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COLLECTIONS
Middle East
Images from the collection
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Grand Vezir. Dagdeviren Collection
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Kapoudan Pacha (grand admiral). Dagdeviren Collection
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Eyewitness sketch of naval shipping off Mudros Island, Gallipoli campaign, 1915, by M.J.W. Pike. M.J.W. Pike Collection
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Egyptian poster. Artist: Jamal Kamil. Hoover Institution Archives Poster Collection
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Drawing of great mosque of Mecca with Kaaba in center. Intended as certificate of completion of a Muslim pilgrimage; text in Arabic includes blank spaces for name of pilgrim, date of pilgrimage, and names of four witnesses. Hoover Institution Archives Poster Collection
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Carrying soup to the guard corps. From a series of postcards illustrating Ottoman costume, 1908. Dagdeviren Collection
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The Mehter, or Ottoman military band. From a series of postcards illustrating Ottoman costume, 1908. Dagdeviren Collection
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"There is no God but Allah." Poster of the Islamic Republican Party, Iran, 1979-1988? Hoover Institution Archives Poster Collection
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Allied encampments at Salonika. Gallipoli campaign, October 1915. Sketch by M.J.W. Pike. M.J.W. Pike Collection
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Drawing of tomb mosque of Prophet Muhammad in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Text in Arabic. Serves as souvenir of pilgrimage to mosque of Muhammad in Medina, includes spaces for names of witnesses attesting to completion of pilgrimage. Hoover Institution Archives Poster Collection
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Collection Highlights:
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T. E. Lawrence
Introduction
The Middle East Collection has extensive holdings of books, serials, newspapers, pamphlets, government documents, society publications, and archival collections from and about the Middle East. It collects materials from and about all the Arab countries of Western Asia and North Africa, Turkey, Israel, Iran, and Afghanistan. These materials concentrate on twentieth-century history, politics, economics, military affairs, political and social movements, communism and socialism, education as a factor in political and social change, and U.S. national security affairs.
The Middle East Collection also has strong holdings, primarily in Arabic, of classical Islamic texts and of works on the history, literature, philosophy, and religion of classical or medieval Islam and of twentieth-century Arabic and Turkish literature. These portions of the collections, however, are no longer actively developed.
In approximate terms, the four collections—Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Western Language—consist of the following: 24,000 Arabic monographs and 11,000 Arabic serials and newspapers; 6,000 Turkish monographs and 22,000 Turkish serials and newspapers; 1,500 Persian monographs and 500 Persian serials and newspapers; and 20,000 Western-language monographs and 30,000 Western-language serials and newspapers. For additional information see article of December 12, 2001, in the Stanford Report. History
The Middle East Collection was formally established in 1948, nearly thirty years after the founding of the Hoover Institution. The Institution has, however, held materials on the Middle East since its earliest days, including documents on the role of the Ottoman Empire in World War I; records of the American Relief Administration (ARA) in Turkey, the American Red Cross, and the Near East Relief, which cooperated with the ARA and the Red Cross in Turkey, Iran, and Syria; and documents from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
The establishment of the Middle East Collection in 1948 placed the collecting of Middle East materials on a systematic footing. Building on the foundation of holdings from World War I and its immediate aftermath, the Collection was developed by a combination of major purchases and a program of systematic acquisitions. Early major purchases included the libraries of James Heyworth-Dunne, Hidayet Dagdeviren, M. Huseyin Tutya, and Richard P. Mitchell.
In the 1960s and late 1970s and briefly in the early 1980s, the Middle East Collection participated in the Middle East acquisitions programs run by the Library of Congress office in Cairo, Egypt. In 1976, the work of the Middle East Collection was measurably curtailed for budgetary reasons and acquisitions reduced. In 1983 the collection was restored to full activity, and a new program of acquisition of Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Western-language materials was inaugurated and remains in effect.
