Khalili Collection of Islamic Art

The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art
Folio from an exemplar of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh made for Tahmasp I; Tabriz, Iran, 1520–1550
Curators	Sir Nasser D. Khalili (founder / chair of the editorial board) Nahla Nassar (curator and registrar) Mehreen Chida-Razvi (deputy curator and publications) J. M. Rogers (honorary curator)[1][2]
Size (no. of items)	28,000[1]
Website	khalilicollections.org/islamic-arts/

The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art includes 28,000 objects documenting Islamic art over a period of almost 1400 years, from 700 AD to the end of the twentieth century. It is the largest of the Khalili Collections: eight collections assembled, conserved, published and exhibited by the British-Iranian scholar, collector and philanthropist Nasser David Khalili, each of which is considered among the most important in its field.^[3] Khalili's collection is one of the most comprehensive Islamic art collections in the world^[4][5][6] and the largest in private hands.^[7][8][9]

In addition to copies of the Quran, and rare and illustrated manuscripts, the collection includes album and miniature paintings, lacquer, ceramics, glass and rock crystal, metalwork, arms and armour, jewellery, carpets and textiles, over 15,000 coins, and architectural elements. The collection includes folios from manuscripts with Persian miniatures, including the Great Mongol Shahnameh, the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, and the oldest manuscript of world history the Jamiʿ al-tawarikh. Among its collections of arms and armour is a 13th-century gold saddle from the time of Genghis Khan.

The ceramic collection, numbering around 2,000 items, has been described as particularly strong in blue and white pottery of the Timurid era and also pottery of pre-Mongol Bamiyan. The jewellery collection includes more than 600 rings. Around 200 objects relate to medieval Islamic science and medicine, including astronomical instruments for orienting towards Mecca, tools, scales, weights, and "magic bowls" intended for medical use. Among the scientific instruments are a celestial globe made in 1285–6 and a 17th-century astrolabe commissioned by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan.

Exhibitions drawing exclusively from the collection have been held at the

The Wall Street Journal has described it as the greatest collection of Islamic Art in existence.^[4] According to Edward Gibbs, Chairman of Middle East and India at Sotheby's, it is the best such collection in private hands.^[5]

Khalili Collections

Based in the UK and originally from Iran, Nasser David Khalili has assembled eight distinct art collections, each considered among the most important in its field.^[3] In total, they include 35,000 objects.^[11] He began collecting Islamic art in 1970.^[12] Private collections usually focus on either collecting complete series of objects or on selecting those of the highest aesthetic quality; Khalili's collection combines both traditions.^[6] The collection of Islamic art is one of two focused on Islam, along with the Khalili Collection of Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage. Islamic enamels also appear in the Khalili Collection of Enamels of the World.^[13] While collecting Islamic art, Khalili encountered damascening, in which gold and silver decoration is pressed into an iron surface; this led him to acquire a separate collection of Spanish damascened metalwork.^[14]

In addition to collecting, conserving, publishing and exhibiting the collection, Khalili has funded the creation of a research centre in Islamic art at the

The collection of complete Qurans and individual folios includes 98 from before 1000 AD,^[20] 56 from 1000 to 1400,^[21] 60 from 1400 to 1600,^[22] and more than 150 from after 1600.^[23] It was described by the historian Robert Irwin as "one of the largest and most representative collections of Quranic manuscripts in the world"^[24] and is the largest private collection.^[25] Among the earliest objects in the collection are some complete examples with their original bindings.^[20] The collection has an individual folio from the Codex Parisino-petropolitanus, one of the very oldest surviving Quran manuscripts.^[26] There are two folios from the 10th-century Blue Quran, the only surviving Quran on indigo-dyed vellum.^[27][28] A section of a 13th-century Quran bears the signature of calligrapher Yaqut al-Musta'simi, regarded as one of the greats of classical Quranic calligraphy.^[29] An exceptionally large single-volume Quran dated to 1552 AD was in the Mughal imperial library during the reigns of Aurangzeb and Shah 'Alam, bearing their seals. It is thought to have been commissioned by Shah Tahmasp.^[30] An 18th-century single-volume Quran, the work of calligrapher Mahmud Celaleddin Efendi, was previously owned by Ottoman princess Nazime Sultan.^[31]

