Museum of Islamic Art

The collection was gathered from the 1880s onward out of Cairo's own decaying monuments and from across the Islamic world, and it runs to something over a hundred thousand objects covering Spain to India and the seventh century to the nineteenth. Its particular strengths are Mamluk metalwork and enamelled glass, carved wooden mihrabs and doors lifted from Cairene buildings, Persian and Ottoman ceramics, carpets, and a rare surviving group of early scientific and medical instruments. The museum closed for restoration in 2014 and reopened in 2017 with a redesigned layout and repaired glass, and the conservation work itself is now part of what it explains.

History

Islamic art was recognised in Cairo later than Pharaonic art: Khedive Ismail approved a museum in the courtyard of the Mosque of Baibars, but it was set up only in 1880, when Khedive Tawfiq ordered the Ministry of Endowments to create it. In 1881 the Austrian scholar Julius Franz proposed the ruined mosque of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim as its provisional home, where a gallery opened with 111 architectural pieces from other monuments, and a Committee of Arab Antiquities was formed to run it; by 1884 a two-storey building in the courtyard held 900 objects. Max Herz, who took over in 1887, named it the Gallery of Arab Antiquities, and with 1,641 objects by 1895 it needed a larger home, whose foundations were laid in 1899 at Bab al-Khalq. The present neo-Mamluk building, designed by Alfonso Manescalo, was completed in 1902 with the National Library on its upper floor. The museum shut for renovation in 2003 and reopened in August 2010, after work costing nearly US$10 million; it holds more than 100,000 objects (Wikipedia, Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo).

What's there

• Mamluk enamelled glass - mosque lamps in cobalt and gold.
• Carved wooden mihrabs - salvaged from Cairo buildings that no longer stand.
• Scientific instruments - astrolabes and surgical tools from the medieval centuries.
• The restoration story - objects conserved and redisplayed for the 2017 reopening.

When to go

October to April. The museum is quiet almost always, which is one of its pleasures. Mornings are best for the glass galleries, which depend on daylight. Two to three hours, longer if the metalwork holds you.

Practical notes

It is off the usual circuit and gets far fewer visitors than it deserves, which also means less staffing and some galleries occasionally closed. Labelling is uneven in English. The neighbourhood outside is a busy traffic junction with no easy walking connection to Khan el-Khalili.

Nearby

Bab Zuweila is a short walk east; the National Library shares the building.

Key facts