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Title: Kanan Makiya papers
Date (inclusive): 1943-2010, undated
Collection Number: 2010C35
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material: In Arabic and English
Physical Description:
105 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box
(44.2 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Correspondence, writings, notes, interview transcripts, conference papers, government publications, printed matter, and audiovisual
materials relating to the history of the Middle East, political conditions in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, the Saddam
Hussein regime in Iraq and the Iraqi opposition to it.
Creator:
Makiya, Kanan
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Users must sign use agreement. The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation
system. If there are audiovisual or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
Users must sign use agreement - no photography, scanning, downloading, or duplication in any manner is permitted until 2042
October 1; notes may be made. For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2010.
[Identification of item], Kanan Makiya papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
The papers have been inventoried by Makiya and Hoover Institution Library and Archives staff. Where information was only recorded
in relation to a range of multiple boxes, those boxes have been grouped under their overarching description and have been
recorded as "Material not yet described."
Born in Baghdad, Kanan Makiya left Iraq to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and later returned
to join Makiya Associates to design and build projects in the Middle East. In 1981, he left the architecture field and began
to write a book about Iraq.
Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (1989) became a best-seller after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Makiya's second book,
The Monument (1991) is an essay on the aesthetics of power and kitsch. Both
Republic of Fear and
The Monument were written under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil. His next book,
Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World (1993), was published under Makiya's own name.
In 2000 Makiya published
The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem, a work of historical fiction that tells the story of the building of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Along with these
books, Makiya has written for The Independent, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement
and The Times. Makiya has also published on the architecture of Mohamed Makiya,
Post-Islamic Classicism: An Essay on the Architecture of Mohamed Makiya.
Makiya has been profiled in many books and publications including
The New Yorker (January 6, 1992) and
The New York Times Magazine (October 7, 2007). He has collaborated on several films for television, the most known of which exposed for the first time
the 1988 campaign of genocide in northern Iraq known as the Anfal. The film, originally aired in January 1992 on the BBC,
was aired by Frontline in the U.S. under the title "Saddam's Killing Fields," and received the Edward R. Morrow Award For
Best Television Documentary on Foreign Affairs for 1992. Makiya's books are available in many languages, including Arabic,
French, Turkish and Spanish.
In 2003 Makiya founded the Iraq Memory Foundation, a NGO based in Baghdad and the US dedicated to issues of remembrance, violence,
and identity formation. The Iraq Memory Foundation has collected and digitized nearly 10 million pages of Ba'th era documents
and has been supported by both the Iraqi and US governments as well as many foundations. Makiya also continues to write, working
on a historical fiction book set in Iraq between 2003 and 2006, titled
The Rope.
Source: Brandeis University, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Kanan Makiya, faculty, http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/nejs/faculty/makiya.html,
accessed 27 May 2015.
Scope and Content of Collection
The papers consist of correspondence, writings, notes, interview transcripts, conference papers, serial issues, pamphlets,
leaflets, government publications, other printed matter, and audiovisual materials, relating to the history of the Middle
East, political conditions in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, and the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, including the
Iraqi opposition to it.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Video tapes
Middle East -- Politics and government
Iraq -- History
Middle East -- History
Iraq -- Politics and government