Four thousand years ago she was a princess and high priestess in the Sumerian city of Ur in modern-day Iraq. She was also a poet whose verses scribes wrote down in cuneiform on clay tablets and then did something new: They attributed the work to her by name—and now Enheduanna is more famous than ever.

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.

Her hands have known tennis rackets since age 3 and now, 24 years later, Ons Jabeur of Tunisia is the first Arab ranked in the world's top 10. Each new title is also a break point in her longer game to inspire a new generation of young women.

Eggplants are a heavenly ingredient, a mainstay of the healthy Mediterranean diet and a staple of Middle Eastern cuisine.

In part two of this series, we construct a medallion that combines a geometric rosette with an eight-point biomorphic, or arabesque, design. With tracing paper, get ready to learn a 700-year-old patternmaking hack.

Amara bin Thuqub was a teenager in 1952 when he guided British explorer Wilfred Thesiger through the marshes of southern Iraq. Now 91, he is full of memories.

It was the winter of my grandfather Dhanji’s 89th birthday, and we gathered at Mani Villa. We spent the afternoon sunbathing, eating and listening to stories of Dhanji’s impassioned life in the sprawling garden of this beautiful half an acre of property: Mani Villa, home of our beloved grandparents, was a British row house in Jhansi, in north-central India, that was named after my late grandmother, Mani.