A musical wave has been swelling for a decade in the German capital, which one local analyst now calls “the city of choice for a new generation of cultural talent from the Middle East and North Africa”—part of the greater demographic shift that has made people of Arab backgrounds Berlin’s fourth-largest ethnic-identity group. In street jams, clubs, studios, concert halls and online, new mixes of musicians are blending notes and ideas into genre-bending, transcultural fusions. “What we as artists in Berlin can do is tear down the borders in our head and invite others to do the same,” says musician Jamila Al-Yousef.

Expo 2020 Dubai closed in March after showcasing buildings and displays designed to maximize sustainability, one of the Expo’s top themes. Creative systems for power generation, water conservation and city planning all addressed global challenges.

Nearly all modern maps of Jerusalem’s Old City show it divided into four quarters labeled Christian, Muslim, Armenian and Jewish. But the idea that gave rise to these labels dates back only to the mid-19th century and surveys of the city by colonial mapmakers—and specifically to the pen of a young British chaplain.

International travel in 2020 went from a luxury enjoyed by some to an impossibility endured by all. British travel writer and journalist Matthew Teller witnessed his livelihood become grounded more abruptly than most.

Writer Anissa M. Bouziane’s heritage in Morocco reflects in her creative output, from her experiences in film to her 2019 novel, Dune Song.

Sometime in the 12th century, at the center of a frequently contested region in what is now southwestern Spain, atop sheer cliffs that fall to the river below, hydraulic engineers working for the Almohad rulers of the taifa of Ronda began directing men wielding picks to carve, stroke by stroke, a secret staircase down through the rock to the river: It was a water mine, for use in case of siege, and it worked until May 13, 1485, when it was breached by the army of the Marquis of Cádiz. Cut off from water, the  town surrendered. The victory bolstered the Spanish campaign against the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, and in 1492, Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula was over. Now historians are taking a closer look—and finding more questions.

Originally designed to allow a gaze out to the street while blocking both harsh sunlight and prying eyes, the wooden "box balconies" that proliferated after the founding of Lima in 1535 drew from Spain's Islamic heritage. They are now beloved cultural emblems of the Peruvian capital that, if they could share stories, could tell many a tale.

Moved to memorialize the mostly anonymous people who continue to perish while crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to Europe, Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi has opened both an exhibition and a working cemetery. 

In 622 CE the Prophet Muhammad and his first followers rode some 450 kilometers from Makkah to Madinah along a segment of the caravan route that had long linked the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa and the Levant. In 2005 the discovery of an isolated monolith led to a 15-year archeological quest that has identified 55 similar and regularly spaced stones that appear to predate the ninth century CE. The discoveries are now helping locate with precision historic sites, thanks to the measure of distance between the milestones: 1,609 meters, give or take a few. Whether intact or broken; standing, fallen or partially buried, each stone is now being studied, and together they tell stories of history, faith and science.