This book follows the journey of Druze individuals who can remember their former lives and go on search for their previous families. For the Druze, an ethno-religious minority in the Middle East split between different nation-states, such cases and related discourses embody ambivalent bridges between personal, familial, and ethnic identities. The contributions in this book, presented by Eleonore Armanet, Nour Farra Haddad, Gebhard Fartacek, Tobias Lang, Lorenz Nigst, and Salma Samaha, draw on ethnographic inquiries and illuminate the broad field of Druze conceptions of rebirth and group coherence against the backdrop of everyday challenges and recent conflicts in the Middle East and beyond.

Hidden deep in the most remote corners of Syria there are a number of extraordinary sites of particular significance. These Syrian places of pilgrimage are visited by members of a wide variety of religious communities and still today exert a huge attraction on the local population. Always located at places with extraordinary natural formations, these shrines are associated with ancient myths and legends, and are regarded amongst the pilgrims as the property of various Islamic and Christian saints. The present book presents 20 of these Syrian places of pilgrimage and the myths and legends associated with them. Numerous illustrations in colour present an impression of the caves, crevices, mountain peaks, strange trees or holy springs at which the shrines are located. In the second part of the book, the author addresses the question of why it is precisely these places that are regarded as holy, and he examines the importance that they have in modern everyday life of the Syrians.