Visit the walled city of Harar

The world's largest car-free old city.

The first Ottoman capital under Mount Uludag: the Green Mosque, the silk bazaar and Iskender kebab.

The Kul Sharif mosque inside a Kremlin, the capital of Tatarstan where minarets and domes share a skyline.

The mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, Timur's unfinished masterpiece and Kazakhstan's holiest site.

The fourth holiest city of Islam: the Great Mosque of 670 and the carpet souks.

Faded Ottoman-Italian Red Sea port.

Rumi's tomb and the whirling dervishes, the Seljuk capital in the middle of Anatolia.

The city of saints: blue-tiled Sufi shrines and the hottest summers in the subcontinent.