Illustrated manuscripts and miniature paintings

The illustrated manuscripts in the collection include complete copies and detached folios from Iran, India and Turkey. There are several complete exemplars or folios of the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), the national epic poem of Iran, whose text and illustrations combine historical and mythical material.^[32] These include ten illustrated folios from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp (circa 1520),^[33] four from the late 16th century Eckstein Shahnameh,^[34] and one of 57 surviving folios of the Great Mongol Shahnameh (circa 1330s).^[35]

There are several exemplars of the

Other manuscripts include a lavishly illuminated exemplar of part one of Al-Shifa bi Ta'rif Huquq al-Mustafa (a detailed commentary on the life and character of Muhammed) from the 17th-century Moroccan royal court.^[42] A manuscript of Tuhfah al-Saʿdiyyah, a commentary on Ibn Sina's medical text The Canon of Medicine, dates from the 14th century.^[43] A 14th-century diwan of the poet Al-Mutanabbi is illuminated to the highest standards of that period.^[43]

Calligraphy

The 174 items of calligraphy

The 1,000 metalwork objects in the collection cover the period from the 6th century to the early 20th century. They come from across the Islamic world, especially Iran, the Jazira (in present-day Syria and Iraq), and 17th- and 18th-century India.^[48] The objects include bowls, incense burners, and ewers.^[49] Brass and bronze are common materials.^[50] Metalworkers in 12th- and 13th-century Iran made vessels and incense burners in the shape of birds and animals, and the collection includes several examples.^[51] The objects' decorations range from arabesque patterns to inscriptions and to figurative art.^[50]

Although it is rare in Islamic metalwork for artists to sign or date their pieces, several objects in the collection have signed names or dates.

The jewellery in the collection numbers almost 600 personal adornments,[54] plus more than 600 rings^[55] and 200 luxury items from the royal workshops of the Mughal Empire.^[56] Together this is the most comprehensive published collection of Islamic jewellery.^[54] The adornments include almost every kind—from bracelets and amulets to buttons and brooches—from the 7th century onward. They are decorated with gems, enamel, or niello.^[54] The collection's Fatimid objects have the "rope and grain" filigree style characteristic of Egypt or Syria.^[54] The Mughal objects include a ruby engraved with the names of emperors Shah Jahan and Jahangir.^[56] A box from 17th-century Mughal India consists of 103 engraved emeralds in a gold frame, topped by a faceted diamond.^[57] Most of the enamelled gold objects made for the Mughal court are now in the Iranian crown jewels or in the Hermitage Museum in Russia; an exception is an octagonal box in the Khalili collection that dates from around 1700.^[58] A hookah bowl from 18th-century Mewar in India is made of gold with colourful enamel decoration.^[59] A gold badge, collar and star, constituting the Order of the Lion and the Sun, is decorated with enamels and precious stones. It was presented by Fath-Ali Shah Qajar of Iran to the British diplomat John Macdonald Kinneir.^[60]

Very few Islamic rings had been documented before Khalili published his collection of 618.^[55] Whereas some rings are purely decorative, many function as signet rings while others have religious inscriptions intended to give protection to the wearer.^[61][62] Art historian Marian Wenzel used the collection as the basis for a typology of Islamic rings.^[55]

• 
  Emerald-set box, Mughal India, c. 1635
• 
  Stirrup ring, Fatimid Egypt or Syria, 11th–12th century
• 
  Button, southern Spain, 14th–15th century

Arms and armour

The collection's arms and armour range from the 7th century to the 19th. There are belt fittings that express military rank,^[63] and multiple chanfrons (masks for protecting horse's faces).^[64] Two sets of horse trappings from the 13th and 14th centuries include a complete gold saddle.^[65][64] A 15th-century iron and steel war mask is decorated with engravings.^[66] Describing the arms and armour catalogue, James W. Allan, Professor of Eastern Art at the University of Oxford, wrote "The range of pieces [...] is quite extraordinary: a 1.8 m long seventeenth-century Indian cannon, Turkish and Persian daggers with astonishingly beautiful enamelled handles and scabbards, gold fittings for a 10th-century Chinese saddle, a Moroccan horse-shoe etc."^[67]

Seals and talismans

The seals and talismans number more than 3,500, forming the largest such collection in the world. Many of these are set in rings or pendants or mounted on bases. The materials include metals, precious or semi-precious stones, and clay.

