Culture and Politics
(Middle East Report 219, Summer 2001)

Back to 219 Table of Contents

Web Resources on Middle East Cultures

(Compiled by Salah D. Hassan)

almashriq.hiof.no
This site provides an excellent list of Internet bookstores and sources for Arabic music. Links to a wealth of photos, audio and video clips, historical essays and bibliographies from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan.

www.arabfilm.com
The company’s online list consists mostly of Arab feature films, but also includes a small selection of Iranian and Turkish films and is expanding its range of documentary films.

www.daratalfunun.org/main/index.html
Located in Amman, Darat al-Funun is funded by the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, and claims to be a “home for the arts and the artists of Jordan and the Arab world.” Its web site consists of a detailed exhibition archive, a list of 70 contemporary Arab artists, a good compilation of art links, an online art review and the physical layout of the galleries and premises.

www.akakurdistan.com
This site is itself a work of art put together by the photojournalist Susan Meiselas (also known for her war reporting on Latin America). The web page acts as a virtual nation, composed of personal and professional photographs of Kurds and testimonies of Kurdish cultural remembrances.

www.neda.net/index.shtml
The home page includes links to many Iranian cultural sites. Especially interesting is http://www.neda.net/nvg/, home of the Negah Virtual Gallery (NVG), launched in summer 1998. It offers access to several galleries of contemporary art and late twentieth-century exhibits of Iranian artists. NVG is a project of the Neda Rayaneh Institute, the growing national information NGO created in 1994.

www.turath.org
Although this web page emphasizes Arab world music, it provides excellent information on the other arts as well. The electronic resources include video, audio clips, a collection of photographs and an extensive list of hyperlinks.

www.ankaboot.com
An index of Iranian websites, with sections on arts and humanities, literature, entertainment, sports and politics. Links to the Farsi/English cultural web page at www.tamasha.com—a seemingly exhaustive array of information and links on Iranian culture.

www.iranian.com
The Iranian online magazine—which claims to be “the most popular Iranian site on the Internet”—provides access to current information on and timely reviews of Iranian music, literature, film and the arts.

home.t-online.de/home/opus125/mocia/
A rich and stunningly presented site with pages specific to Iranian film, music, painting, sculpture, photography, conceptual art, graphic art, calligraphy, architecture and literature. A number of the artist pages include a banner for The Iranian, indicating a symbiotic relationship between the two resources.

www.glas.org
The Gay and Lesbian Arab Society hosts a web page and Queerarabs chat line, which, in the words of one subscriber, is the venue for “some of the most intriguing and provocative cultural debates about censorship in the Arab world, postmodernism, politics, cultural and sexual identity.”