Purpose-built mosques in the United States now number more than 1000, and they are becoming part of the American landscape. Architecturally, they fall into three groups: mosques that use the architectural vocabulary of Islamic countries, those that combine Middle Eastern and American ideas, and mosques whose designers draw entirely on the American experience.

Bordered on three sides by mountains and on the fourth by the great Taklamakan Desert, and lying equidistant between Beijing and Makkah, the Silk Road trading city of Kashgar has been a meeting ground of East and West for more than 2000 years.

To breed speed and endurance into their cavalry mounts, a handful of Polish noblemen spent years and fortunes in the Middle East, buying the finest of purebred Arabian horses. The most famous was the scholarly and somewhat obsessive Count Waclaw Rzewuski, whose lavishly illustrated, encyclopedic chronicle of his sojourns in what is today Saudi Arabia lies almost unknown in Poland's National Library.

All year, the spotlight in the US world-music market has focused brightly on young Arab crossover rockers and one veteran classical-jazz fusionist. The attacks of September 11 didn't abort the trend; rather, they are giving it depth. Charts, sales and crowds—all up—mark 2001 as a year of East-West musical mixes, now more eclectic and energetic than ever.