Photo Essays

Few other bands can look back on such a diverse musical culture as the Moroccan group "Master Musicians of Joujouka" – not least due to their musical co-operations with western rock and jazz greats since the 1960s. A photo essay by Arian Fariborz

In Mauritania, northwestern Africa, slavery is a fact of modern life. It's estimated that 10-20 percent of the country's 3.5 million people are still enslaved in a system rooted in ethnic discrimination.

The civil war in Syria, which has taken the lives of thousands since 2011, is becoming increasingly brutal. Valuable cultural sites are also being destroyed in the fighting. UNESCO has now provided reports on the damage.

Raden Saleh spent many years - the "best of his life" - in Germany. In the mid-19th century, the Javan artist became one of the founders of German Orientalism.

In 2011 demonstrators gathered at Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest against the old regime signalling the start of the Arab Spring in Egypt. A few weeks later the Mubarak regime was ousted and there was hope that Egypt was on a path to change. Today, one year into Mohammed Morsi's presidency, the protests continue at Tahrir Square - against the president and the ruling Muslim Brotherhood party. By Andreas Stahl

While Muslims in Western Europe still represent a very recent phenomenon, Muslims have been settling in Eastern Europe for several centuries – in Belarus, Poland, and Lithuania, for example. Here, they are an integral part of the population. At the beginning of the 14th century a group of Tatars settled on territory encompassing the former Arch Duchy of Lithuania who were, in a name derived from the old Crimean Tatar word "Lipka" for Lithuania, called "Lipka Tatars". Today, several thousand descendants of this people live in the region. Photos: Ahmed Krausen, texts: Annett Hellwig

The innumerable symbols and slogans in graffiti, banners and leaflets that served the Arab demonstrators as a means for political protest against their autocratic rulers were at times rich in metaphor, laconic and ironic, and at other times more direct and accusatory.

Afghan soccer fans celebrate the country's first premier league football final. By Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi

Zanzibar has long been a place of religious tolerance and diversity, and this characteristic is reflected in its architecture. The East African archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania enjoys a reputation as a melting pot of religions. In the maze of narrow alleyways that make up the old quarter of Stone Town on the main island Unguja, mosques stand side by side with Hindu temples and churches among houses made of coral by Muslim Arabs some 300 years ago. Impressions and images by Arian Fariborz.