For many of us the Great Barrier Reef conjures up images of beautiful clear waters teeming with colourful fish and coral of every shape, colour and form imaginable. This title takes you on a journey along 2,300km of Australia's north-eastern coastline, through the diverse range of habitats that make up this extraordinary water world.
The Shark Bay-Ningaloo Coast extends 600km from north to south and the Outback Pathways cover more than 3,000km of Outback roads, all exhibiting a stunning diversity of organisms and geological and human history. Habitats include oceanic, bay, sea floor, coral reef, seagrass meadows, mangroves, stromatolites, limestone caves, karst landforms, underground water masses, sand dunes, clay pans, mountain ranges, arid lands and desert. The Outback Pathways are an exciting series of three self-drive road trails being the Wool Wagon Pathway, Kingsford Smith Mail Run and Miner's Pathway. This book introduces these comprehensively as well as the 'icons' of the region, and the associated innovative animal recovery programs in Shark Bay. There is a photographic guide with captions for the most commonly-seen plants and animals. 'Boxed bits' of information covering important hints or explaining in detail more complicated or special items are throughout the book.
The Qur'ān, emphasizing ritual purity and the role of Jesus as giver of God's positive law, preserves aspects of an earlier Jesus movement that most Christian groups diluted or rejected. The Didascalia Apostolorum, a late ancient church order, records a significant number of the laws promulgated in the Qur'ān, but does not fully endorse them when it comes to purity. Likewise, the Didascalia' legal narratives about the Israelites and about Jesus, as well as the legal and theological vocabulary of the Syriac (Eastern Christian Aramaic) version of the Didascalia, recurrently show kinship with the Arabic Qur'ān, amplifying the apparent affinities between the two texts. The Qur'ān, however, is not "based" on the Didascalia in any direct way; detailed comparison of the two documents illustrates the absence of textual influence in either direction. Both texts should rather be read against the background of the practices and the oral discourse shared by their respective audiences: a common legal culture.