Brill Companions Online is a suite of e-book collections comprising state-of-the art research companions in various subject fields within the humanities. Peer reviewed and written by experts, these handbooks offer balanced accounts at an advanced level, along with an overview of the state of scholarship and a synthesis of debate, pointing the way for future research. Designed for students and scholars, the books explain what sources there are, what methodologies and approaches are appropriate in dealing with them, what issues arise and how they have been treated, and what room there is for disagreement.

An expanding e-book collection of carefully selected research companions to various key aspects of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Peer reviewed and written by experts, these handbooks offer balanced accounts at an advanced level, along with an overview of the state of scholarship and a synthesis of debate, pointing the way for future research. All volumes are in English.

This database includes the 150 manuscripts and a small number of printed works that form the collection of Rafi’ Shamghudi (1863-1932), a famous scholar and bibliophile from Shangoda, a town in central Dagestan. The private collection was gathered by several generations of scholars from the Shamghudi family. Rafi’ Shamghudi inherited them and added further texts on his travels to Mecca, Yemen, and Egypt. When rumours of Shamghudi’s arrest reached his hometown, scholars decided to hide the library in the basement of the local Friday mosque. The library remained hidden throughout the Soviet period and was recovered only in July 2001. The collection, with texts in Arabic and Persian, includes copies from the Timurid period. All metadata is Library of Congress-compliant.

Access World News: Research Collection is an unparalleled collection for academic libraries, featuring thousands of U.S. and global news sources, most available online exclusively through NewsBank. Designed in collaboration with academic librarians, this primary resource solution supports a wide range of academic disciplines, including political science, journalism, English, history, environmental studies, sociology, economics, education, business, health, social sciences and more.

Part 1: Middle East, Africa, Near East and South Asia
This fully searchable online collection—one of eight individually available area subsets of FBIS Daily Reports, 1974-1996—consists of the following specific FBIS series: MEA (Middle East & North Africa, 1974-1980, Middle East & Africa, 1980-1987) and NES (Near East & South Asia, 1987-1996). As the indispensable source for insights into decades of turbulent regional history, these reports provide students and scholars with national and occasionally local perspectives through a wealth of original political broadcasts and newspaper coverage.

The Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia is one of the most important European primary sources for the study of the modern Gulf region from the 17th to the early 20th century. The Gazetteer was compiled and written by John Gordon Lorimer (1870-1914), an official of the Indian Civil Service. The Gazetteer was intended as handbook for British policy makers and agents in the area. The wealth of historical, political and geographical information from which Lorimer composed the Gazetteer was sourced from official documents of the British government in India and the Gulf, from British naval and military establishments and the East India Company archives, and first-hand research and surveys. It is the fullest account of the state of knowledge of the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as such is still an important tool for researchers. This full-text searchable online version offers scholars and students unique possibilities to study and consult this important work.

The world’s foremost private collection of early and rare Hebraica housed in the Valmadonna Trust Library serves as the basis for this Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic books from Baghdad collection. It comprises an unparalleled resource for the study of oriental printing, Hebrew liturgical history, Judeo-Arabic literature, and the history and culture of the most ancient Jewish Diaspora community. All of these bibliographic treasures are reproduced here for the first time.

Brill’s Humanities and Social Sciences E-Book Collections are available on Brill Online with all the advantages and features of digital publishing.The Brill E-Book package can be purchased as a whole, but is also divided into seven broad subject categories that are offered separately.

The Lithographed Editions of Firdawsī’s Shāhnāmah is a collection of extremely rare and illustrated lithographed editions of the famous Persian epic The Book of Kings by Firdawsī. The Shāhnāmah was completed at the beginning of the eleventh century C.E. and it is both a monument of classical Persian literature and of Iranian national identity. Scholarly research on the work has mainly focused on the establishment of a faithful and reliable text. However, there are numerous “Oriental” editions that have received little attention. It has never been thoroughly studied how many of these different editions exist or what the exact nature of the known editions is.

Middle East and Islamic Studies E-Books Online is the electronic version of the book publication program of Brill in the field of Middle East and Islamic Studies

The 2020 Brill Online Middle East & Islamic Studies Journal Collection gives access to the online content available back to the year 2000 of Brill´s 2020 Middle East & Islamic Studies journal program.

For anyone seeking to understand one of the world’s most complex, volatile and internationally significant regions, Middle East and North Africa: Global Perspectives, 1958-1994, is an indispensable resource. This fully searchable online archive offers firsthand reporting and deep analysis on important issues and historic events from Morocco to Egypt to Afghanistan. And with unique content not available anywhere else, it allows researchers unprecedented opportunities to delve into the cultural, economic and political forces that are integral to an array of interdisciplinary topics.

