This bibliographical survey covers the enormous area of North Africa, Western Asia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Populated mainly by Arabs, Iranians, and Turkic peoples, the region also includes numerous ethnic and religious minorities. Despite the diversity of these peoples, Islam is the common unifying element of culture and society. In addition, the region includes the three distinctive ethnic islands of Georgia, Armenia, and Israel.

In the immense corpus of pre-19th-century Arabic literature, the only dramatic works extant are three shadow plays by Shams ad-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Dāniyāl (1248–1311), an oculist turned both popular and court entertainer.

To explain this paucity, conjectures have been offered ranging from the contention that Islam (whose very name implies the total submission of man to the will of Cod) leaves no room for tragic conflict to the argument that Arabs remained attached to a literary ideal born in nomadism, whereas the theater can arise only in a settled community.

Manuscript libraries, the items collected in them, their location, and something of their history can be classified as follows (previous work on this subject was described in Lütfü Eroğiu’s “Istanbul Kütüphaneleri”):

1. 1. Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s libraries under the auspices of the General Directorate of Libraries.

2. 2. Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s libraries under the auspices of the General Directorate of Monuments and Museums.

3. 3. University libraries.

4. 4. Public libraries.

5. 5. Libraries under the auspices of the General Directorate of Foundations.

6. 6. Private libraries, such as those associated with banks or newspapers.