History Of The Modern Middle East Cleveland

How to Study the History of the Modern Middle East in Cleveland: A Practical Guide

Cleveland isn't exactly the first city that comes to mind when you think about Middle Eastern history. Most people picture Beirut, Amman, or maybe Istanbul. But if you live here and want to dig into the Modern Middle East — Ottoman decay, the Sykes-Picot division, the 1956 Suez crisis, the Iranian Revolution — you actually have a few decent options. Not world-class, but workable. I spent about a year and a half pulling materials together while teaching an independent study at a local college, and here's what I learned about where to look and how to use it. The main resource in Cleveland proper is the Cleveland Public Library — specifically the Main Library's special collections and reference section on the 3rd floor. Their Middle East holdings aren't massive. You won't find first-hand Arabic-language primary sources or rare manuscripts. What they do have is decent secondary literature and some microform collections that cover the mid-20th century well. The call numbers cluster around DS sections (Islamic history) and MJ through PM (Middle Eastern area studies). If you're looking for something specific like the 1979 Iranian Revolution or the Lebanon Wars, you can usually track down a couple of solid books, maybe a documentary or two in the media collection. The librarians there know the Dewey system, but they're not subject specialists. Bring your own reading list. For anything more serious, you need to go to the universities. Case Western Reserve University has the best collection in the region for Middle Eastern studies, partly because they built their history and political science departments around area studies funding from the 1960s onward. Their Joseph B. Gitteldean Collection in the John Hay Library includes books on Ottoman administrative history, modern Iranian studies, and Gulf politics. I've used their microfilm reading room to pull declassified CIA documents on the 1953 Iranian coup — the process takes about 20 minutes once you know the call number, but finding the right call number can eat an hour if you're not familiar with their catalog. The key is searching the CWRU library catalog for "Iran -- History -- 1941-1979" and then filtering by "Microform" or "Media." You'll find the CIAFOX collection there, which has the actual documents.

Cleveland State University is worth a look too, especially if you're interested in the Arab-American experience in Cuyahoga County. Their special collections have oral histories from Cleveland's Arab community — Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian immigrants who settled here after World War II. This isn't the same as studying Middle Eastern history from the outside, but it gives you the American reception side of things, which most courses skip. The urban studies library has a small but growing collection. Their finding aids are online, so you can check before you drive over.

What to Study: Core Topics and Common Approaches

When people talk about the Modern Middle East in an academic setting, they're usually covering the period from the late Ottoman era (roughly 1800s) through the present. The standard framework breaks into several chunks. First, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the mandate system — this is where Sykes-Picot comes in, and it's essential for understanding every border dispute in the region today. Second, the post-WWII era with decolonization, Nasserism, and the rise of secular Arab nationalism. Third, the 1970s and 1980s — the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet-Afghan War, the Gulf Wars. Fourth, the contemporary period covering the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Here's something most introductory courses get wrong: they treat the region as if it moved in a straight line from colonialism to independence to modern conflict. It didn't. The Ottoman state was still a major power well into the 19th century, and its reforms — the Tanzimat — were far more ambitious than most Americans understand. The British and French didn't just "divide the Middle East" in 1916 and walk away. They spent decades building administrative structures, installing puppet regimes, and manipulating tribal alliances. If you want to understand why Iraq's borders are what they are, you need to read about the 1920 Iraqi revolt and the British role in selecting Faisal I, not just the map lines on Sykes-Picot. I ran into a specific problem when I was putting together a reading list for a graduate seminar. A student wanted to focus on the Kurdish question, but every source I found was either too general (a chapter in a broader Middle East history) or too narrow (a single ethnographic study of one Kurdish tribe). The gap was in the political history — the actual treaties, the UN documents, the Turkish-Iraqi agreements. I ended up using the United Nations Treaty Collection online and cross-referencing it with the Oxford Research Encyclopedias entry on Kurdistan. That combination gave the student enough to work with, but it took me about three hours to assemble because the sources weren't organized in any single place. If you're doing this research on your own, budget extra time for exactly this kind of sourcing problem.

Using the Resources Efficiently

Let me give you a practical workflow. Start at the Cleveland Public Library if you're on a budget. Check their catalog for the DS and JC/JF call numbers I mentioned. Pull 5 to 8 foundational books before you do anything else. Good starting points: The Modern Middle East: A History by James L. Gelvin, A New Age of Empire by Kenneth M. Cushing, and The Persian Question by Elizabeth Thompson if you want something that actually challenges the standard narrative. Don't buy these — wait for interlibrary loan. CPL can request books from other OhioLink libraries, and the turnaround is usually 3 to 5 business days. Once you've got your foundation, go to CWRU for the deeper work. Their library card is available to community members for a fee, but students and faculty can bring guests with a signed letter. Use the Gitteldean Collection for specialized books and the microfilm room for primary sources. The reference librarians there will help you with catalog searches, but they won't read the documents with you. If you need guidance on interpreting a declassified cable or an Ottoman tax register, you're on your own unless you find a grad student in the history department who works on that period. A lot of them are happy to chat if you approach them with specific questions rather than vague requests for "help with Middle Eastern history." There's a limitation you should know about: Cleveland doesn't have a dedicated Middle Eastern studies center. Unlike Chicago (which has the Middle East Institute and strong University of Chicago connections) or Washington D.C. (which has the Wilson Center and dozens of embassies), Cleveland's resources are scattered. You won't find guest lectures by ambassadors, visiting scholars, or documentary screenings on a regular schedule. The closest thing to that is occasional events at the Jewish Museum of Cleveland, which sometimes covers Middle Eastern Jewish history — relevant if your interests lean toward Iran, Iraq, or Syria's Jewish communities, but not helpful for, say, Gulf history or Turkish politics.

Online Alternatives When Local Resources Fall Short

When the physical collections in Cleveland aren't enough — and they won't be for advanced work — you need digital archives. The Royal Central Asian Archives at SOAS in London has digitized material on British involvement in the region, including the Mesopotamian campaigns and the Hashemite kingdom establishment. The Nasser Institute at NYU has a strong digital presence with translated sources and bibliographies. For primary documents, the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series from the State Department is freely available online and covers every major Middle Eastern event from 1945 onward in exhausting detail. One more practical note: if you're trying to write a paper or prepare a presentation and you need access to Arabic-language sources, don't expect to find much in Cleveland. The CWRU library has a small Arabic collection, mostly liturgical and literary texts, not modern political documents. You'll need to rely on English translations or learn enough Arabic to navigate the sources yourself. Learning Arabic takes time — realistically 18 to 24 months to reach a level where you can read a newspaper, let alone an archive — so unless you're already working toward that, plan your research around translated materials. The bottom line is that Cleveland can support a serious but limited engagement with Modern Middle East history. The resources exist. They're not, they require effort to navigate, and they won't replace a visit to the National Archives or the British Library if you're doing original research. But for a dedicated student or hobbyist willing to spend time in the right reading rooms and dig through the right catalogs, it's enough to build a real understanding of the period. Just don't expect it to be easy or fast.