The more than 250 textiles include embroideries, carpets, and costumes from the 6th to the 19th centuries.^[71] The carpets come from royal workshops across the Islamic world.^[71] Other textiles include Ottoman and Safavid gold brocades and woven silks from Mughal-era and Sultanate India. The costumes include shawls from Kashmir, talismanic shirts, and ikat coats.^[71] The 16th-century Ottoman court used European textiles as robes of honour, later creating its own looms to control production.^[72] Some of the collection's textiles have explicitly religious purposes: a North African silk panel repeats the name of Allah hundreds of times and a carpet was used as a mihrab (prayer niche).^[73] The Dhulfaqar, a double-bladed sword said to have been taken in the battle of Badr, is a motif appearing on two Ottoman banners.^[74]

Lacquer

The

Ceramic styles popular in the Islamic world include lustreware (with a thin metallic film), sgraffiato (in which the design is etched into the slip), and underglaze pottery.^[79] Khalili's ceramic collection, numbering nearly 2,000 items, has been described as particularly strong in pottery of the Timurid era and also that of pre-Mongol Bamiyan.^[80] As well as bowls, plates, and vases, the ceramics include figurines as well as decorative tiles of the sort used in religious and secular buildings.^[79] It includes the earliest known dated ceramic from Iran: a signed fritware bottle dated to 1139–40.^[81] Other unique items include a bowl with a depiction of a Buraq, a four-legged creature that is said to have borne Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and then to heaven.^[81][82] Laqabi-wares are deeply carved ceramics usually depicting animals or birds; the collection has a Syrian example from around 1200 AD.^[83] The wares from 15th-century Iran and central Asia illustrate the connections between Chinese and Islamic pottery. Other collections have a scant coverage of this period.^[84]

Glass

More than 300 objects in the collection illustrate the history of Islamic glass, going back to the

The collection's 15,000 gold, silver, and copper coins come from the entire Islamic world and span the time period from 700 to 2000 AD. For many series of coin, the Khalili collection is more numerous and diverse than any other.^[88] The coins include a dozen from the first issue of North African Arab-Latin gold coins, from 704 and 705 AD, as well as early gold dinars.^[88] Later holdings include a unique gold dinar from the reign of the Ilkhanid Emperor Musa Khan and others, with signs of the zodiac, from the reign of Mughal Emperor Jahangir.^[89] A gold dinar from 697 AD is an example of the earliest known issue with only Arabic inscriptions.^[90]

Scientific instruments

Throughout the history of Islam, its rituals have made use of scientific procedures to

The collection's architectural elements and tombstones bear dates from the 13th century to the 19th. They include ceramic tiles from Ilkhanid Iran, 15th-century Spain, and 18th–19th century Multan.^[98] The tombstones are of varying origins and materials, including a carved and calligraphed stele, nearly two metres (6 ft 7 in) high, from Northern India.^[98] A Tunisian marble tombstone from 1044, with Kufic inscriptions, stands at over a metre high.^[98] A carved wooden cenotaph, dated 1496–7 AD, from a shrine in the Caspian area of Iran bears the craftsman's signature and the names of donors.^[98] Royal palaces were sometimes decorated with stone sculpture; the collection has heads from two examples; an 8th- or 9th-century limestone head shows the influence of Buddhist depictions of Bodhisattvas.^[99] The collection also includes jali (carved sandstone window grilles) and a group of marble carvings from Ghazni in modern-day Afghanistan.^[98]

Gallery

• 
  Lustreware dish decorated with Kufic script, probably Egypt, 8th or 9th century
• 
  Crowned head, Central Asia, 8th or 9th century
• 
  Casket with the remains of a combination Lock, Jazira, early 13th century
• 
  Iron and steel war mask, Anatolia or Western Iran, late 15th century
• 
  Carpet with star medallions, Uşak, Turkey, late 15th or early 16th century
• 
  Dagger and sheath with a steel blade damascened with gold, Ottoman Turkey, 1540–50
• 
  Seal of Tahmasp I cut into a flawless rock crystal, 1555–6
• 
  Poem in praise of the prophet Muhammad, calligraphed and signed by Mahmud II, early 19th century

