Library Research Guides: REL 263: Islam in the Modern World: Find Internet Resources

The Holy Qur'an
An electronic, open-source created version of the Qur'an that includes searching, browsing, and interactive audio files. Many recitations available with translation, very user-friendly.
The Internet Archive
This free resource brings together millions of digitized books, moving images, graphics, and many more. It contains many secondary and primary texts on religion.
Hathi Trust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.

Artstor

Digitized images of art, architecture, and other forms of visual culture from around the world, from museums, archaeology, photo archives, slide collections, and art reference works.
Dates: BCE to present

Bodleian Digital Image Library
A number of collections of digitized images from the Bodleian Library, including collections of images from early, rare, and/or important Islamic, South Asian, and East Asian books as well as Western sources.
Abdul-Hamid II collections of photographs of the Ottoman Empire
These photographic albums portray the Ottoman Empire during the reign of one of its last sultans, Abdul-Hamid II. They highlight the modernization of numerous aspects of the Ottoman Empire. Most of the places depicted are within the boundaries of modern-day Turkey, but buildings and sites in Iraq, Lebanon, Greece and other countries are also included.
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
Historical map collection at Stanford University.
Al-Bab Maps of the Arab World
General maps of the Arab world, sorted by country.
Arabic Collections Online
Arabic Collections Online (ACO) is a publicly available digital library of public domain Arabic language content. ACO currently provides digital access to 10,242 volumes across 6,427 subjects drawn from rich Arabic collections of distinguished research libraries.
Avestan Digital Archive
The Avestan Digital Archive (ADA) seeks to be a digital archive containing all Avestan manuscripts spread all over the world.
Akkasah Photographic Archive
The Akkasah photographic archive at NYU Abu Dhabi is drawn from around the Middle East and North Africa. Our historical collections range from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth. Akkasah commissions and supports documentary photographic projects focused on the Middle East and North Africa.
Travelers 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. Includes images, documents, and maps.
Al Mashriq The Levant
Thousands of images of Lebanon and the Levant.
Arab Image Foundation
The ongoing research and acquisition of photographs include so far Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Mexico, Argentina and Senegal. To date, the collection holds more than 600,000 photographs, some of which are online.
Saudi Aramco World
Search more than 40,000 images in one of the world's largest archives specializing in historic and current images of the Middle East and the Islamic world.
Middle Eastern Posters 1970-90
Some posters digitized, links in the finding aid.

Islamic Heritage Project
A digital collection of Islamic manuscripts, published texts, and maps from across Harvard's libraries and museums.
The Minassian Collection of Qur'anic Manuscripts
This database catalogues the holdings of over 200 Qur’anic manuscript folios dating from the 9th to the 16th centuries housed within the special collections of the Brown University libraries.
ShariaSource
SHARIAsource includes sources and scholarly commentary on Islamic law from the earliest periods of Islam to the modern era, covering both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority contexts.
AMEEL
Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library, a web-based portal and a digital collection of information for the study of the Middle East.
Digital Persian Archive
The Database includes "public" and "private" documents: royal decrees and orders, official correspondence, and shari'a court documents, such as contracts of sale and lease, vaqf deeds, marriage contracts, and court orders.
Gertrude Bell Archive
Diaries, letters, photos, and ephemera from a woman's travels through the Middle East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
MENADoc Digital Collections
The Specialised Information Service hosts several Digital Collections with a focus on the Middle East and Islam in its MENAdoc Repository. They are comprised of Digitised Materials and Born Digital Publications and are made available in Open Access.
Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran
Explore the lives of women during the Qajar era (1796-1925) through a wide array of materials from private family holdings and participating institutions.

Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969

British government documents concerning UK colonial holdings in the Middle East and North Africa, covering the mandate in Palestine, Western economic ties to the region, Cold War conflict, and more.
Dates: 1839-1969 CE
This database will no longer be available after Dec. 31, 2025. If you have questions, please contact askus@wellesley.edu.

Iranian Oral History Project
The collection provides scholars and practitioners the opportunity to listen to and read the personal accounts of many of Iran's former political leaders as they recall the times and events that shaped their lives and the life of their country.
Nakba Archive
The Nakba Archive is an oral history collective established in Lebanon in 2002. Since it’s inception, the Archive has recorded over 650 video interviews with first generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon about their recollections of life in Palestine and the events that led to their displacement.

Includes English subtitles to video interviews.
Memory of Modern Egypt
This site documents the history of modern Egypt from the rule of Muhammad Ali Pasha in 1805 until the end of the presidency of the late President Mohamed Anwar Sadat in 1981, where the site presents many articles related to the history of Egypt during the past hundred and sixty-seven years.

Includes audio and video, as well as photos and documents.