The Repetek Reserve, located in the central part of the East Karakum Desert, was founded in 1927, covering 34,600 hectares of a typical sand desert. The territory represents a sand plain with large sand ridges and valley shaped depressions. The travelling sand dunes (barkhans) have only sparse vegetation. Repetek is one of the few places in the Karakum Desert where desert forest in the valley shaped depressions with black saxaul (Haloxylon aphyllum) have been preserved.

The reserve is located in the central highlands of the southern part of Jordan valley. It lies between Wadi Zarqa Ma’in, the northern border of the reserve and Wadi Shegeig the southern border of the reserve. The western border of the reserve lies on the Dead Sea Road, which is the lowest depression of the earth, 420 m below the sea level.

Located in the Anatolian Iran deserts, the Touran Biosphere Reserve represents well the vegetation of arid and semi-arid deserts. It comprises salt, gypsum, mountainous, stone and sandy habitats and covers both clay lowlands and mountains with an altitude of more than 2,200 meters above sea level. 

Omayed Biosphere Reserve is situated close to Alexandria and belongs to the biome of warm deserts and semi-deserts of the Western Mediterranean region.

Niubeiliang Nature Reserve hosts typical representative fauna and flora for Qinling Mountain, although the relatively undisturbed natural forests have recorded the highest biodiversity in the Eastern Qinling Mountain.

Xilin Gol Biosphere Reserve is situated in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, about 600 km north of Beijing.

The Ghaznavid emirate was established in Afghanistan in the late tenth century AD, out of the disintegrating rule of the Samanid emirs. Various local rulers around Afghanistan and in Baluchistan were brought under Ghaznavid control and a conglomerate empire was constructed out of tribes and sedentary states in Transoxania. The high point of Ghaznavid power was under the reign of Emir Mahmud, 998 to 1030, who expanded his territories by military conquest until it stretched from Azerbaijan in the west to the Ganges valley of northern India in the east.

The Delhi sultanate emerged in the fourteenth century after a period of political instability in India during the previous hundred years, caused by internal rivalry for power and frequent Mongol invasions. The sultanate reached its zenith both geographically and politically in the first half of the century under Muhammad b. Tughluq, who died in 1351. There were however on-going social tensions, not least between the Muslim and Hindu elements of Indian society, which continued to run high until the disintegration of the sultanate in the sixteenth century.

Medieval coinage can provide insights into not only the economy but also the politics, traditions and structures of power within a society.  From the eighth century, after the Arab conquests, coins started to be minted with Kufic Arabic inscriptions on both sides, and the various changes in the precise wording and depiction on these coins tell a fascinating story of changing political and religious values over the centuries.  The exact weight and composition of a coin also indicates the state of the economy, according to the quality of the metals used.