The article offers a brief characterization of a unique source — personal working notes of Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov (1929–2015), member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Three parts of the notes are published and introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time. The primary source is presented with academic commentary. A concise overview is provided of Primakov’s journalistic and scholarly activities in a number of Arab countries of the Middle East during the 1960s and 1970s, and the academic value of three sections of his notes is assessed (those devoted to the situation in South Yemen in 1968, the Arab–Israeli War of 1973, and the initial period of the civil war in Lebanon (events of 1976)). A preliminary conclusion is drawn that already at an early stage of the Lebanese civil war Primakov correctly assessed the intentions and potential risks of various scenarios for the development of events for their participants, the predictions that were later confirmed by the course of historical events. The introductory article also notes objective technical difficulties associated with deciphering the original handwritten manuscript of the notes and interpreting the numerous names and abbreviations cited in the text, which leave room for further source studies research.