Curators of the Middle East Collection
1948–1957: Christina Phelps Harris, Curator
1957–1958: John Derek Latham, Curator
1958–1962: Nicholas Heer, Curator
1962–1963: Peter Duignan, Curator
1962–1977: Michel Nabti, Assistant Curator
1963–1976: George Rentz, Curator
1976–1995: Peter Duignan, Curator
1983–2001: Edward Jajko, Deputy Curator
2002-2002: Edward Jajko, Curator
Description
The Middle East Collection currently concentrates on twentieth-century history, politics, economics, military affairs, political and social movements, communism and socialism, education as a factor in political and social change, and U.S. national security affairs. Previous areas of concentration included materials, primarily in Arabic, on classical and medieval Islam and twentieth-century Arabic and Turkish literature.
Four collections make up the library's Middle East Collection: the Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Western-Language Collections. In addition, the Hoover Institution Archives holds about 200 collections relating to the Middle East.
The holdings of the Middle East Collection, in 115,000 volumes, currently consist of the following:
| Collection |
Monographs |
Serials and Newspapers |
| Arabic |
24,000 |
11,000 |
| Turkish |
6,000 |
22,000 |
| Persian |
1,500 |
500 |
| Western-language |
20,000 |
30,000 |
| TOTAL |
51,500 |
63,500 |
The Turkish Collection includes materials in modern Anatolian Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, and other Turkic languages, including rare holdings in Uighur. In addition, the Russian/CIS Collection administers small holdings of rare books and pamphlets in Uzbek, Azeri, Kazakh, Chuvash, Bashkir, Kirghiz, Yakut, Balkar, and other languages of Central Asia, as well as several hundred volumes in Crimean and Volga Tatar.
Many books and newspaper and journal holdings cataloged before the late 1980s are not yet in the online catalog. Users should consult the Hoover card catalogs of the Middle East Collection and the Main Collection for these materials.
For information on holdings, consult the Stanford University online catalog, Socrates, at http://www-sul.stanford.edu/webcat/.
The Middle East Collection participates in a number of interlibrary cooperative efforts and is a founding member of the Middle East Microform Project (MEMP), administered by the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago.
Arabic Collection
The Arabic Collection has particularly strong holdings on the following subjects in the social sciences:
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The modern history of Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia
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The Arab-Israeli conflict
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The civil war in Lebanon, the Israeli invasion of 1982, and subsequent events
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The Muslim Brothers
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The origins and systematization of socialism in Egypt
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Arab communism and socialism
- U.S. relations with Israel and the Arab countries
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U.S. Middle East policy
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Political aspects of so-called fundamentalist Islam
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Zionism
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Social change and modernization in the Middle East
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Economic development
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Labor and trade unions
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Arab nationalism
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Islam and politics
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War in the Middle East
In addition, the Arabic Collection has excellent holdings of classic Islamic texts and materials on Arabic philology, Islamic and Middle East history from the rise of Islam to early modern times, the beginning of modernization in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, and modern Arabic literature until the late 1970s.
Turkish Collection
The Turkish Collection is particularly strong in the following subjects:
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Atatürk and his legacy
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Modern Turkish history and politics
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Turkish political parties
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The Turkish military
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Military rule in Turkey
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Military history
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Military art and science
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Political trials
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Terrorism in Turkey
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The Turkish role in NATO
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Turkey's position as a Middle Eastern and Islamic state
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Relations with other states of the Middle East and Central Asia
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Relations with the United States, the Soviet Union/Russia/
Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, and the
European Economic Community/European Union
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Minorities in Turkey and Turkish minorities in other states
Holdings of Turkish monographs are especially good for the periods 1923 to 1945, 1950 to 1963, and 1983 to the present. For the 1950-1963 period, the Hoover collections stress holdings of progovernment materials (for the Bayar period) and publications of the military government.
The Hoover Turkish Collection has two additional unique features:
The collection holds 266 newspapers, all but a few of them in Ottoman Turkish, and more than 1,000 serial titles in Ottoman, modern Turkish, and Western languages. Newspapers and serials from 1870 to the late 1970s are held for Istanbul, Ankara, and numerous provincial cities, towns, and areas outside modern Turkey, such as Saloniki, Crete, Aleppo, London, Mosul, Batum, and Beirut. The great majority of the files date from the 1880s to the 1920s.
