Cultural and Heritage Tourism in the Middle East and North Africa

Book excerpt: This is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of cultural and heritage tourism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the many complexities that heritage sites and tourist attractions face. The MENA region has long been regarded as the cradle of Western and Arab civilisation and is the home of many of the world’s major religions. Because of this, the region is rich in heritage sites that serve as major tourist attractions and as icons of national, cultural and religious identity. However, as this book examines, heritage in the region is simultaneously highly contested and has even become a target for terrorism creating a situation that brought major challenges for heritage management and sustainable tourism development. Many of the region’s innumerable cultural sites are threatened, in some cases by overuse, in others by neglect and, in many, simply by the pressures of economic development. This book is therefore of interest not only to heritage managers and policy makers but those academics who seek to address the delicate balance between tourism development, communities and the tourists who visit such sites in a turbulent but highly significant region of the world.