Media
Where to begin? Try these basic histories.
Welcome
Welcome to the Near East Collection Guide. In this guide, you'll find:
- Important databases for finding articles, books, and more.
- A guide to archival resources supporting Near & Middle East studies at Yale.
- A guide to visual resources supporting Near & Middle East studies at Yale.
- Links to additional resources for social sciences and the humanities related to Near & Middle East studies at Yale.
Major Resources
Search in Quicksearch, Orbis, or WorldCat for materials in Arabic and Persian by using the American Library Association/Library of Congress rules for transliteration:
The principal databases useful to researchers in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies are:
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Index Islamicus (EBSCO)Indexes materials on Islam, the Middle East, and the entire Muslim world from periodicals, monographs, book chapters, and other collections in Western languages. Includes coverage of arts and humanities, history, and social sciences (including religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries, and Muslim minorities in predominantly non-Muslim countries).
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Middle Eastern & Central Asian Studies (MECAS) (EBSCO)A bibliographic index of research, policy and scholarly discourse on the countries and people of the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. It contains hundreds of thousands of records and coverage spanning over a century.
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Brill Online Reference WorksIncluding the first, second, and third editions of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Brockelmann Online (in German), Brockelmann in English, Encyclopaedia Islamica = Dāʼirat al-maʻārif-i buzurg-i Islāmī, and other important references.
- "How to Use the GAL," by Richard S. Cooper (MELA Notes 3, October 1974, pp. 18-20) (MELA Basic Reference Outline Series, No. 1)
- "Brockelmann's Geschichte Revisited Once More," preface to Brockelmann in English, by Jan Just Witkam (Leiden: Brill, 2016)
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Encyclopaedia Iranica (Brill)The most renowned reference work in the field of Iran studies. Founded by the late Professor Ehsan Yarshater and edited at the Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University, this monumental international project brings together the scholarship about Iran of thousands of authors around the world.
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Oxford Islamic Studies OnlineIncludes an online concordance to the Quran, side-by-side comparisons of Quranic translations, and online primary sources on a variety of topics related to Islamic studies.
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Atla Religion Database (Atla RDB) with AtlaSerials PLUS (Atlas PLUS) (EBSCO)Produced by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA). Coverage from 1881 to the present. Includes a growing list of full-text titles in many diverse areas of religion and theology, including Islamic and Eastern Christian studies, with content in 20 languages (including Arabic, Persian, and Turkish) from nearly 40 different countries.
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AMEEL (Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library) (Yale)Contains 250,000 pages of full text, indexed and searchable in the language of publication including Arabic and Western scripts. Includes scholarly journals and gazettes in Arabic, al-Fīrūzābādī's dictionary al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ, and a selection of important manuscript catalogs.
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An Informal Guide to Fuat Sezgin’s Geschichte Des Arabischens Schriftums (Hazine)Using Sezgin’s GAS to improve your German, learn about your field, and find Arabic manuscripts. Written 2019 by Richard Heffron.
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Guide to Graf's Geschichte der Christlichen Arabischen Literatur (MELA)By Meryle Gaston, Bobst Graduate Library (Columbia U.), retired. Originally published in MELA Notes 69-70 (Fall 1999-Spring 2000). (MELA Basic Reference Outline Series, No. 2)
Librarian for Middle East Studies
Additional relevant subject guides
Yale subject librarians have prepared many other guides potentially of value to researchers in topics relating to the Middle East and Islam, including:
- African Collection, Yale University Library
- Ancient Near East in the Yale Libraries
- Anthropology: Research Guide
- Art History Research at Yale
- Ethnicity, Race, and Migration
- Ethnomusicology
- HIST 344J: The Middle East before Oil
- Research in Judaic Studies
- Political Science Subject Guide
- Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies: Research Guide