In addition, the collection holds 215 brief monographs and pamphlets in the Dagdeviren Pamphlet Collection, a richly revealing cross section of Ottoman history at the end of the empire.
Persian Collection
The Persian Collection has strong holdings on the following subjects:
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Iranian communism and communist parties
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The Constitutional Revolution
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The Pahlavi dynasty
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Revolutionary movements in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan after World War II
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U.S. relations with Iran
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The Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic of Iran
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The government of the Islamic Republic
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The Iran-Iraq war
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Shi'ism and Iranian politics
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Writings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Holdings include a set of Asnad-i lanah-i jasusi, the so-called Spy-den documents, the Iranian reprint of documents stolen from the American Embassy at the time of the takeover by the Iranian Students Following the Line of the Imam in 1978.
A special feature of the Persian Collection is its holdings of Iranian Opposition Materials, probably the largest collection of its kind in the United States. Some of this collection is held in the archives under the name of its collector and donor, James Hitselberger. The larger portion is currently housed in the Hoover Institution Library. Although some of the materials have been cataloged and are listed in the catalogs of the Persian Collection, most are as yet uncataloged and should be requested from the curatorial staff of the collection. Supplementing these holdings is the microfiche collection Iranian Opposition to the Shah (Zug, Switzerland: Inter Documentation Co., 1984), consisting of 790 microfiches in 19 boxes, with a printed guide. This set covers the period of revolutionary and violent opposition to the Shah and enhances the Hoover Institution's extensive holdings of opposition materials.
Western-Language Holdings
The Hoover Institution's Western-language holdings on the Middle East are exceptionally rich. Coverage of modern history—of the Middle East in general, the Jews, Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and North Africa—is especially strong.
Western-language holdings are also strong in the classic works of Western travelers in the Middle East and in the works on Islam.
The Hoover Institution currently receives over 120 Western-language serials from and about the Middle East, as well as selected newspapers of record of Western and Eastern Europe and North America.
Hoover Institution Archives Holdings on the Middle East
Archival holdings, housed in and administered by the Hoover Institution Archives, are a major component of the Middle East collection. The Hoover Archives holds some two hundred archival collections relating to the Middle East. These include papers and other materials of prominent individuals of modern history, such as James Heyworth-Dunne, H. St. John Philby, Chaim Weizmann, T.E. Lawrence, Ahmed Emin Yalman, Arnold Toynbee, and General Gordon of Khartoum.
Other Hoover archival holdings on the Middle East include
World War I, Turkey, and early holdings:
The last years of the Ottoman Empire, military operations in Turkey in World War I, postwar relief work, and the establishment of the Turkish Republic are documented in the collections of Luella Hall, Ruth Parmelee, E. Carl Wallen, Evgenii Vasil'evich Maslovskii, M. J. W. Pike, E. J. Fisher, Benton Clark Decker, Ernest Wilson Riggs, Eliot Mears, Eleanor Bisbee, Hidayet Dagdeviren, Mary Mills Patrick, Kerim Key, Stanley E. Kerr, Anna V.S. Mitchell, Baron Petr Nikolaevich Vrangel', Tarik Z. Tunaya, and others. World War I holdings include the records of the American Relief Administration (ARA), which maintained an office in Constantinople; the American National Red Cross; and the Near East Relief, which cooperated with the ARA and the Red Cross in Turkey, Iran, and Syria.
A unique perspective on Turkish affairs is given by the papers of Michal Sokolnicki, Polish ambassador to Turkey between the world wars. Papers of the Inquiry (more technically, Paris Peace Conference, 1919. U.S. Division of Territorial, Economic and Political Intelligence) and of the Lausanne Conference, 1922-1923, illuminate the history of the establishment of the Turkish Republic. The Dagdeviren Collection contains documentation on Turkish history and politics from the period before Tanzimat until the 1950s and on various special subjects such as Turkish social life, religious and welfare organizations, national minorities, and pan-Slavism. More recent holdings on Turkey include extensive files of pamphlets and documents issued by present-day Turkish political parties.