Activities

Exhibitions

This collection was the basis in 2008 for the first comprehensive exhibition of Islamic art to be staged in the Middle East, at the Emirates Palace in

Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art from the Khalili Collection

• July–Sep 1995 Musee Rath, Geneva, Switzerland
• July–Oct 1996 Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK
• Dec 1996 – June 1997 Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
• Feb–Apr 2000 Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, USA

Marvels of the East: Indian Paintings of the Mughal Period from the Khalili Collection

• May–July 2000, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel

Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art from the Khalili Collection

• July–Oct 2000 Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Oct 2000 – Jan 2001 Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
• Jan–Apr 2001 Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, USA
• Aug–Oct 2001 Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA
• Oct 2001 – Jan 2002 Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA
• Feb–Apr 2002 Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
• May–July 2002 North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
• Aug 2002 – Jan 2003 Museum of Art, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA

Ornements de la Perse: Islamic Patterns in 19th Century Europe

• Oct–Dec 2002 Leighton House Museum, London, UK

Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art from the Khalili Collection

• Feb–Apr 2003 Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
• May–Aug 2003 Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
• Aug–Nov 2003 Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, Georgia, USA
• Nov 2003 – Feb 2004 Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

The Arts of Islam: Treasures from the Nasser D. Khalili Collection

• June–Sep 2007 Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia^[102]
• Jan–May 2008 Gallery One,
  Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, UAE^{[103][28][104]}
• Oct 2009 – Mar 2010
  Institut du monde arabe
  , Paris, France

• Dec 2010 – Apr 2011 Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Loans to museums and galleries

Earthly Beauty, Heavenly Art: The Art of Islam, an exhibition of objects from the Islamic collection and the State Hermitage Museum was seen at:^[10]

• Nieuwe Kerk
  , Amsterdam, Dec 1999 – Apr 2000
• State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, 2000 – Sep 2001
• Hermitage Rooms, Somerset House, London (as Heaven on Earth: Art From Islamic Lands – Selected objects from the Khalili Collection and The State Hermitage Museum), March–August 2004

Publications

Khalili employs a production staff and has commissioned more than 30 academic experts to document the collection in a 30-volume series of books, whose publication he has subsidised.^[6][105] Each volume includes scholarly research on the collection's objects, as well as essays about Islamic art for a general audience.^[6] The General Editor is Julian Raby, formerly a lecturer at the University of Oxford and Director at the Freer Gallery of Art. Other contributors include Sheila Blair, Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at the Boston College; François Déroche of the Collège de France; Geoffrey Khan of the University of Cambridge; and J. M. Rogers of SOAS, University of London.^[1] Khalili, who has a PhD in Islamic lacquers from SOAS,^[5] is a co-author of the volume on the collection's lacquers.^[106] A review said that each volume "has been produced to a standard that is seldom seen in this small corner of the art world [...] backed up by solid scholarship from respected authorities".^[107] Reviewing the first group of volumes, Robert Irwin described the production as "of a very high standard indeed. The catalogues are in their own way works of art."^[24]

