The library’s entrance with the security booth to the left. Photo Credit: Yasemin Akçagüner.
Off the beaten track of researchers and scholars of the Ottoman Empire, Tire Necip Paşa Library is an endowment (Tr. vakıf, Ar. waqf) library dating back to the early-nineteenth century located in the Turkish town of Tire in Izmir province. Sometimes spelled Necippaşa or Necib Paşa, this library is more accurately described as a manuscript museum and conservation site. Established in 1827-28 by the Ottoman statesman Mehmed Necib Paşa, the library boasts 5156 titles that include 1754 manuscripts and 3402 print books in modern Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian. The library continues to serve researchers through digitization services and limited capacity in-person viewings in its original location today.
From the first commercial audio recordings at the turn of the 20th century to the 1940s, a dozen or so record companies made tens of thousands of audio recordings for sale across the globe to the peoples and diasporas of the southern and eastern Mediterranean regions.* The vast majority of these recordings were of music, but they also included recordings of comedy sketches, political speeches, Qur’anic recitations, and a smattering of other audio forms. Recording companies sought to capitalise on the region’s communal diversity by recording materials in Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Greek, Armenian and other local languages; especially after realising that there was a market for these materials in diaspora communities from the region, particularly in the Americas. Beyond commercial recordings, the region’s audio heritage includes a large volume of one-of-a-kind recordings, such as radio transcriptions prepared for broadcasts, ethnographic recordings, home recordings by amateurs, and so on.
A sampling of records and their sleeves from UCSB’s Historical Recordings Collection (Photo credit: Heather Hughes)
Over a century later, several archives with varying breadths to their collection mandates have identified these recordings as priority areas for collection, preservation, exhibition and digital curation. In this piece, I aim to provide information that could be useful to researchers of the southern and eastern Mediterranean regions who are interested in such things as recording history, cultural heritage, music, and archival practices and provenance. I profile five institutions with some of the most substantial collections of relevance to the history of audio recording in the region: the AMAR Foundation (Lebanon), The Palestinian Institute for Cultural Development-Nawa (Palestine), Centre des Musiques Arabes et Méditerranéennes: Tunisian National Sound Archive (Tunisia), the British Library (UK) and the University of California at Santa Barbara Library (USA).
“Open access” is any resource you don’t have to pay for, that is available online and that has less obstacles to copying and using material – in short, anything that is available for all.1 As a movement in information sciences, it has been praised, but in our particular contexts, in mine as someone who lives in the Arabic-speaking world, I wonder about its limitations. What does “available for all” truly mean?
What open access is can be defined by cultural factors, like language, history and even the significance of computer literacy. I presented on this with N.A. Mansour at the Digital Orientalisms Twitter Conference in 2020 in both Arabic and English. But we thought a visual medium might help us provoke thought on this issue even more.
Alternative text is also available for each comic panel.
Image taken by Heather Hughes at UCSB Library Special Research Collections
How does music constitute an archive? What happens when we listen to or play music from the past? Hazine is seeking 3-4 pieces on music and sound collections from the Mashriq, Maghreb, East Africa, West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, Iran, Greece, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean that address the following topics:
Music collections and sources for the study of music and performers
Collecting sound recordings, either for institutional and personal collections
Radio, performance, and re-release as research or archive
Situating music history and sound collections in different fields
Musical transformations and traveling of songs/melodies in different contexts and places
Send pitches to hazineblog[at]gmail.com by February 14th, 2021.
Pitches should be no longer than 300 words and should be accompanied by a few sentences telling us who you are. For this call, we accept archives reviews, essays, resource guides, and are open to creative formats like zines and comics. We are open to different forms of style as we expand this category of the site but do have a look at the essays we’ve run previously, like this one on typography and this one on archivy, because they demonstrate what we’re really looking for: a strong point of view. Our standards for archive reviews are here, but we also take more narrative introductions to archives, like this one. Completed essays –if accepted– will be 2000 words or less. Deadlines for completed pieces are flexible. Each piece is paid 100 USD upon publication.
A General view from Silêmanî/Sulaymaniyah “The Capital of Kurdistan” which was founded by the leader of Kurdish Baban Principality, Ibrahim Pasha Baban in 1784. Silêmanî has been one of the major centers for education, culture, and history in Kurdistan. William Heude, A Voyage up to the Persian Gulf, and a Journey Overland from India to England in 1817” (London: 1819).
