As the Mediterranean Sea's largest and most central island, Sicily has lured invaders, traders and travelers since antiquity, and each one has left its layers of legacy. From the ninth to the 12th century, Arabs and Normans dominated the island. Along its western coast, in its capital Palermo, the Arab-Norman royal court of King Roger I rose to become one of the most influential seats of power of its time. Since 2015 the UN has recognized a set of nine buildings whose syntheses of Byzantine, Arab and Norman designs epitomize the best of a time whose multiculturalism remains a foundation for Palermo today.

Strength, speed and a lustrous coat made the Karabakh horse a symbol of status, power and beauty in its native Azerbaijan, and beyond. Wars over the past century nearly eliminated them, but now breeders are steadily restoring their numbers.

I took this photo during a rainy day in November 2018 from the window of my family home in Fayoum, Egypt, located about 100 kilometers southwest of the capital. It hardly rains but a few times in the year in most parts of Egypt, and when it does, it is always something special, bringing Joy and happiness particularly for the local children.

Little explored for tourism and not a popular destination even among locals, this section of the Tien Shan mountains, some 360 kilometers east of Bishkek, Kyrgystan’s capital, lies near the border with China.

Walk into any mosque and at its front you are likely to see a stepped pulpit: the minbar. In Egypt, under the patronage of the Mamluk sultans of the 13th to 15th century, minbars became masterpieces of woodworking—most without nails or glue. Today nearly four dozen Mamluk minbars stand as a priceless but vulnerable heritage: A recent rash of thefts led to the Rescuing the Mamluk Minbars of Cairo Project, which offers protection, promotion and new opportunities for young artisans.

Working with civic reality as an architect and personal imagination as a novelist, Alaa Halifi has, at age 23, already won awards in both fields. His subject: his city, Casablanca.

Widely regarded as the most fragrant of roses, the Damascus rose bloomed first in Central Asia and came to the Levant and Anatolia via the Silk Roads. Today it is cultivated most intensively in Bulgaria’s Rose Valley, where it thrives as both export and heritage.

As a young college student in the 1980s, George Steinmetz hitchhiked in the desert lands of north-central Algeria along the Sahara. In 2009 he revisited the region, now as a world-renowned photojournalist working on a book about the world’s extreme deserts and the human adaptations and settlements in them.

As long as a minibus and as thin as a canoe, curved like a banana and painted a rainbow of hues, the handbuilt wooden pirogue remains the watercraft of choice among half a million people who support the artisanal fishing industry along the coast of Senegal in West Africa. Pirogues were originally designed narrow for easier paddling, and their long, curved keels help them glide into surf and swell, where every morning hundreds of crews cast nets with the hopes of a good day's catch.