FirstLook: Tassili n’Ajjer National Park

At first impression, the Sahara appears to be lifeless, with golden sand dunes stretching out as far as the eye can see. Yet it is one of the places where I have felt closest to the past of humanity.

We were fortunate during this part of a journey in southeast Algeria to have a helicopter made available by the Algerian army for some 12 hours over Tassili n’Ajjer National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of outstanding scenic, historical and geological interest. It has one of the largest and best-preserved groupings of prehistoric cave art in the world, more than 15,000 drawings and engravings that record climatic changes, animal migrations and the evolution of human life on the edge of the Sahara from 8,000 to about 1,500 years ago. It is also, in parts, an island of life that harbors the endemic Saharan cypress, one of the rarest trees in the world.

From on high, it was possible to see how this vast plateau ends abruptly in what resembles a cliff face that in turn is slowly being eaten away by erosion. As compacted sand disintegrates, it adds to the desert. In other areas, deep ravines have been cut through the plateau by rivers that flowed thousands of years ago.

—Sebastião Salgado

The Great Migration of the Bani Hilal

Written by Caroline Stone // Illustrated by Ivy Johnson

In the 10th century, herders fled drought in Arabia, but the sultan of Egypt used them against his rivals. Their story went viral—oral-folklore style—as Sirat Bani Hilal, or the Romance of the People of the Crescent Moon.

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Creatives

Habibi Funk’s Musical Revivals

Written by Mariam Shahin

Across North Africa a few back-street stores still sell records pressed in the ’70s and ’80s. There Jannis Stürtz has been digging for local classics to rerelease on his digital-and-vinyl label, Habibi Funk, bringing them to global audiences and illuminating some the era’s most vibrantly hybrid music scenes.

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The Alhambras of Latin America

Written by Raphael López Guzmán, Rodrigo Gutiérrez Viñuales, et al.
Photographs courtesy of Raphael López Guzmán

From the 1860s to the 1930s, architects throughout South America and the Caribbean took inspirations from the Islamic design heritage of southern Spain, where the most inspiring building of all proved to be the Alhambra palace.

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