Kurds, especially in Turkey, have faced some of the most systematic assimilationist policies in the Middle East since the early years of the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. The Kurds have not been allowed to establish their own centers for the production of knowledge under the uncertain and perilous conditions in Northern Kurdistan and Turkey. Therefore, the Kurds and their friends have created some indispensable organizations and platforms in diaspora to preserve Kurdish written materials and cultural artifacts from attempted state annihilation.
By Natalya Stanke, Tessa Litecky, and Elisabeth Koch
Hazine recognizes that most archives and libraries are closed right now and emphasize prioritizing during these times the health and safety of all those who work at archives and libraries as well as the health and safety of those who use archives and libraries. We are publishing archive reviews in the hopes that eventually these repositories will be accessible again.
The ARCE Grand Salon, Photo Credit: ARCE 3D Model
Just a block south of Tahrir Square in the heart of Cairo lies the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). Since 1948, ARCE has served as a powerful force for conservation, education, and historical research within Egypt. The archive and library collections cover 7,000 years of Egyptian history, including prehistoric Pharaonic, Coptic, Islamic, and more contemporary materials. ARCE’s conservation efforts are housed within the ARCE Conservation Archive, which serves as a resource for researchers interested in the dynamics of preserving Egyptian cultural heritage.
I have hesitated to write this piece because, as I told the person who commissioned it, everything about the archive(s), archivists, and their tepid relationship with historians and humanities folk has already been said in academic articles, books, conferences, and in less diplomatic ways on social media. Perhaps the most succinct and well-presented perspective of archivy’s relationship with other academics is Caswell’s (2016) article, “ ’The Archive’ Is Not an Archives: On Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies.” I would not be offended if you stopped reading this right here and just clicked on the link to that article now.
Caswell (2016) acknowledges in her article previous work on the topic by Lingel (2013), “This is not an archive” , who spoke about the limits of the archives as a metaphor especially when the theories are constructed “in ignorance of archival work.” Recently, Gibbons (2020) has written “Derrida in the Archival Multiverse” which begins with the important point all of our voices have grown hoarse repeating, “Archival theory did not start (nor end) with Derrida.” As Eastwood (2017) explained, archivists themselves “have long engaged in characterizing the nature of archives.”
The lobby of the American Research Center in Egypt (photo credit: N.A. Mansour)
At MESA 2019, Djodi Deutsch, Academic Programs Manager for the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), participated in a discussion on doing research in Egypt today; she based this on years of working with ARCE fellows conducting dissertation research and other projects. She kindly shared this list of research sites in Egypt with us (and on social media!) to share with you. Note these are not archive reviews –we’ve hyperlinked the research sites that we do have reviews for– but we are working on bringing you Egypt-specific archive reviews, along with other content. Feel free to drop us a line at hazineblog@gmail.com if you want to write us a piece! For now, this guide should help you get a general sense of what is out there.
Statue of a Peasant Woman in the Agricultural Museum Gardens (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
Obviously Dar al-Wathaiq (the National Archives) and Dar al-Kutub are still accessible. Dar al-Wathaiq requires a lengthy application process you can begin by visiting the location on the Corniche. Dar al-Kutub, both at the Corniche and Bab al-Khalq are running as usual: these repositories are good for rare books, manuscripts, and periodicals.
Dar al-Kutub (Corniche Location) is on the right side of the image. The left side of the image is Zamalek, where the Majma al-Lugha al-‘Arabi can be found (photo credit: N.A. Mansour)
Here is the list itself, compiled by Djodi Deutsch
Let’s face it: every publication is better with images. Whether it’s a presentation, a blog post, a book, or just a paper, images engage an audience instantly. The internet is flush with images from Islamic art, architecture, and society, but reliable sources (with credit information) are more difficult to track down. So we’ve done it for you! Here are some of the best sites for finding credited visual resources for Islamic, Middle Eastern and North African Studies. Feel free to suggest more in the comments and we’ll update the list! Note this list is specifically focused on images and visual resources, but not necessarily manuscripts (for a guide to online manuscript collections, look at Evyn Kropf’s list here).
