Explore the databases and digital repositories listed on this page. Please note that some databases are licensed and can only be accessed from within the institute’s network.
Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR)
Adab – Arabic Poetry
Arabic poetry from pre-Islamic to present times.
Arab Art Archive – al Mawrid Center for the Study of Art
Akkasah
Photo Collection of the Middle East (particularly related to the GCC countries).
Al-Ahram Digital Archive – From 1876 to the present
Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon – AKL
Internationale Künstlerdatenbank - Online with biographical information from all over the world, from ancient times to the present.
Al-Maktaba al-Shamila
Research tool and database for literature mainly in Arabic language.
Al-Manhal – MENA E-Book Collections
Al-Sharekh Archive for Arabic literary and cultural magazines
ALVIN
Platform for digital collection and digitized cultural heritage.
American University of Beirut (AUB) – Digital Collections
The digital collections comprise the Gender Oral History Archive, the Lebanese Newspapers Digital Archive, the Egyptian Cinema and Theatre Photographs Collection, the al-Ādāb Digital Archives, the Kamal Joumblatt Digital Library, the Palestinian Oral History Archive, the art posters collection and the digital archive of “Thamarāt al-Funūn” newspaper among many others.
American University in Cairo (AUC) – Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library
The digital collections comprise the Voice of America Egypt Radio Recordings, the Egypt Artist Oral Histories and Archives Collection, the Maktabat Al-Khanji Documents Collection, the Arabic Books Collection, the Van-Leo Photographic Collection and many others.
Arab Women
Online Resource in Arabic and in English about women in the Arab World.
Arabic Design Archive
The Arabic Design Archive is a non-profit initiative that seeks to enable knowledge production about Arabic design and its history through a framework of collecting, digitizing, and exhibiting.
Arabian Gulf Digital Archive
Online archive on the history of the Arabian Gulf including letters, memos, transcripts, photos and official correspondence from leaders and governments that shaped the events of their time.
Arabic Collections Online
Digital library of public domain Arabic language content from rich Arabic collections of distinguished research libraries.
The Arabic Papyrology Database
The Arabic Papyrology Database (APD) provides editions and research on pre-modern Arabic documents written on materials such as papyrus, parchment or paper, up until the 16th c. A.D.
ART bibliographies Modern (ABM)
Database on modern and contemporary arts dating from the late 19th century onwards.
Athar Preservation and Documentation
Athar is a cultural heritage preservation center aiming to collect, preserve, digitize and make accessible documents from the 1920s to 1982 related to the local history of Tyre (Sour) and South Lebanon.
BeMA Collection
The Beirut Museum of Art (BeMA) collection consists of paintings, works on paper, sculptures, photographs, and mixed media created by artists from Lebanon and the Levant.
Bibliography of the Arabic Bible
Comprehensive and fully annotated bibliography of text editions and research on the Arabic Bible, its translation and history.
Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica (BHSE)
The BHSE is organized around literary works, specifically Syriac saints' lives or vitae and provides open access to original text sources in Syriac.
Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies
This database contains more than 800 exclusively commissioned, peer-reviewed articles, written by academics in the country of focus. They can be used to study and compare countries through six key education levels.
Central Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL)
CEEOL provides academic e-journals, e-books and grey literature documents in the humanities and social sciences from and about Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
CLIO Online
Fachportal für Geschichtswissenschaften (Specialised Portal for Historical Studies).
Corpus Coranicum
Database for the study of the Qur’ān, includes intertexts and studies on Qur’ānic manuscripts.
Decolonizing the page – A Forgotten Golden Age of Arabic Book Arts (1950s – 1980s)
A Digital Corpus for Graeco-Arabic Studies
The Digital Corpus assembles a wide range of Greek texts and their Arabic counterparts. It also includes a number of Arabic summaries, commentaries and secondary sources. The texts in the corpus can be consulted individually or, where applicable, side by side with their translation. The majority of texts can also be downloaded for further analysis.
Digital Library of Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Online Repository of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME)
Open Access library to the cultural legacy of the Middle East and North Africa from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Stanford Libraries.
Digital Orientalist
Full-text Online Arabic Sources.
