New York Public Library Schiff Collection

By Raphael Cormack

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

Finding pre-First World War Arabic printed books in European and American libraries is sometimes a complex business, involving navigating the online catalogs of different institutions, trying creative transliterations, and a good deal of luck. The major collections are well known – British Library, Bibliothèque national de France, Harvard, Yale, etc.. But, for a variety of reasons, people often overlook the New York Public Library, which had amassed one of the best (if not the best) collections of Middle Eastern books in America by the 1920s. In large part, this is because many of the books have not yet been uploaded to the online catalog and those that have been, can be quite hard to search because you need to have the transliteration right – e.g. it took me a long time to find the play لا اتزوج ولو شنقوني (la atzūj wa lū shankūnī). So, I hope it will be helpful if I provide a brief guide to using the Arabic books there, particularly those in the Schiff Collection.

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A Short Research Guide to Egypt

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.

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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.

The Coptic Canadian History Project (CCHP) also has a list, written by Amy Fallas and Weston Bland, on archives in Egypt and the US. The CCHP is also working in collaboration with immigrants and have a growing archival collection with York University Libraries in Toronto.

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

  • Al-Azhar University; al-Azhar Library
  • American University in Cairo
  • National Judicial Studies Center
  • Central Library (al-Sayyidah Zaynab)
  • Bibliotheca Alexandrina
  • Alexandria Municipal Library
  • Institute of Arabic Manuscripts
  • Majma al-Lugha al-‘Arabi
  • Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO)
  • Nederlands-Vlaams Instituut in Cairo (NVIC)
  • American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE)
  • Coptic Museum and Patriarchate
  • St. Catherine’s Monastery Library
  • Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (IDEO)
  • Franciscan Centre of Christian Oriental Studies
  • Cairo International Book Fair (every January/February, dates change yearly)
  • Suq al-Ezbekiyya
  • Egyptian Radio and Television Archive
  • Al Ahram
  • Akhbar al-Yawm Newspaper Archive
  • Ruz al Yusuf Foundation
  • Dar Al Hilal Newspaper Archive
  • Dār al-Karmah, Dār al-Tanwīr, and Dār al-Maḥrūsah (publishing houses)
  • Wekalet Behna
  • Egyptian Olympic Committee
  • Cimatheque Cairo – Alternative Film Center
  • Agricultural Museum
  • Dar al-Mahfuzat al-ʿUmumiyya 

Online Archives, Digitized Collections and Resources for Middle East, North Africa, and Islamic(ate) Studies

By N.A. Mansour

We at Hazine love our lists. So hot off the heels of our visual resource guide and our regularly updated blog-list, we have a list of online resources to share with you all: this is where you can find primary sources online or resources to help you get at primary sources. An earlier incarnation of this list is here, written by Zachary Foster. We’re including links to digitized Islamic manuscripts, digitized periodicals, digitized books, oral history repositories, online syllabi and material history archives, all relevant to Middle East, North African, Islamicate world, and Islamic studies.  Note while many of these are open access, some are not. Standard rules apply: this is not a comprehensive list so tweet at us or email us and we’ll add things to our semi-annual updates to this list. 

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