Minorities in the Middle East consists of 32 volumes of primary source documents drawn from British Government files relating to the numerous ethnic and religious minorities in the Arab World. Geographically the collection covers the Arab Middle East and is centered on the Levant but it touches on the Maghreb countries and, particularly for the sets concerning the Christians and the Kurds, it includes the (non-Arab) states of Turkey and Iran. The documentation starts in the mid-19th century and continues up to the last quarter of the 20th century as many British governmental records remain closed after this point.