] Founded in 1875, Al-Ahram (الأهرام‎, “The Pyramids”) is one of the longest-running newspapers in the Middle East. It has long been regarded as Egypt’s most authoritative and influential newspaper, and one of the most important newspapers in the Arab world, with a circulation of over 1 million. Prior to 1960, the newspaper was an independent publication and was renowned for its objectivity and independence. After being nationalized by President Nasser in 1960, Al-Ahram became the de facto voice of the Egyptian government and today the newspaper is managed by the Supreme Council of Press.

PERIOD COVERED: 1993–December 31, 2013
The WNC was collected by U.S. intelligence from unclassified, open sources around the world and administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Technical Information Service. News include, for example,
— Saudi Arabia (Al Majalla, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Arab News),
— Egypt (Akhbar al-Yawm, Akhir Sa'ah, Al-Akhbar, Al-Musawwar, MENA, Watani),
— Iraq (Al-Hurriyah, Al-Ittihad, Al-Mu'tamar, Al-Sabah Al-Jadid, Hawlati, Kurdistani Nuwe),
— Turkey (Anatolia, Bianet, Cihan News Agency, Dicle News Agency, Hurriyet, Hurriyet, Milliyet, Sabah, Turkish Daily News, Zaman), and more.

[Center for Research Libraries (CRL)] PERIOD COVERED: from the late 19th century through the present
Key topics include the decline of colonialism, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Suez Crisis, the Cold War, the rise of the petroleum industry, twentieth-century pan-Arab movements, both World Wars, the establishment of the state of Israel, the Iran-Iraq War, and the recent Arab Spring.
Content in MENA Newspapers is predominantly in Arabic, but also includes key titles in English and French, featuring titles such as Al-Iqbal (Lebanon), Al Akhaa al Watani (Iraq), Tangier Gazette(Morocco), and La Vérité (Algeria).

Well known works include those by Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (1520/1-1592); Pietro della Valle (1586-1652); J.B. Tavernier (1605-1689); Jean de Thevenot (1633-1667); John Chardin (1643-1713); Cornelis de Bruyn (le Brun; 1652-1726); J.P. de Tournefort (1656-1708); Richard Pococke (1704-1765); James Bruce (1730-1794); and Carsten Niebuhr (1733-1815).

1: Pioneer Orientalists
2: The Ottoman Legacy of Levinus Warner
3: Arabic Manuscripts from the Hungarian Academy
4: The Shangoda Collections from Dagestan

Brockelmann's work offers bio-bibliographic information about works written in Arabic and their authors, with an emphasis on the classical period. It is divided in chronologically organized sections, which are subdivided by literary genre. Individual entries typically consist of a biographical section and a list of the author’s works in manuscript and print, with references to secondary literature.

[Alexander Street] These collectors’ bodies of work contain some of regional music on record, including the Mark Slobin Fieldwork Archive, Music in the Afghan North, 1967-1972 (World Music Archives, Wesleyan University).

TOC, Arabic version and English translation
The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah Online was written by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270) is the earliest comprehensive history of medicine. It contains biographies of over 432 physicians, ranging from the ancient Greeks to the author’s contemporaries, describing their training and practice, often as court physicians, and listing their medical works; all this interlaced with poems and anecdotes.

— Shāhnāmah (MS RAS 239)
— Gulistan of Sa‘di (RAS Persian 258)
— Kitab-i Mathnawiyyat-i Zafar Khan (RAS Persian 310)

The collection was partially digitized. It covers various subjects including: astronomy and astrology, chronology, cookery, divinations and the interpretation of dreams, herbals, magic, medicine and the history of medicine, philosophy, and religion. The entire collection that includes prints comprises:
Non-Islamic Near and Middle East: About 100 manuscripts in: Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, and Syriac, with Egyptian papyri.
Islamic Near and Middle East: About 2,000 manuscripts in: Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.

The online version is based on the original three-volume work (1553 pages in total) and was updated with the fourth volume, which was published in 2016. This version, which is written in English, is organized based on the original Akkadian, Anatolian, Egyptian, West Semitic, and Sumerian texts. It contains:
— Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World: "literary" texts - those responses to the world about them by which the creative minds of antiquity sought to come to terms with their environment, real or imaginary.
— Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World: "historical" texts: building and votive inscriptions, seals, weights, treaties, collections of laws, and other genres originally inscribed on durable mediums or in multiple copies for long-term survival. The monuments in which the rulers attempted to memorialize their achievements and lesser mortals expressed their loyalty or piety.
— Archival Documents from the Biblical World: "economic" texts – a vast number of legal, commercial and private documents preserved from pre-classical antiquity

The Encyclopædia Iranica is a comprehensive research tool dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.

See also The Koran Interpreted by Arthur J. Arberry (1905-69)

[Brill] The Miras Maktoob Persian e-book collection consists of 248 volumes (189 works) originally published by the Written Heritage Research Institute (Miras Maktoob), a non-governmental organisation in Tehran. For example, the Nahj al-balāgha is a collection of sermons, letters, testimonials, and wise sayings attributed to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), the Prophet’s son-in-law, successor, and first imam of the Shīʿa.

The series present the surviving record of past encounters in a variety of forms: authoritative, text editions and annotated translations, studies of authors and their works and collections of essays on particular themes and historical periods.

The series include, for example, Printing the Talmud: Complete Editions, Tractates and Other Works, and the Associated Presses from the Mid-17th Century through the 18th Century, which is a profusely illustrated major work describing the complete editions of the Talmud printed from about 1650 to slightly after 1800.

Authoritative research guides to essential literature in subjects across the humanities and social sciences.

Access is available for the titles that have a green lock icon.
For example, Philosophy in the Islamic World Online: 8th-10th Centuries Collection.

The Encyclopædia Iranica is a comprehensive research tool dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.

Created by Nicole A.N.M. van Os (June 2020)