The Leiden University Library has a world-famous research collection of Middle Eastern Manuscripts. Its core collection consists of volumes brought together by, among others, the Leiden Orientalists Joseph Justus Scaliger (d. 1609) and Jacobus Golius (d. 1667). Included in the Scaliger collection are about a dozen manuscripts which belonged to Franciscus Raphelengius (d. 1597). These collections consist of extremely rare, sometimes unique, manuscripts.

This online publication consists of 140 volumes from the Warner Collection, totaling 45,809 pages of Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian texts. All these manuscripts were acquired by the great scholar Levinus Warner during his stay in Istanbul from 1644 until his death in 1665. This selection from the famous Warner Legacy to the Leiden University Libraries includes one autograph (Codex Orientalis 432), 10 unique manuscripts (Cod. Or. 498; 517; 801; 870; 1088; 1090; 1096; 1110; 1143; 1155; and 1175), and 11 manuscripts with unique parts (Cod. Or. 309; 333; 662; 697; 730; 765; 835; 870; 898; 917; and 923). Several manuscripts once belonged to famous owners; for example, Cod. Or. 1122 originates from the private library of the Ottoman polymath and historian Kātib Çelebi (d. 1657). The collection also includes several of Warner's diaries with research notes in various languages.

Arabic Manuscripts from the manuscript holdings of the Oriental Collection in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. The collection consists of 200 manuscripts with just over 300 works. In addition to 5 autographs, the highlights of the collection include: the earliest dated manuscript in the collection (Arab O. 013) a dated copy of a unique arrangement of a rare treatise written by al-Ṣāḥib Tāǧ al-Dīn (d. 707/1307) produced in the year of the author’s death; two rare Mamluk treatises on horsemanship (Arab F.2); and an anonymous compilation (Arab O. 027) about the lives of the outstanding men who lived in Medina in the 12th/18th century.

Relations between the Ottoman Empire and Russia were no less conflictual in the eighteenth century: they were at war in 1736-39, 1768-74, and 1787. In the infamous Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774, the Ottomans were forced to acknowledge the independence of the Crimea (under Russian influence) and of the northern coasts of the Black Sea. It was not until the Treaty of Jassy in 1792 that peaceful relations between the Ottomans and the Russians were restored.

This collection includes discussions of diplomatic treaties like those of Bucharest of 1812 and Adrianople (Edirne) of 1829; the commercial and military issue of access to the Black Sea; eye-witness accounts from war theaters; and plans for, and ideas about, future confrontations. The fact that many different perspectives are represented in this collection makes it extra attractive.

In this collection Russian views are represented by such publications as no. 685 by Anatole Demidov (1812-1870), traveler and patron of the arts; the discussion on the peace by former diplomat Tchihatchef; and the accounts of the Russian veteran, Piotr Andreevich Viazemsky (1792-1878). The opinions of two Turkish officers, Rustem Effendi and Seid Bey, and the views on the Crimean War of the Algerian poet, Muhammad b. Ismail (1820-1870) are also included. On the British side the influential works of the virulently anti-Russian diplomat, David Urquhart (1805-1877), are well-represented, as well as more moderate publications.

The position of the Ottoman Empire continued to decline during the second half of the nineteenth century. Succumbing to foreign pressure, the sultan had decreed far-reaching reforms in favor of his non-Muslim subjects in 1856. Less than two decades later the Ottoman Empire went bankrupt and had to allow foreign bankers to supervise its finances. The Ottomans found themselves increasingly marginalized in the debate on the Eastern Question of whether the Ottoman Empire should be preserved in some form or divided.

One of the authors of the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916; Sykes' work would be the basis for carving up the Ottoman Empire after its collapse. This former Empire would be divided between Britain and France. These papers focus on Sykes' experience in military intelligence and diplomacy in the Middle East, both before and during the First World War. These records also include items on the Armenian genocide. The Zionist movement was active during this time and records of its influence upon him are included in these papers.

Since 1945, the U.S. intelligence community has had to cover a half dozen major wars and several dozen smaller but equally bloody armed conflicts in the Middle East, as well as innumerable civil wars, border clashes, armed insurgencies, and terrorist attacks. This comprehensive document set sheds light on the U.S. intelligence community’s spying and analytic efforts in the Arab world, including the Middle East, the Near East, and North Africa. It covers the time period from the end of World War II to the present day, up until the 2002-2003 Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) assessments, the Global War on Terror, the Iraq War, and Iran’s nuclear program.

Accounts of travel are a popular and accessible source for research on historical relations between “East” and “West” and are attractive for specialists and non-specialists alike. In the pre-modern period a large number of such accounts were published all over Europe. Predominantly covering the Ottoman Empire, the collection also stretches into Ethiopia, Central Asia, Afghanistan, North Africa, and of course Iran.