"Abou Naddara" Press Run Available Online from Heidelberg

Ya‘qub Sanu‘a

Ya‘qub Sanu‘a (also James Sanua) (1839-1912) was a pioneering Egyptian journalist, dramatist, and satirist in the 19th century who published a popular satirical paper, mostly from exile in France, with various titles but using variations on his nom de plume, "Abou Naddara," (the man who wears glasses). From an Egyptian Jewish family, he wrote variously in Arabic, French, English and Italian, and also knew Hebrew. His publication from French exile was smuggled into Egypt and became quite popular. His cartoons were the first to be captioned in Egyptian colloquial rather than Standard Arabic, and political cartoons still do this routinely.

The University of Heidelberg now has posted the complete run of newspapers from 1878 to 1910, along with other materials including unpublished manuscripts, online as "The Abou Naddara Collection."

Historians of Middle Eastern Journalism and of Egyptian politics in the late 19th and early 20th century should find this a valuable resource.

An Interesting Open Source Multi-Media Site on the Middle East from Oxford

A new site from Oxford, Manar al-Athar, offers free photos and other media relating to the Middle East. Here's how they explain it:

The Manar al-Athar website, based at the University of Oxford, aims to provide high resolution, searchable images for teaching, research, and publication. These images of archaeological sites, with buildings and art, will cover the areas of the former Roman empire which later came under Islamic rule, such as Syro-Palestine/the Levant, Arabia, Egypt, North Africa and Spain. The chronological range is from Alexander the Great (i.e., from about 300 BC) through, the Islamic period to the present. It is the first website of its kind providing such material labelled jointly in both Arabic and English. We will also be publishing related material, both online and on paper, in English and Arabic.

A Major Contribution to Gulf History: Digitizing the India Office Records

The Guardian reports on a major project that will contribute greatly to researchers pursuing the history of the Gulf: funded by Qatar, the British Library is digitizing some half million pages of India Office records, a treasure trove for reconstructing the Gulf from the mid-18th century onward. They also are digitizing some 25,000 Arabic manuscripts as part of the same project.

I envy the next generation of historians the growing wealth of digital source material. For centuries historians have had to go where the archives were, but we may finally be about to transcend that.

It's interesting that, in the article, an archivist (if quoted correctly by the newspaper) actually compares this immense undertaking to the accomplishment of J.G. Lorimer in compiling his great 5000=page Gazeteer of the Gulf, which I've discussed on this blog before. That may understate the goals of this huge project, but it does indicate an appreciation of the immensity of the contribution of John Gordon Lorimer to the history of the Gulf.

Online Resources: The Claremont Coptic Encylopedia and the Legacy of Aziz S. Atiya

One thing I like to do here from time to time is mention great research tools now available online. Others specialize in this, like Access to Middle East and Islamic Resources Online (AMIR), but their readers tend to be in academia. What if you're just an ordinary blog reader who, once in a while, suddenly has a question about fifth century Christology, such as, say, the Acacian Schism. Oh, of course you can go to Wikipedia, and get a probably decent enough account of the dispute between Rome and Constantinople. But what if your real question involves the significance of the Acacian schism for the Copts in Alexandria? Not much about that in Wikipedia. What if, in other words, you need this kind of detail:

And it goes on.  Yet hard as it is to believe, the Wikipedia article doesn't even mention Timothy Wobble-Cap!

When you need detail about, well, just about anything relating to the Church of Alexandria, the Coptic language, Coptic art, or, well, anything Coptic, it's time to turn to the Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia, an online resource of value to anyone (including Muslims) interested in Egypt. And given the fact that this summer we are witnessing the election of a new Coptic Pope to succeed the late Pope Shenouda, there will be plenty of reporters, religion columnists, and such looking for a quick source of information on the Church of Egypt. Click the link above.

Aziz S. Atiya

Aziz Suryal Atiya (1898-1988) was the founding father of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Utah, and a pioneer of Coptic history in the United States, where Coptic specialists had previously tended to focus on linguistics for Bible studies. Atiya also wrote extensively on the period of the later Crusades. After studying in Britain, he taught in Cairo and Alexandria, then came to the US in the 1950s, teaching at Michigan, Indiana and Princeton before going to Utah in 1959.  An Egyptian and, of course, a Copt, he was also the father of the Coptic Encyclopedia, which he initiated and edited, and which was completed after his death under his wife's supervision. The Middle East library at Utah carries his name. He is said to be the man who coined the terms "Coptology" and "Coptologist," now in general use. (Well, at least in general use among persons interested in the subject.)

His role as an interpreter of the Copts was appreciated. Once in the 1970s I was on a bus trip of American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) fellows to the ancient monasteries of the Wadi Natrun. When the bus arrived a monk informed us that it was Great Lent and no visitors were allowed. Then he saw that Professor Atiya was our guide. Problem solved.

Claremont's site has digitized the original Encyclopedia in a form that allows constant updating and expansion, so it is still growing beyond what Atiya envisioned. You can search, browse, download PDFs of individual articles, etc. While the papal election may be the main area readers will be searching for this summer, you can also find much more obscure material:

Yale-SOAS Digital Islamic Manuscripts

Yale and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London have joined to create the Yale-SOAS Islamic Manuscript Gallery, which has digitized several Arabic and Persian manuscripts from the two collections, with more envisioned, and several key classical Arabic dictionaries for reference. One more step among increasingly many online to increase access to unpublished source material.