Digital Collections of the Bavarian State Library
Provided by the Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ) – Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum
EBSCO Research Databases (accessible from within the OIB network)
EGO – European History Online
Transcultural history of Europe.
Egyptian Press Archive of CEDEJ
More than 800,000 digitized articles in Arabic, English and French about the Egyptian political, cultural and economic life from the 1950s until 2017. The collection is documented by CEDEJ and presented by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Electronic Enlightenment – Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Electronic Enlightenment is a pioneering digital resource for the epistolary communication in the ‘long’ eighteenth century. The corpus draws on the best retro-digitized scholarly editions of letters, born-digital correspondences, and newly transcribed manuscript letters.
Empire Online
Database on colonialism and imperialism, particularly surrounded on the theory, practice and consequences of “Empire”.
Encyclopaedia Iranica
The Encyclopaedia Iranica is a comprehensive research tool dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.
Encyclopaedia of Islam
The online versions of the Encyclopaedia of Islam are full-text searchable through alphabetical lists of entries. The collection includes the 2nd end the 3rd edition and the Historical Atlas of Islam.
Europeana Collections
Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitised items that are related to European culture and heritage.
EVIFA – Virtual Library of Social and Cultural Anthropology
EVIFA offers access to (retro-)digitized anthropological literature from the last two centuries, to current e-books, databases and e-journals, as well as information on digital platforms for anthropological research.
The Fouad Debbas Collection – Sursock Museum
The Fouad Debbas Collection is a photographic collection comprising over 30,000 images from the Middle East – namely Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Turkey – from 1830 till the 1960s. It was built over the course of two decades by Fouad César Debbas (1930-2001), who was an ardent believer in the importance of collecting and preserving images as a means of safeguarding cultural heritage.
French Colonial History Archives
This collection includes links to research databases, finding aids, historical society webpages, and other materials. Material is arranged by region rather than by historical periods.
The Ghani Collection at Yale
Digitized manuscripts from the Ghani collection from the Yale Iranian History Internet Archive.
Grove Art Online
Art encyclopedia covering global art and architecture from prehistory to present day.
Hathitrust
HathiTrust Digital Library offers in partnership with academic and research institutions digitized titles from libraries around the world.
Hazine
Information and research material on the Middle East.
Historicum.net
Specialised Information Service for Historical Studies
History of Modern Egypt
Digital Archive on the History of Modern Egypt.
Index Religiosus - Online
International Bibliography of Theology, Church History and Religious Studies.
Institute for Palestine Studies – Digital Projects
The Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) has assembled a number of databases and collections of documents on the question of Palestine that constitute a rich source of information for researchers and scholars. IPS is in the process of acquiring and disseminating a range of other original resources and making them available in digital format for users.
Iraqi Academic Scientific Journals (IASJ)
Access to more than 500 peer-reviewed open access journals from Iraq.
Islamic Manuscript Studies – University of Michigan
Resources for the study of Islamic manuscripts and their socio-cultural contexts.
Islamic Philosophy Online
This site contains hundreds of full-length books and articles on Islamic philosophy, ranging from the classical texts in the canon of Islamic philosophy to modern works of Muslim philosophy.
Jara'id: A Chronology of Arabic Periodicals (1800-1929)
JSTOR
Levant Iconography
This collection features views, maps, and plans -from iconographic, cartographic, and architectural archives- of cities in the Levant.
Mamluk Bibliography Online
Comprehensive bibliography for Mamluk Studies.
Manuscripts of the Islamic World
Curated selection of Islamic manuscripts at the Princeton University Library, predominantly in Arabic, but including many manuscripts in Persian and Ottoman Turkish.
Mathaf Encyclopedia
Bilingual, peer-reviewed platform on modern and contemporary Arab art.
Mawrid Reader
Arabic dictionary interface. Contains Arabic monolingual lexica and bilingual dictionaries.
Maydan
Digital Resources and Collections in Islamic Studies.
MENAdoc
Through the MENAdoc portal, our specialist information service offers free worldwide access to a wide range of digital sources and publications relating to the MENA region and Islam. Here you will find classics from the field of Oriental studies as well as current research articles, which you can read in open access or save as PDF files. All titles are equipped with a permalink and can therefore be referenced permanently and are listed in supra-regional catalogues.
