This project explores the photographic archive of Frank Scholten — from his time in Palestine (1921–23) amid the collapse of the Ottoman world and the early British Mandate — as part of broader efforts to understand the Middle East through archival cultures. In Prophets, Poets and Scholars, a multi-author volume on the collections of Leiden University’s Middle Eastern Library, contributions range from ancient manuscripts and Ottoman material culture to questions of Western orientalism and modernity in the twentieth century. Scholten’s work is positioned within this history of collecting, documentation, and interpretation, showing how visual materials become part of scholarly and cultural archives that shape understandings of the region.