Some years ago, a colleague from another institution told me how much she was looking forward to screening Nasser 56 in her introductory Middle East history course. Students had just finished reading about the Nasser era, and the screening of Muhamad Fadel's stylish biopic starring the charismatic film star Ahmed Zaki would serve as an enjoyable way to round out the unit. I was surprised, not at my colleague's use of the film in her class, but at her timing. Released in 1996, Nasser 56 is very much the product of the Mubarak era. It offers rich opportunities to discuss the particular challenges Egypt faced in the 1990s and how this nostalgic look back at a triumphant moment in Gamal Abdel Nasser's (Jamal ʿAbd al-Nasir's) presidency was marshalled to animate an economically and politically fraught period. Its celebration of ʿAbd al-Nasir as an effective and caring patriarch to the nation could be interpreted as an endorsement of Egypt's authoritarian political system. However, the film is less useful as an explication of ʿAbd al-Nasir as a political figure, or of 1950s Egypt.

Every year, I teach a broad survey course on the Modern Middle East (between 120 and 200 students), along with seminars on a wide range of topics. Regardless of the content of these courses, I have three big goals. I want them to come away understanding that the history of the region is more complex and fascinating than they learned in high school and from the pundits, and the simplistic assumptions and solutions they offer answer no questions. Second, I want to persuade them that things change over time, and we can't understand anything without knowing its context—and the context of the Middle East is global. But most imperative: I want to convince students to be critical in analyzing sources of information. Informed citizenship requires students to be able to think critically, and that is what historians do offer. We analyze multiple sources in myriad ways.

The 2005 UNAIDS/WHO Epidemic Update reports that the number of people living with HIV last year worldwide was 40.3 million (1). In 2005, approximately 3.2 million people became newly infected by HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region of the world that is considered the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic (2).

Although the rates of HIV are much less in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) than in Sub-Saharan Africa, some experts believe that without appropriate implementation of surveillance and prevention services, the epidemic will spread to the general population (3). Reportedly, 67,000 people in MENA became infected with HIV in 2005; there are approximately 510,000 people living with HIV in the region (2). Because of cultural and social taboos surrounding the discussion of the acquisition of HIV around the world in general, and in MENA in particular, it is difficult to develop a clear representation of HIV's presence and risk in countries in the Middle East. Based on the information that is available, the main mode of transmission of HIV is sexual contact, with injecting drug use recognized as the second mode of increasing prevalence (2). Without sufficient implementation of surveillance in the region, however, estimated rates of infection may indeed be lower than the actual number of people infected with HIV (4).

In March 2004, I sat in the refurbished office of Ms. Juwan Mahmoud, the Chief Librarian of the Iraqi Academy of Sciences (in Arabic, al-majma' al-ilmi) in the Al-Waziriyya section of Baghdad. The Iraqi Academy had been looted of its first-rate collection of manuscripts in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and other languages immediately after the war. When I had first met Juwan, it was in the ruins of the library. I remember the rooms piled high with trashed documents and manuscripts haphazardly strewn around the place, and rows upon rows of gutted library shelves. I had gone to Baghdad in June 2003 with three colleagues – Jens Hanssen, Edouard Méténier and Keith Watenpaugh – to investigate the burning and pillaging of university and research libraries. One member of the group, Jens Hanssen, made a short documentary of the wrecked library premises, in which Juwan played a starring role. In the spirit of an Iraqi passionara, she forcefully called upon the conscience of the world to restore the Iraqi Academy's collections immediately.

Al-Ghazali introduces the issue of doubt in his book al-Munqidh min al-Dalal [Deliverance from Error]. The book can be considered an intellectual autobiography of this philosopher. Here al-Ghazali describes his intellectual development and the method of his search for truth. He also discusses the ideas of various doctrines that were present in Islamic society in his period, including the philosophers, al-Mutakallimun (scholastics), al-Batiniyya (interiority), and Sufism. The book is a concise exposition of al-Ghazali’s experience in the field of research and epistemological criticism.

Dates in parentheses at the end of each statement represent the combined holdings of the Stanford University-Hoover Institution libraries and are meant to serve as a guide to the publication history of the documents.

The bibliography is arranged by country and then by issuing agency. The Arabic form of the agency has been used when available.

This bibliography is not a comprehensive listing, but rather serves as an introduction to the wealth of material buried in the confusing array of publications of statistical agencies in the Middle East.

Soviet Scholarship on Islamic studies exists in almost hermetic isolation from its Western counterpart for both linguistic and methodological reasons. Soviet scholarship is concerned with a different set of questions that emerge from Soviet Marxism, rarely tackling the conceptual questions formulated in the West. Nevertheless, Soviet scholarship is very strong on descriptive detail which could, if properly utilized, enrich Western debate. Unfortunately, few Western Islamicists (except those involved in Central Asian history) know Russian, and therefore a wealth of factual information unearthed by Soviet scholars remains virtually unknown in the West and plays no part in the scholarly discourse here.