Recent developments across the Middle East have made archival retrieval difficult to say the least. Iraq is no exception. In fact, there are many intricacies and obstacles related to the writing of Iraqi history, whether, cultural, social or economic. In the wake of the 2003 invasion, looting and vandalism left libraries, archives, museums, and government buildings in ruins, most notably in the examples of the Ba’th archives, now at the Hoover Institution, and the ISIS Files. The loss of these sources, the toll of dictatorship, years of sanctions, and the present state of violence in Iraq pose serious challenges to critical studies of Iraq. As a result, perhaps, twentieth-century Iraqi history has until recently been written through a rather narrow use of British colonial sources located in the National Archives in London. The collections of the Jesuit Archives & Research Center (JARC) are a welcome exception that proves the importance of thinking about Iraqi and Middle Eastern archives transnationally. The collection, it must be said from the outset, is most directly relevant to scholars interested in twentieth-century Iraqi history. It contains the materials of the Jesuit Mission in Iraq as well as correspondence with the Jesuit community in the US and covers the period from 1932-1969. However, those working on missionary history, US-Iraqi relations, elites, education, sport, and masculinity in the Middle East will also find the collections useful.
History
JARC is the home of the archives of the US Jesuit provinces and the missions they administered abroad. The New England Province administered the Jesuit mission in Iraq, which makes this archive the only one in the collection directly related to Middle Eastern history. In November 2017, the archives of the thirteen Jesuit provinces were centralized and relocated to a brand new facility in Saint Louis.
The Jesuits established an elite high school for boys (Baghdad College) in 1932 and a co-educational university (al-Hikma) in 1956 in Baghdad. However, already in 1921, the Chaldean Patriarch in Iraq, Mar Emmanuel II Thomas, a graduate of Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut, sent a petition to Pope Pius XI in Rome asking for the establishment of Christian secondary education in Baghdad. More than a decade passed, however, before the desire for Christian secondary education in Iraq materialized. Georgetown professor and founder of its School of Foreign Service, Fr. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., arrived in Baghdad in 1931. Walsh had been sent to Baghdad in his capacity as fundraiser and officer of the Vatican-sponsored Catholic Near East Welfare Association. In Iraq, Walsh met with Iraqi government officials to discuss the possibility of opening a Jesuit high school in Baghdad. In March 1932, Walsh received a cable from the Iraqi Ministry of Education giving him the green light and the school officially opened in September of that year. While the Vatican was influential during the founding of Baghdad College, it quickly became an American Jesuit project. The Jesuit mission in Iraq was administered by the New England Province and funded by the presidents of eight American Jesuits colleges and universities: Boston College, the University of Detroit, Fordham University, Georgetown University, Loyola University in Chicago, University, Loyola University in New Orleans, St, Louis University, and the University of San Francisco. Together, these eight institution formed the The Iraq-American Educational Association. Between 1932-1969, the Jesuits in Iraq educated several generations of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Iraqis, Middle Easterners, and expats from prominent families, including the sons of ministers, Prime Ministers, senior government officials, ambassadors, consuls, businessmen, and newspaper editors. In 1969, the Jesuits were expelled from Iraq and Baghdad College and al-Hikma were “Iraqicized.” In the 1970s, al-Hikma was turned into a trade school. Equipment and the library were taken over by the University of Baghdad and most of the documents were moved to the US. BC continued as a college preparatory school, its teaching staff now coming from the University of Baghdad. The Jesuit church and cemetery were taken over by the Chaldean Patriarch and turned into an orphanage.
Collection
The collection is extremely well-organized and the finding aids, which can be downloaded online here, are very detailed. The collection is the home of a large body of documents pertaining to the education of several generations of mostly upper and upper middle class Iraqis and other Middle Easterners of all faiths at the two Jesuit institutions in Baghdad – Baghdad College and al-Hikma University. Al-Iraqi and Al-Hikma, the bilingual yearbooks of the two institutions, are very rich historical sources and perhaps the most interesting part of the collection. The yearbooks contain a wealth of information about the many clubs, societies, and extracurricular activities, such as sport and school trips organized by the two institutions. In addition, the many essays, short stories, and poems published in the yearbooks offers an opportunity to examine the expectations, hopes, anxieties, and concerns of the institutions’ students at a time when Iraq was experiencing tremendous political and historical upheaval. Finally, the yearbooks contain a wealth of photographs and several pages of advertisements for local and international businesses and products. The Baghdad College and the al-Hikma University yearbooks have been digitized and can be found here and here. Physical copies are available at JARC.
