Beyond the profiles
Stories
Explore the rich cultures, histories, and lived experiences of minority communities across the Middle East through stories that go beyond the headlines.
Yazidis in Lalish
Four thousand years of sanctuary, seventy-four persecutions, and one barefoot afternoon among the Yazidis of northern Iraq.
Assyrians in Alqosh
Four soldiers, three bunk beds, a wall of Kalashnikovs — and the 1,400-year-old monastery they guard. A night among the Assyrians who stayed.
Neo-Aramaic
From imperial lingua franca to four endangered dialects: how the language of Jesus survived everything except the twentieth century.
The Circassian exile
How an empire's final campaign emptied the Caucasus — and why the road from the Black Sea beaches ends at the founding of Amman.
Nowruz
Kurds, Iranians, Zoroastrians, Baha'is, Alevis: how one equinox festival became the region's most shared — and most contested — day.
Mandaean Silver
A faith that forbids weapons made its men masters of the bench instead — and the exodus that nearly ended both the people and their silver.
Tifinagh
Circles, crosses and dots older than the Latin alphabet — how the Amazigh dug their script out of the rock and put it back on the schoolroom wall.