In a Christian village beneath the majestic Kurdish mountain ridge in Iraq, a crumbling shrine to the prophet Nahum endures. On Aden’s volcanic crater in Ye­m­en, a ran­sacked Jewish ceme­tery still exists. Though it is not easy to ac­­­cess these sites in person, vi­­sitors to Diarna.org, a heritage mapping site, can zoom in on them using Google Earth. Diar­na, meaning “Our Homes” in Judeo-Arabic, ex­­plores Jewish history in the Middle East and North Africa with satellite imagery, archi­val and con­temporary pho­tog­raphy, scholarship and oral history.

Since its founding in 2008, Diarna has sent 17 expeditions to the region and recruited individuals on the ground—mostly young Mus­lims—to document 750 sites, many in danger from ISIS, other warring factions or simple de­­cay and neglect. About 100 are avail­able on the website, along with videos and inter­views.

“We are in a race against time,” says Jason Guberman-Pfeffer, project director and ex­­ecutive director of the American Sephardi Federation, Diarna’s major partner. “Jewish identity is rooted in the Middle East. This is where we’re from; it’s our heritage.”