Baghdad College (Photo Credit: Pelle Valentin Olsen; JARC Collections)
The collection also contains the English-language newsletters of the school, al-Baghdadi, which was written to a Jesuit audience in the US. In addition, JARC is the home of alumni and school reunion materials, architectural plans and drawings, budgets, financial reports, contemporary newspaper and magazine articles about the mission, student statistics, commencement programs, promotional materials, house diaries for the boarding section, official correspondence, library catalogues, textbooks, and several other categories of documents. JARC also houses a large collection of photographs, audiovisual material, and the private papers of many of the Jesuits who taught in Baghdad. A handful of items in the collection, such as grades and report cards, are restricted. The entire collection consists of more than 100 boxes with several folders in each book.
While the collection is limited to Jesuit activity in Iraq, several documents touch upon local, regional, and international politics and developments. Researchers interested in the Jesuit mission might also find the archives of the The Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia useful. The Presbyterians arrived in Iraq in the early twenties and operated several schools, including the Baghdad High School for Girls. The Presbyterians were also active in other parts of the region.
The Research Experience
JARC is a very pleasant place to work. The building and the facilities are brand new. In fact, JARC has only been open to the public for about a year. The reading room gets a lot of natural sunlight, has large desks, comfortable chairs, lamps, several outlets, and free Wi-Fi. Gloves are provided for researchers interested in the photographic elements of the collection. More importantly, the staff is extremely knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful. Digital microfilm machines are available, but not necessary for the Iraq-related materials as none of this is on microfilm. It is possible that JARC will get more visitors when the word gets out. However, when I visited (September 2018), I was the only researcher working in the archives for more than a week.
Access
Baghdad College boarding students having breakfast, 1934 (Photo Credit: Pelle Valentin Olsen; JARC Collections)
Compared to archives in the Middle East, the archives at JARC are very accessible to researchers who have access to the United States and can afford travel. JARC is located in Saint Louis’ Central West End right next to the campus of Saint Louis University. For researchers arriving in car, parking is available for free in a private lot behind the main building. The parking lot as well as the two main entrances are handicapped accessible and the building is equipped with an elevator and ramp. The archives are open to researchers from Monday through Friday during the hours of 9:00 am to 11:45am and 1:00pm to 4:00pm. Research can be conducted by appointment only. To schedule a research appointment fill out the online Archives Request Form or contact JARC by phone or email. The staff is very prompt at responding. Upon arrival, researchers are asked to fill in and sign a form about their research topic and contact details. JARC provides 10 free photocopies. After that, a small fee is added. Staff will allow you to request several boxes at the same time. Researchers are welcome to bring phones, cameras, and laptops into the reading room. There’s no fee for using phones or cameras.
Transportation and Food
As already mentioned, JARC closes for an hour-long lunch break every day. Luckily, there are a couple of restaurants and a CVS close by. This is convenient since water and food is not allowed in the reading room. Backpacks and water bottles, however, can be stored in the lockers, which are provided free of charge. There are restrooms and water fountains at the entrance to the reading room. There’s a nice café (Café Ventana), popular with Saint Louis University students, located directly across the street from the archives. They also serve food and pastries. More cafés, restaurants, and bars can be found by walking either West or East on Lindell Blvd or Forest Park Ave. JARC is close to public transportation, which makes it possible to have lunch elsewhere in the city. Since the archives closes relatively early, researches have a unique opportunity to take advantage of the countless things Saint Louis has to offer (after they have organized their findings and typed up their notes): live music, great parks, a free zoo and botanical gardens, museums, restaurants, and bars. The hotels in Central West End are rather expensive – especially for researchers on a graduate student budget, and it might therefore be necessary to find accommodation elsewhere in the city or try airbnb, which lists several apartments close to JARC for around $50 a night.
Pelle Valentin Olsen is a graduate student at University of Chicago’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He works on modern Iraqi cultural and social history and literature.
