CCMS Library Collections

The Allamah Iqbal Memorial Urdu Collection

This collection consists of 125 volumes, primarily in Urdu with some Persian and English, on the work of Iqbal and the cultural history of Indo-Pakistan.

The Collection of Ottoman and Turkish Studies

This collection contains over 200 books on history, society, and culture, primarily in the Turkish language.

The World Lebanese Cultural Union Arabic Collection

This collection holds over 120 volumes of recently published Arabic works, primarily on the history, society, and culture of Lebanon.

Dr. Fritz Lehmann Collection of Bihar and Muslim South Asia

This collection currently holds approximately 220 volumes, and is particularly rich in Bihar records, gazetteers, books, and pamphlets in Urdu, Persian, and English. It includes the original Bihar Survey and Settlement Reports.

The Lami Nasserpour Persian Collection

This collection has over 800 volumes in Farsi on history, politics, memoirs, mysticism, art, and literature, including valuable editions and commentaries on Hafiz, Rumi, Sa'adi and Firdawsi.

William and Gretchen Cleveland Arabic Collection and Digitalization Project

The late Dr. William L Cleveland (1941-2006) was Professor Emeritus in the Department of History, Simon Fraser University. A world-renowned scholar of the Middle East and North Africa, he was the founder of SFU's Middle East and Islamic program and the mentor of numerous undergraduate and graduate students. After his passing, his family donated to the SFU Library his personal collection of Arabic books on the Middle East and North Africa, volumes which now reside in Special Collections as the "William and Gretchen Cleveland Arabic Collection." The Collections consists of approximately 300 Arabic books and is rich in first-edition Beirut and Cairo imprints in history, memoirs, travelogues, and novels.

The Cleveland Collection Digitization Project of the Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies (CCMS-SFU) aims to convert many of the Arabic works in this collection into a digital format, which will allow researchers access to the material without the costs and risks associated with a physical examination of the Collection. The CCMS envisions this digitization project as the first step in a long-term strategy of collaboration with the SFU Library to make its increasingly important collections of Middle East and Islamic Studies accessible to a wider academic and public audience.