Guides: Middle East & North Africa Studies (MENA): Primary Sources

What are primary sources?

Primary Sources are materials documents, artifacts, or other information sources that were created at the time of being studied, or by some directly involved in an event. Primary Sources are immediate, first-hand accounts of a topic from people who had direct connections with it. Primary Sources can include:

Texts of laws and other original documents
Newspaper reports, by reporters who witnessed and event or who quote people who did
Speeches, diaries, letters, and interviews— what the people involved said or wrote
Original research
Datasets, survey data, such as census records or economic statistics
Photographs, video, or audio that capture an event

Other tabs of this guide feature finding and researching specific primary sources such as audiovisual materials, and data and statistics. Below are some open access collections examples:

Archive of Arabic Language Journals
Administered by the Inspector General at the Ministry of Education, the Archive of Arabic Language and Culture is embedded within the official website of Arabic language and culture in France.
Digital Library of the Middle East
The Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME) offers free and open access to the rich cultural legacy of the Middle East and North Africa by bringing together collections from a wide range of cultural heritage institutions. Developed by an engineering team from CLIR and Stanford Libraries, the platform federates and makes accessible data about collections from around the world.
Islamic Heritage Project - Harvard University
Harvard University has cataloged, conserved, and digitized hundreds of Islamic manuscripts, maps, and published texts from Harvard’s renowned library and museum collections to create the Islamic Heritage Project.
JDC Archives Collections
The archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) have digitized records of activity in over 90 countries dating from 1914 to the present. Comprising the organizational records of JDC, the overseas rescue, relief, and rehabilitation arm of the American Jewish community, the JDC Archives houses one of the most significant collections in the world for the study of modern Jewish history.
Judaica Digital Collection
Harvard University Library Judaica Collection's many digital materials document the life and culture of the Jewish people, with particular focus on life and culture in Israel.
MENAdoc - Digital Collections
MENAdoc provides Open Access digital documents with regard to the MENA-region and to Islamic studies and is administered by the The University and State Library is a service facility of the Martin Luther University and the state of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany.
The Middle East 1916-2001: A Documentary Record (The Avalon Project)
A collection of digitized documents on American law, history, politics, and related topics, the Avalon Project was created by the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University. This specific collection features electronic copies of documentary records regarding the United States' and the United Nations' relations with the Middle East from 1916 through 2001.
North African Research Archive
Not to be confused with NARA—the National Archives and Records Administration— the North African Research Archive (NARA) provides a platform for archaeological cultural heritage from North Africa, in particular the Maghreb states of Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, and Morocco. It is a collaborative effort with the Deutches Archāologishes Institut and the University of Cologne, and is licensed under the Creative Commons.
Qatar Digital Library
A partnership between the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library and the British Library, this free online resource is a digital archive of cultural and historical materials dealing with the Gulf region.
Visual Resources of the Middle East (Yale University Open Community Collections via Artstor)
Yale University holds a wide array of images from the Middle East across its encyclopedic collections. Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) has manuscript paintings from early modern Iran and India, and strong holdings in textiles, ceramics, photography and contemporary art. 18th- and 19th-century highlights include objects that document British travels through the Middle East from the Yale Center for British Art and the Lewis Walpole Library. Sterling Memorial Library offers visual resources from books and periodicals published in Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, while the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library houses numerous scientific manuscripts. Beinecke Library's renowned rare book and manuscript collections encompass resources from Safavid Shahnama manuscripts to 20th-century field photographs. Included among the Peabody Museum of Natural History’s collection are archaeological objects from the Islamic world. Artstor also includes the YUAG Gerasa and Dura-Europos collections.