• ISBN 9781874780519
  .
• James, David (1992). Volume II – The Master Scribes: Qur'ans of the 10th to 14th centuries AD. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780526
  .
• James, David (1992). Volume III – After Timur: Qur'ans of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9780197276020
  .
• Bayani, Manijeh; Contadini, Anna; Stanley, Tim (1999). Volume IV, Part I – The Decorated Word: Qur'ans of the 17th to 19th centuries. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9780197276037
  .
• Bayani, Manijeh; Contadini, Anna; Stanley, Tim (2009). Volume IV, Part II – The Decorated Word: Qur'ans of the 17th to 19th centuries. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780540
  .
• Safwat, Nabil F. (1996). Volume V – The Art of the Pen: Calligraphy of the 14th to 20th Centuries. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9780197276044
  .
• ISBN 9781874780564
  .
• Freeman, Deborah (1993). Volume VII – Learning, Piety and Poetry. Manuscripts from the Islamic world. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780847
  .
• Leach, Linda York (1998). Volume VIII – Paintings from India. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9780197276242
  .
• ISBN 9780197276075
  .
• Grube, Ernst J. (2007). Volume X – A Rival to China. Later Islamic pottery. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780878
  .
• Spink, Michael (31 December 2009). Volume XI – Brasses, Bronze & Silver of the Islamic Lands, Part I and II. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780885
  .
• Maddison, Francis (1997). Volume XII – Science, Tools & Magic: Body and Spirit, Mapping the Universe, Part I and Mundane Bodies, Part II. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9780197276105
  .
• Bayani, Manijeh (1997). Volume XIII – Seals and Talismans. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780779
  .
• Cohen, Steven (2011). Volume XIV – Textiles, Carpets and Costumes, Part I and II. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780786
  .
• Goldstein, Sidney M. (2005). Volume XV – Glass: From Sasanian antecedents to European imitations. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780502
  .
• ISBN 9780197276143
  .
• Spink, Michael;
  ISBN 9781874780861
  .
• Carvalho, Pedro Moura (2010). Volume XVIII – Gems and Jewels of Mughal India. Jewelled and enamelled objects from the 16th to 20th centuries. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780724
  .
• Vardanyan, Aram R. (28 April 2006). Volume XIX – Dinars and Dirhams. Coins of the Islamic lands. The early period, Part I. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780823
  .
• Vardanyan, Aram R. (28 April 2006). Volume XX – Dinars and Dirhams. Coins of the Islamic lands. The later period, Part II. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780830
  .
• Alexander, David (1992). Volume XXI – The Arts of War: Arms and Armour of the 7th to 19th centuries. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780618
  .
• Khalili, Nasser D.; Robinson, B. W.; Stanley, Tim (1996). Volume XXII – Lacquer of the Islamic Lands, Part I. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780625
  .
• Khalili, Nasser D.; Robinson, B. W.; Stanley, Tim (1997). Volume XXII – Lacquer of the Islamic Lands, Part II. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780632
  .
• Vernoit, Stephen (1997). Volume XXIII – Occidentalism. Islamic Art in the 19th Century. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9780197276204
  .
• ISBN 9781874780854
  .
• Sims, Eleanor; Bayani, Manijeh; Stanley, Tim (28 February 2006). Volume XXV, Part I – The Tale and the Image. Illustrated manuscripts and album paintings from Iran and Turkey (Part One). The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780809
  .
• Rogers, J. M.; Bayani, Manijeh (28 April 2006). Volume XXV, Part II – The Tale and the Image. Illustrated manuscripts and album paintings from Iran and Turkey (Part Two). The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780816
  .
• ISBN 9781874780656
  .

The monographs in the Studies in the Khalili Collection series present research about objects in the Islamic Art collection:

• ISBN 9781874780663
  .
• ISBN 9781874780670
  .
• ISBN 9781874780922
  .
• Sims-Williams, Nicholas (2007). Volume III – (Part Two) Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan, Letters and Buddhist Texts. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780908
  .
• Sims-Williams, Nicholas (2012). Volume III – (Part Three) Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan, Plates. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780915
  .
• Goodwin, Tony (2005). Volume IV – Arab-Byzantine Coinage. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780755
  .
• Khan, Geoffrey (2007). Volume V – Arabic Documents from Early Islamic Khurasan. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780717
  .
• Chaldecott, Nada (2020). Volume VI – Turcoman Jewellery. The Nour Foundation.
  ISBN 9781874780939
  .

For the 2023 video game Assassin's Creed Mirage, the Khalili Collections were one of four partner institutions providing images for the game's educational database. An astrolabe and a statuette of a camel and rider from the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art were among the objects used to illustrate the game's setting of 9th century Baghdad.^[108][109] Images from the collection are also being shared on Wikipedia and related platforms^[110] as well as on Google Arts & Culture.^[111]

Reception

The

• Early Quranic manuscripts

References

Sources

•  This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. Text taken from The Khalili Collections​, Khalili Foundation, .
• OCLC 61177501
  .
• OCLC 455121277
  .

Further reading

• Khalili, David (2023). The Art of Peace: Eight collections, one vision. London: Penguin Random House. pp. 76–83, 149–183.
  ISBN 978-1-52991-818-2
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Khalili Collection of Islamic Art.

• Official site
• Video: walk-through of exhibition "The Arts of Islam", Abu Dhabi