MENAlib
Web Portal of the Specialized Information Service Middle East, North Africa and Islamic Studies
The Middle East 1916-2001
Part of the Avalon Project of the Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Law Library presenting a digital library of documents relating to law, history and diplomacy.
Middle Eastern & North African Newspapers
An Open Access collection by Eastview sponsored by the Center for Research Libraries.
Musiconn
Fachportal Musikwissenschaft – Virtual Library Musicology
Niemeyer in Tripoli Archive
In collaboration with UNESCO's Regional Bureau in Beirut, this archive serves as a repository for digital images pertaining to Oscar Niemeyer's International and Permanent Lebanon Fair in Tripoli project.
The OAIster Database
OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records that represent open access resources. This catalog was built through harvesting from open access collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Today, OAIster includes more than 50 million records that represent digital resources from more than 2,000 contributors.
Osmikon
Forschungsportal zu Ost-, Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa – Virtual Library for Eastern European Studies
Ottoman Inscriptions
The Database of Ottoman Inscriptions (DOI) is searchable digital database comprising information about, as well as transliterations and pictures of, all the Turkish, Arabic and Persian architectural inscriptions created in the Ottoman lands during Ottoman times.
Ottpol
A History of Early Modern Ottoman Political Thought, 15th to Early 19th Centuries
Oxford Bibliographies for Atlantic history
Atlantic history is a field of historical inquiry that operates upon new assumptions about how to understand the interactions between different peoples and cultures on four continents and many islands in the period between Columbus’ voyages to the New World in the late fifteenth century and the end of slavery in the Americas in the late nineteenth century. Its principal theme is the movement of peoples, ideas and things.
The Palestine Poster Project Archives
Palestine Open Maps
Open Access platform for map-based exploration that allows users to navigate and search historic map sheets.
Perspectivia.net
Publication platform of the Max Weber Foundation.
Qalamos
Database on Oriental Manuscripts of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
Qatar Digital Library
This growing archive covers modern history and culture of the Gulf and wider region, available online for the first time.
Sadat Digital Archive
SHARIAsource
Open Access project in the program on Islamic Law at Harvard Law School that provides comprehensive and content and context on Islamic law.
Sharing History – Museum with no Frontiers
Virtual Exhibitions exploring Arab-Ottoman-European Relations in the 19th Century.
Smarthistory
Open access digital resource for art history including Islamic arts.
Syri.ac
Comprehensive annotated bibliography of Open Access resources related to the study of Syriac hosted by the University of Oklahoma.
Syrian Heritage Archive Project
Open Access documentation project of the Museum of Islamic Art (Berlin) and the German Archeological Institute.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics
The Encyclopedia provides in-depth coverage of the political dimensions of Islam and the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Women and Memory Forum – Women´s Oral History Archive
The Women’s Oral History Archive contains interviews with women of different age groups and diverse backgrounds in Egypt. These women have played effective roles in the public domain, and had strong resonance and impact on society.
“Translatio” Digitization Project
The digitization project “Translatio” at the Department of Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Languages (Abteilung für Islamwissenschaft und Nahostsprachen) at the Institute for Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of Bonn focuses on Arabic, Persian and Ottoman-Turkish periodicals published during the Middle Eastern and Asian “saddle period” between 1860 and 1945 and making them digitally accessible.
Travellers in the Middle East Archive
The Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA) is a digital archive that focuses on Western interactions with the Middle East, particularly travels to Egypt during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. TIMEA brings together images, texts, maps, and research and teaching guides.
UMAM Biblio
Catalogue and repository including periodicals, publications, written documents, audiovisual materials, and photos relating mainly to Lebanon and its recent history.
Wellcome Arabic Manuscripts Online
Arabic manuscript collection of the Wellcome Library (London) relating to the history of medicine.
Waqfeya
Online-Repository for digitized Arabic, mostly critical, editions.
Wikidata
Witness to A Golden Age – Mapping Beirut´s Art Scene 1955-1975
World Digital Library
Collection of print and visual resources available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.
Zentrales Verzeichnis digitalisierter Drucke
The Zentrales Verzeichnis Digitalisierter Drucke is the verification portal for the documentation of digitized copies of printed works produced in Germany from the 15th century to the present.