The Arabic Collection has particularly strong holdings on the following subjects in the social sciences:

• The modern history of Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia
• The Arab-Israeli conflict
• The civil war in Lebanon, the Israeli invasion of 1982, and subsequent events
• The Muslim Brothers
• The origins and systematization of socialism in Egypt
• Arab communism and socialism
• U.S. relations with Israel and the Arab countries
• U.S. Middle East policy
• Political aspects of so-called fundamentalist Islam
• Zionism
• Social change and modernization in the Middle East
• Economic development
• Labor and trade unions
• Arab nationalism
• Islam and politics
• 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.