Library Guides: Middle East: Home

Getting Started

University of Chicago Library Catalog This link opens in a new window
Find items in all campus libraries, including books, periodicals, sound recordings, videos, DVDs and more.
Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition This link opens in a new window
Provides detailed information and articles on Islam, as well as the people and cultures of the Middle East and other Islamic nations.

- Windows users - Click on "Brill fonts PC" in the top frame to download and install the required fonts. The fonts are in a .zip file and should be extracted and placed into your system's font directory, e.g. C:\WINNT\FONTS. This application is developed for MS Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher.

- Macintosh users - Click on "Brill fonts Mac" in the top frame to download and install the required fonts. The fonts are in a .sit file and should be extracted and placed into your system's font library. This application is developed and tested for Mozilla 1.4 and MS Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher. Other browsers or browser versions may cause problems in using this demo.
Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three This link opens in a new window
Brills all-new Third Edition of the globally respected Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI3), the preeminent reference work in the field, began publication in the spring of 2007. EI3 is an entirely new work, which rigorously maintains the comprehensiveness and reliability of the great multivolume set, with new articles reflecting the great diversity of current scholarship. The EI3 appears in four substantial parts each year, both online and in print. The new scope includes comprehensive coverage of Islam in the twentieth century, attention to Muslim minorities all over the world, full attention to social science as well as humanistic perspectives. Publisher's Website
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A database of back issues of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. All issues of each journal are included in full-text except for the most recent 2-to-5 years.
Encyclopaedia Islamica This link opens in a new window
Encyclopaedia Islamica is a projected 16-volume publication, consisting of an abridged and edited translation of the Persian D??irat al-Ma??rif-i Buzurg-i Isl?m?, one of the most comprehensive sources on Islam and the Muslim world. One unique feature of this work of reference lies in the attention it gives to Shi?i Islam and its rich and diverse heritage, which makes it complementary to other encyclopaedias. In addition to providing entries on important themes, subjects and personages in Islam generally, it off ers the western reader an opportunity to appreciate the various dimensions of Shi?i Islam, the Persian contribution to Islamic civilisation, and the spiritual dimensions of the Islamic tradition.
Encyclopaedia Iranica This link opens in a new window
A multi-disciplinary reference work designed to record the facts of Iranian history and civilization. The lands, life, culture and history of all Iranian peoples and their interaction with other societies.
Index Islamicus (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Indexes literature on Islam, the Middle East, and the Muslim world (main Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, plus Muslim minorities elsewhere). Includes records for articles from over 2,000 journals, conference proceedings, monographs, and book reviews.

Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR)
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Created to be "a tool to assemble and distribute information on open access material relating to the Middle East."

Bibliography of Arabic Books Online This link opens in a new window
BABO aims to become a comprehensive bibliographic database containing information about virtually all books published in Arabic before 1960. BABO contains over 60,000 bibliographical records from the National Library in Egypt, the British Library and the Library of Congress. BABO include Name Authority Files (NAFs) which list all the spelling variants of authors names found in the database.
WorldCat (OCLC) This link opens in a new window
WorldCat is a database that allows researchers to search the combined catalogs of hundreds of libraries around the world. It contains more than 52 million records for books, journals, audiovisual materials and more. This source can help researchers find items, verify citations, and identify which libraries hold a particular title.

ALA-LC Romanization Tables
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The links below are to the scanned text of the 1997 edition of the ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts, approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association.

Welcome

The Middle Eastern collection in Regenstein Library is recognized by scholars throughout North America, Europe, and the Middle East as one of the premier research collections in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in the world. The collection supports undergraduate, graduate, and faculty research and teaching in all disciplines of the social sciences and humanities including history, literature, language, religion, philosophy, bibliography, art, political science, anthropology, music, sociology, and film.

The collection, amounting to over one million items, consists of monographs, serials, microformat materials, lithographs, maps, films, photographs, video and audio tapes, DVDs, CD-ROMs, and electronic resources, covering the area between Central Asia and the Atlantic Ocean and from Asia Minor to sub-Saharan Africa. It includes materials in the principal languages of the Middle East—Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and their dialectical variants—as well as the relevant materials produced in various languages in North America, Europe, Japan, the states of the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere in the world.

Department Collections and Catalogs

Please consult a staff member in the Middle East Department office, JRL 560 (open Monday through Friday, 9AM to 5PM), for access to the Middle East Microforms collections, or contact Marlis Saleh in advance.

Mamluk Bibliography Online This link opens in a new window
The Chicago Online Bibliography of Mamluk Studies is an on-going project of the Middle East Documentation Center at the University of Chicago, the aim of which is to compile comprehensive bibliographies of all primary sources relating to the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Syria, as well as all research and discussion--scholarly and popular--germane to the subject.
MEDOC Catalog of Microform Projects
A catalog of Ottoman, Persian and Arabic texts and resources available in microformat.
Manuscripts, Books and Lithographs in Microformat
The department holds hundreds of manuscripts, books and other sources on microfilm or microfiche, many of which are not in the library's catalog.

The Popular Press: Holdings in the Middle East Department
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A listing of various publications in the collection (newspapers, journals, serials) from the 19th and 20th centuries, many of them uncataloged.

Middle East Photo Archive of the University of Chicago Library This link opens in a new window
The Middle East Photograph Archive consists of about 400 photographs, most dating to the second half of the nineteenth century and produced by professional photographers. The images depict the monuments of the Middle East's medieval and ancient past as well as scenes of daily life in urban and rural locations.
The Middle East Photograph Archive consists of about 400 photographs, most dating to the second half of the nineteenth century and produced by professional photographers. The images depict the monuments of the Middle East's medieval and ancient past as well as scenes of daily life in urban and rural locations.

Subject Specialist

Marlis J. Saleh

Send Email

Contact:

Bibliographer for Middle East Studies
Joseph Regenstein Library,
Room 563
(773) 702-8425

Subjects: Middle East