“Bibliography”, as a concept and as an instrument to control the products of intellectual and artistic activities, has had a long history of evolution in Turkey as in other countries of the world. Kâtib Çelebi (1609-1657), a seventeenth century Turkish scholar, who is known as Haji Khalifah by Westerners, produced his famous work “Keşfu’z-Zunûn ‘an Esmái’1-Kütübi ve’1-Fünûn” in the middle of that century, and this was first published by Gustav Fluegel in seven volumes between the years of 1835–1858, in Arabic and Latin with the title of Lexicon Bibliographicum et Encyclopaedicum. This work marks one of the summits of bibliographical evolution in Turkey. More than three hundred years have passed since the appearance of this monumental work which is universally considered as an important contribution to human knowledge. So far the Turkish intellectuals have not been able to produce another work of this calibre, however they have always been aware of the importance of bibliographical activities for a changing society. I will soon try to draw a picture of the scene of the bibliographical activities in today’s Turkey by giving some concrete examples.

This review of population policies in Middle Eastern and North African countries complements the earlier works in the State of the Art series by Sabagh (1970) on the demography of the Middle East, and by Bonine (1976) on urban studies in the Middle East. It also interrelates with the work by Van Dusen (1976) on the study of women in the Middle East since population policies often directly and indirectly affect the status of women. The emphasis will be on discussion of current population policies, and where relevant, how these have changed during recent years. A broad definition of population policy is used, i.e., the discussion is not limited to the initiation and expansion of family planning activities, while recognizing that the provision and availability of fertility regulation supplies and services in public and private sectors constitute a major facet of many population policies.

The social studies teacher in today’s elementary and secondary school is faced with a serious problem in attempting to determine the curriculum for a geography, cultures or history course: does one discuss each of the 145 or so independent states in the world, allowing only one hour of class period per country, or should particular attention be directed to certain nations? Of course, the latter is the only logical alternative. The problem remains, however, of how to select those states that will be examined in detail.

The international community is witnessing the resurgence of an old, yet new entity in its midst—the Persian Gulf. Since this decade began, the October War, the Oil embargo, the energy crisis, the massive American arms sales in the region, the concomitant presence of substantial numbers of American personnel and the expanding roles of Iran and Saudi Arabia have all forced this area to the center of international politics and economics. The new perceptions which have been created by these developments have focused on the modern Persian Gulf as a major source of oil, a subsystem of competing local nationalisms, an area of superpower rivalry, an insatiable market for consumer products, a pivotal factor in regional and international conflicts and of course a fascinating case study for social science researchers. The recent outpouring of studies, reports and background summaries testifies to the many facets of the region which are of interest to policy makers, businessmen and academicians.

The past few years have seen the rise in the use of computers and quantitative techniques for the study of the Middle East. My recent article “Quantitative Research on the Middle East in Islamic Times,” American Research Center in Egypt Newsletter, 93 (Spring, 1975), 4–15 established this fact statistically, and a follow-up article in the Bulletin, “New Trends in the Use of the Computer for the Study of the Middle East,” Volume IX, Number 3 (October 1, 1975), pp. 16–26, reported several ongoing projects relating to the use of computers, both with and without the simultaneous use of quantitative techniques. This article is an update of the latter article.

In the decade since the Six-Day War of June 1967, a multitude of peace plans and procedural formulas for the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict have been advanced by governments, international organizations, private groups, and individuals. No other international dispute has inspired so many and variegated suggestions on how to proceed toward its settlement. Particularly prolific in ideas have been private sources, which, unlike national governments and their officials, are not fettered by the requirements of diplomatic bargaining or the burdens of political responsibility. The apparent intractability of the complex of problems and issues that have come to be collectively known as The Middle East Conflict, while generally acknowledged, has not dampened the ardor of would be peace-makers. To the contrary, academics and retired diplomats, journalists and jurists, think tanks and study groups have found it a spur to their imagination and a challenge to their ingenuity. The result has been an outpour of literally hundreds of proposals in varying degrees of comprehensiveness and originality, scattered over the pages of books, scholarly journals, popular magazines and the daily press of the Middle East, Europe and North America.