Web portal of the Specialised Information Service
Middle East, North Africa and Islamic Studies

About us

The Specialised Information Service (FID) for Middle Eastern, North African and Islamic Studies provides German academia with highly specialised research material from the countries of the MENA region. It has been organised since 2016 by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and supervised by the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt.

Acquisitions of publications that are difficult to access

 We acquire publications that are difficult to access from the countries and predominantly in the languages of the MENA region and make this highly specialised source material permanently available.

 

On the one hand, this is traditionally done via the Interlibrary loan service of the ULB Saxony-Anhalt for printed materials and increasingly in digital form as well. Open Access or as a licence offer for the FID specialist community. The MENALIB virtual specialised library provides central access to our holdings, offers and services, which are available to you via the MENAsearch discovery system.

Range of subjects
The FID Middle Eastern, North African and Islamic Studies sees itself as a point of contact for a number of smaller, philological, religious and regional studies orientated disciplines that are part of the subject spectrum of Oriental Studies. These include the
Islamic Studies (non-denominational)
Islamic theology (confession-orientated)
Christian Orient
Arabic Studies
Semitic Studies
Iranian Studies
Turkology
Armenology
Caucasiology
Regional orientation

Egypt, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Eritrea, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan (Republic of Sudan), Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates, Western Sahara

Supported by Bing @Australian Bureau of Statistics, GeoNames, Geospatial Data Edit, Microsoft, Navinfo, Open Streetmap, TomTom Wikepedia
Supported by Bing @Australian Bureau of Statistics, GeoNames, Geospatial Data Edit, Microsoft, Navinfo, Open Streetmap, TomTom Wikepedia
Content orientation
In terms of content, our programmes focus in particular on the fields of religious studies, history, political and social sciences as well as linguistics and literary studies of the above-mentioned regions.
Community

In order to align our service with the needs of research, the FID team maintains close contact with the specialist community, regularly organises roadshows and is in contact with specialist researchers via social media.

How to reach us

If you are travelling from out of town and would like to visit our library and view our holdings, please contact the Information from the ULB and write a Mail to the FID.

 

The Vorderer Orient branch library is located at Mühlweg 15 in Halle. All necessary information about the location can be found here.

 

Here find out more about the FID Middle East building.

Due to current events...

We ask for your understanding that the specialised information service (FID) will not comment on or comment on current political events.

 

The FID provides German Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies with research-relevant literature from the MENA region as well as subject-specific services.

 

The MENALIB, Bluesky and Mastodon websites are used to promote our own services and to communicate with the scientific community and are not used as a platform for the personal opinions of FID team members.