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Enquiries 

Enquiries relating materials in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish and related languages should be directed to the Near and Middle Eastern Department either by telephone (64739 or 66368), by e-mail at near_eastern@lib.cam.ac.uk or in person during our office opening hours,

Recommendations

Readers are encouraged to forward recommendations for new titles directly to the Near and Middle Eastern Department or by submitting details via the Library's on-line recommendation form.

Recommendations are given special priority during the purchase and cataloguing process and will be made available as soon as possible.

 Catalogue searching

Almost all printed publications in the Near and Middle Eastern languages can be searched through the Library’s on-line catalogues, the exception being some publications in Ottoman Turkish, for which it is still necessary to consult the printed Guard Book catalogue

Searching the Catalogues for Near and Middle Eastern Language materials

In order to search the on-line catalogues effectively it is vital to be familiar with the Library of Congress transliteration standards for Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Turkish or other languages, which are common to most English language based on-line catalogues. New acquisitions in these languages are now catalogued showing both transliterated and the original script data. The 'Newton' catalogue can be searched either by using transliteration or in script. 'LibrarySearch' can only be searched in transliteration.

Transliteration tables 

For searches in script please note that, as information in original script is not as yet present in all catalogue records, and publications retrieved when searching in Arabic or Hebrew script will only reflect publications received by the library in the last ten years.

  • Please note: when searching for a name or title
    • omit the initial 'al-' in names and titles
    • omit all diacritics
    • keep the hyphen (-) in the middle of a word or sentence:

 For example:

Author / al-Fārābī  ----------- search for: Farabi
Author / Ibn `al-`Arabī ------------- search for: Ibn al-Arabi
Title / al-Makhṭūtāt al-`Arabīyah  ----------search for: Makhtutat al-Arabiyah

Search Example:

Author: Ibn al-Arabi / Title : Makhtut nadir min

The resulting catalogue record looks like this:- 

Main Author:

Ibn al-Arabī, 1165-1240.

Title:

Makhṭūṭ nādir min Rasāil Ibn al-Arabī / taḥqīq wa-taqdīm Saīd Abd al-Fattāḥ.

Other Entries:

Abd al-Fattāḥ, Saīd.

Published:

[Cairo] : al-Maktabah al-Azharīyah lil-Turāth, [2004].

Description:

165 p.; 24 cm.

ISBN:

9772243067

Subject(s):

Sufism –Early works to 1800.

Format:

Book

Original Language:

ابن العربى 1165-1240.

 

مخطوط نادر من رساءل ابن عربى / تحقيق وتقديم سعيد عبد عبد الفتاح.

 

[القاهرة] المكتبة الازهرية للتراث [2004].

The catalogue record for each publication provides the classmark, indicates its location in the Library, and whether it is available on the open shelves or should be requested in one of the Reading Rooms.