There is no truer symbol of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, than its Old Bridge. The magnificent icon of Balkan Islamic architecture was destroyed during the 1992–’95 war—but not for long. Like the multicultural workforce that produced the original hundreds of years earlier, a broad team of architects, engineers and others came together immediately to plan its reconstruction. This summer marked the 20th anniversary of the bridge’s reopening.

The United Kingdom is experiencing a surge in demand for contemporary art of African origin. For artists of the African diaspora, the UK represents a new arena in which to showcase their messages through unique techniques and mediums. Interest in their work follows mounting pressure on museums, universities and other institutions to “decolonize” their curricula and collections.

Thanks to children who kicked up little pieces of red ceramics while playing on a hilltop in 1977, the town of Mértola, Portugal, has taken its place alongside much of the rest of the country as it rediscovers its Islamic past. Years of excavations have turned Mértola, which lies near the border with Spain, into a destination for both tourists and researchers, and officials have applied to make Mértola a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since its beginnings 75 years ago, AramcoWorld’s editors have viewed architecture as an essential lens on history and a crucible for cultural connections. Early stories, in particular, added human context to a discipline that often focused on the form of buildings with little regard for the people who used them. In Part 4 of our series marking our 75th anniversary in 2024, we look at the ways these stories encapsulate architecture in the evolution of world history.

In the March/April 1992 issue, writer and photographer John Feeney took AramcoWorld readers on a walk through the streets of Cairo during Ramadan.

Dozens of volunteers joined together in Houston, Texas, to construct a mudhif, a reed structure dating back 5,000 years to the Mesopotamian marshes of southern Iraq. To this day the hut serves as a town hall for Marsh Arabs to meet with their sheikh. In Houston, it also served as a meeting place—for some of the city’s 4,000 Iraqis and their fellow Houstonians to share insights into an ancient society and gain a sense of community.

For centuries iso-polyphony, a style of folk singing, has chronicled Albanian life. The songs are part of a rich tradition, vital to weddings, funerals, harvests, festivals and other social events. Indeed, a Ministry of Culture official dubs it “the autobiography of a nation,” a means for the preservation and transmission of different stories.  Recently, crowds gathered for the National Folklore Festival in the  “stone city” of Gjirokastër, demonstrating that interest in iso-polyphony remains high. The challenge is getting younger generations to engage. But some are taking up the call.

Avoiding main roads due to threats to his life, in 622 CE the Prophet Muhammad and his followers escaped north from Makkah to Madinah by riding through the rugged western Arabian Peninsula along path whose precise contours have been traced only recently. Known as the Hijrah, or migration, their eight-day journey became the beginning of the Islamic calendar, and this spring, the exhibition "Hijrah: In the Footsteps of the Prophet," at Ithra in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, explored the journey itself and its memories-as-story to expand understandings of what the Hijrah has meant both for Muslims and the rest of a the world. "This is a story that addresses universal human themes," says co-curator Idries Trevathan.

Amidst "the stillness of a world that never knew an engine... he found at last a life he longed to know and share.