MELA NOTES Journal of Middle Eastern Librarianship Number 80 (2007) ISSN 0364-2410 Published by The Middle East Librarians Association Editor Review Editor Jonathan Rodgers Rachel Simon University of Michigan Princeton University Officers of the Middle East Librarians Association Ali Houissa, Cornell University President, 2005–2007 M. Lesley Wilkins, Harvard Law School Past-President, 2005–2007 Kristen Kern, Portland State University Vice-Pres./Program Chair, 2006–2007 William Kopycki, Univ. of Pennsylvania Secretary-Treasurer, 2004–2007 Jonathan Rodgers, University of Michigan Editor, 2004–2007 Basima Bezirgan, University of Chicago Member-at-large, 2005–2007 Joyce Bell, Princeton University Member-at-large, 2006–2008 John Eilts, Stanford University Melanet-L Listserve Manager, Interim John Eilts, Stanford University MELA Webmaster MELA Notes is published once a year, in spring and fall. It is distributed to members of the Association and subscribers. Membership dues of US $30.00 bring the Notes and other mailings. Subscriptions are US $30.00 per calendar year, or US $16.00 per issue for most back numbers. Address correspondence regarding subscriptions, dues, or membership information to: William Kopycki, Secretary-Treasurer MELA University of Pennsylvania Library 3420 Walnut Street Philadelphia PA 19104-6206 Address articles and other notices to: Address books for review to: Jonathan Rodgers Rachel Simon Editor, MELA Notes Review Editor, MELA Notes Near East Division, Hatcher Graduate Library Catalog Division Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1205 Princeton Univ. Library E-mail: [email protected] 1 Washington Road Phone: (734) 764-7555 Princeton, NJ 08544 Fax: (734) 763-6743 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.lib.umich.edu/area/Near.East/MELANotesIntro.html Articles and reviews must be submitted both in printed format by post and in electronic format by email attachment or disk. 5 offprints will be sent to authors of articles; 3 offprints will be sent to authors of reviews and other contributions. MELA NOTES Number 80 2007 CONTENTS Articles Edward A. Jajko A Look Back ....................................................1 Omar Khalidi D¯a-irat al-Ma,¯arifal-Uthm¯an¯ıyah: A Pioneer in Manuscript Publishing in Hyderabad, Deccan, India ........................27 Simon Samoeil The OACIS Project: Online Access to Consolidated Information on Serials..........................................33 George N. Atiyeh Award Essay Jodi Goodman Considerations of Access and Their Impact on Middle East Scholarship.....................................45 Reviews Rosen-Ayalon: Islamic Art and Archæology in Palestine (Karl R. Schaefer) ..............................................49 Schaefer: Enigmatic Charms: Medieval Arabic Block Printed Amulets in American and European Libraries and Museums (Kristen Wilson) ..................................... 52 Wassef and Wassef: Daughters of the Nile: Photographs of Egyptian Women’s Movements, 1900–1960 (Salwa Ferahian) ....55 How Can We Watch the Film With Sand in Our Eyes: A Round Up of Current Middle Eastern Feature Film on DVDs. Part 1: The Turks Are Coming! The Turks Are Coming! (David Giovacchini) ......56 How Can We Watch the Film With Sand in Our Eyes: A Round Up of Current Middle Eastern Feature Film on DVDs. Part 2: Egyptian Films: Hollywood on the Nile and After (David Giovacchini) ....59 Alkalesi: Modern Iraqi Arabic with MP3 files : A Textbook (Jonathan Hopwood) ...........................................63 ii Stowasser and Ani: A Dictionary of Syrian Arabic: English-Arabic: English-Arabic (Kristen Kern) ..................65 Kendall: The Top 1,000 Words for Understanding Media Arabic (Shelton Henderson) ............................................67 Sadgrove: History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East (Shelton Henderson) ..........68 Ali: Al-Qur-¯an:A Contemporary Translation (David Giovacchini) ............................................70 Suleiman: The Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology (Nicholas Ostler) ....................................73 Ryding and Mehall: Formal Spoken Arabic Basic Course with MP3 Files (Mohamed Taher) ...................................75 Ryding and Zaiback: Formal Spoken Arabic FAST Course with MP3 files (Mohamed Taher) ....................................75 Rabkin: A Threat From Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism (Blair Kuntz) ..........................................78 Jwaideh: The Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development (Blair Kuntz) .....................................81 Arfi: International Change and the Stability of Multiethnic States (Catherine Rockwell) ...........................................84 Harris: Muslim Youth: Tensions and Transitions in Tajikistan (Mary St. Germain) ............................................85 Wayne: Inshallah : In Pursuit of My Father’s Youth (Rebecca Routh) ...............................................86 Johanyak: Behind the Veil: An American Woman’s Memoir of the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis (Nancy Beygijanian) ..............88 Lababidi: Silent No More: Special Needs People in Egypt (Connie Lamb) .................................................90 Books Received for Review in MELA Notes ......................95 ANNUAL MEETING 2006 Minutes and Reports: 2006 MELA Annual Business Meeting ........................................................97 A Look Back Edward A. Jajko ust as I had long wanted to submit one of my annual reports in verse J (but, sadly, never did), I have also thought for some years about writing a memoir framed along the lines of al-Ghazz¯al¯ı’s al-Munqidh min al-d. al¯al: “For you have asked me, my brethren in librarianship, about the reasons why I have done kaz¯aw@ kaz¯a.” Another, more recent, voice has called to me, that of Ali Kerim Bey, my second-favorite character in the movie “From Russia With Love,” who says to the Russian whom he and James Bond have intercepted on the train and whom they have decided that Kerim will guard, “I’ve had a particularly fascinating life. Would you like to hear about it?” Inappropriate and vain though it may seem, I think this is an irresistible line. Early On When I was a kid, the first thing I wanted to be—other than a cowboy or, given my environment, a priest—was an archeologist. Specifically, an Egyptologist (not that I knew the word then, as a boy of ten or fewer years). But it was Egypt that fascinated me then, and continues to do so to this day. I have almost no interest in the archeology of the Western hemisphere or the Far East. It is that of Egypt that has always been of greatest importance to me, and secondarily that of the rest of the Middle East and the Classical world. I was born into and raised in a Roman Catholic Polish-American family in Philadelphia. My parents, both born in Poland, were extraor- dinarily hard-working and dedicated to the education and betterment of their two sons. The environment we grew up in was rich and diverse. During and after the second World War, numerous soldiers, sailors, and defense workers came into our parents’ business with stories of far-off lands, peoples, and events. Richard F. Burton, in one of his books, speaks of war as the Regius professor of geography, a wise comment. The newspapers, which I started reading as a young boy, were full of information about the war and the world. Our relatives and fam- ily friends added people to our lives with close personal experience of Poland and other European countries and who spoke Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, German, Hungarian, and other languages. Frequent shopping 2 MELA Notes 80 (2007) trips up to Marshall Street put us in contact with the Yiddish language and mysterious Hebrew letters on synagogues and stores. In high school, I had four years of Latin and three of German. I elected the Classical course rather than the Scientific, which gave me, instead of a year each of biology, chemistry, and physics, two and a half years of Attic and Homeric Greek, followed by a half year of Physics, the minimum needed to satisfy Commonwealth of Pennsylvania require- ments for scientific education. I enjoyed all the language study. We were bilingual at home, and I had discovered that I had a gift for learn- ing languages. Leaving St. Joseph’s College High School, the Jesuit prep of Philadelphia, I thought I would likely major in Classical Stud- ies, Classical Archeology, or perhaps something that would get me into Egyptology. But my interests quickly changed. These days, archeology can be a fairly exciting subject. The study is used to illuminate various aspects of life in the ancient world, from pol- itics to the most ordinary parts of daily life. Egyptologists continue to make major discoveries, but they have also produced important studies of, say, the lives of the builders and creators of the pyramids and the tombs of the Valley of the Kings. Back when I was considering a major in the field, however, archeologists seemed to be totally devoted to pots and pans. Then and in subsequent years, I visited many collections in the U.S. and Europe of Greek and Roman pottery and, while I have been able to appreciate the beauty of much of the work, and I com- pletely understand the importance of pottery as a most useful means of dating the human settlements in which it may be found, I have nev- ertheless been thoroughly bored. To become an archeologist fifty years ago, I would have had somehow to at least feign interest in pots, and I couldn’t. College In any event, by the time I was a student at