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.

Azerbaijan has sat at a crossroads of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Western Asia for centuries as a Silk Road hub and a gateway that empires routinely fought to control. That intersection also has manifested itself in the nation’s food—a complex and enticing stew of Turkic, Persian, Eastern European and other regional influences. This food diary explores the unique cuisines of each region.

Zainab Bahrani of Columbia University photographs ancient statues and reliefs carved into the rocks of remote Iraq to create a database for conservators and scholars. The effort is “decentering Europe from histories of art and histories of archaeology.”

After decades of decline under communist rule, food enthusiasts—including brother chef and baker Bledar and Nikolin Kola—are pioneering the return of the country’s traditional dishes. Chefs and other culinary aficionados are drawing on Albania’s 500-plus years of culinary heritage to reinterpret the foods of their ancestors. Their efforts are re-establishing traditions that were feared lost.

With origins from Europe’s Thirty Years’ War, the Gotha Research Library features more than 1 million objects and manuscripts—including 800 years of Islamicate scholarship and the collection of 19th-century German physician Ulrich Jasper Seetzen.

Using as its base either calico or other stiff cotton cloth, the kummah is a link to the region's past as well as a personal statement for the present.

Reaching out to new generations and global audiences, musicians in India's northwest state of Rajasthan draw on centuries of traditions that, to an untrained ear, may sound like Indian classical music. But what sets them apart are the regional stories they tell and the tone and power of the singers.

With more than 150 published works, Eland Publishing reflects a worldly eclecticism, from reprints and re-releases of biographies to letters and even comic novels. The London based publishing house has for 40 years brought new life to travel writing.

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.