Other pre-1948 holdings include materials produced by British organizations such as the British Palestine Committee, the English Zionist Federation, the Zionist Organization, and Friends of Armenia, as well as those produced by corresponding American groups: the American Jewish Committee, the Federation of American Zionists, the Zionist Organization of America, and the New Syria National League.
North Africa:
North African history, from the latter part of the nineteenth century through World War II, is recorded in the papers of James Rives Childs, Horace H. Herr, Cuthbert P. Stearns, Douglas E. Ashford, Walter J. Muller, P.A. Bourget, and Robert Louis Delavignette. The attempted coup by the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) is living history in the archive of Yves Jean Antoine Noel Godard, colonel in the French army, director of police in Algeria (1958-1960), and an organizer of the OAS.
Propaganda and Photographs:
The Hoover Archives has a file of Lebanese political leaflets from 1943 to 1957 and of anti-Nasser propaganda leaflets dropped on Egypt by the British in November 1956, during the Sinai war. Many of Hoover's Middle East archives contain photographs of political prisoners, relief operations, and general conditions in the area. The archives also holds a small collection of rare Bonfils photographs of Middle Eastern scenes.
Middle East Oil:
The Hoover Archives includes several collections relating to the oil industry in the Middle East, including the papers of Philip C. McConnell, former vice-president of Arabian-American Oil Company; Harley C. Stevens, former vice-president of the American Independent Oil Company; and the George Spies file on the Deutsche Bank, 1904-1906.
The Muslim Brothers:
The Hoover Archives also holds the Richard P. Mitchell collection on the Society of the Muslim Brothers and on Islamic fundamentalism.
Current Affairs:
Hoover archival holdings on current affairs in the Middle East include the papers of former congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Wilbur Crane Eveland, Alfred Lilienthal, and the organization American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism. Collections acquired in recent years deal with U.S. relations with Israel and other countries, the impact of the Middle East on American policy and public life, opposition movements, and revolutionary Iran. These collections include:
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The Ahmad Sadiq Sa'd Collection, including the unpublished autograph manuscript memoirs of this major figure in Egyptian communism
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The Mustafa Shu'a'iyan Collection: writings in manuscript by the Iranian communist theoretician Shu'a'iyan, many of them formerly circulated clandestinely in Iran
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The Iranian poster collection, one of the largest collections of political posters and illustrations from revolutionary and republican Iran in the United States; topics illustrated include the downfall of the Shah, the glorification of leaders of the revolution, the war with Iraq, and vilification of the United States
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Iranian opposition literature, including published and unpublished documents of numerous Iranian émigré and exile opposition groups, among them various communist parties and organizations, the Mujahidin-i Khalq, and the Confederation of Iranian Students
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The papers of the Iran Freedom Foundation, including materials by and relating to its founder, Ali Asghar Tabatabai, and his successor as president, Mohammed Reza Tabatabai
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The papers of former congressman Paul Findley, dealing with the influence of the Israel lobby in American public life
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The Stephen Green Collection, consisting of source materials for his books on the history and development of the relationship between the United States and the state of Israel, Taking Sides and Living by the Sword
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The James Ennes and Ronald Kukal papers on the Israeli naval and aerial attack on the U.S. intelligence ship Liberty, June 8, 1967
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The transcript of the proceedings, exhibits, and findings of the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry on the attack on the USS Liberty
Guides to the Collection
Much useful information is available in Hoover Institution Survey no. 4, African and Middle East Collections: A Survey of Holdings at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, by Peter Duignan, Karen Fung, George Rentz, and Michel Nabti (1971). Also of value are the catalogs published by G.K. Hall in 1969, The Library Catalogs of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University: Catalog of the Turkish Collection. Archival holdings on the Middle East are included in Guide to the Hoover Institution Archives, by Charles G. Palm and Dale Reed (1980), and in special supplements and lists issued by the archives.
Internet Resources
Socrates: Stanford's Online Catalog
University of Texas at Austin
Columbia University
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