This Presentation is a rather impressionistic as well as eclectic view of Middle Eastern Studies, one which does not pretend to be complete. Many of you have been associated with Middle Eastern Studies for much longer than I have, and you could undoubtedly see greater changes—or lack of changes—than I will present.

Let me begin by briefly looking at the history and growth of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, for the growth of MESA is somewhat a reflection of the structure and changes in Middle East studies, particularly, of course, in the United States. Also, in this way I can make comparisons with MESA when looking at developments elsewhere.

For several years, there has been at the University of California at Los Angeles a chapter of the Onomasticon Arabicum, an international project whose goal is the collection of data from Arabic biographical dictionaries and the storing and retrieval of these data by computer. What follows is a brief outline of the project and its history.

The Domain of Middle Eastern Studies discussed in this paper covers mainly the study of the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian languages and literatures, and the history and cultures of the region where these languages are spoken. Thus, Hebrew and Jewish studies, Armenian studies, and the study of the languages and cultures of the pre-Islamic Middle East are not included.

The introductory section on the history of the field is followed by sections on the programs, on research conditions and trends, and on institutes and foundations concerned with Middle Eastern Studies. The paper does not aim at a historical analysis of the development of Middle Eastern Studies in relation to the specific historical factors (e.g., Calvinism, Asian trade, colonialism) which shaped the field. The accent is on the present-day conditions that seem to determine its current fate.

One problem faced by many Western historians of the Middle East and North Africa is a relative ignorance of what is being produced by the local scholars themselves. In the case of the Maghreb, for example, without regular visits to the area, an American researcher may have to wait several years to learn about the publication of a new book or a local research project relevant to his own interests. This observation is certainly true for Tunisia, where a small, active group of historians at the University of Tunis has been examining aspects of Tunisia's political and social evolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but whose works, with few exceptions, are not well known to scholars in America.

This Article consists of a short review of the Arabic and Persian word processing software for the Macintosh computer called AlKaatibTM, as well as a presentation of some of the ways in which it is now being used as a pedagogical and research aid. It should be stated at the outset that although I did not personally develop this software, I was intimately involved with developing the fonts for it, and with testing it in its initial stages, thereby providing input that was incorporated into the present version. This article should therefore be viewed not so much as an outside review of the software, but as an expression by someone who uses it on a daily basis of what it has meant to him.