Works from the world's largest private collection of Islamic art have gone on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Silver-gilt filigree cabinet from Goa, probably dating from the 17th century, is part of the collection of Nasser David Khalili.
(Art Gallery of New South Wales)

The exhibit, The Arts of Islam, ranges from rare Qur'ans, to prayer rugs and secular objects such as colourful ceramics and lustre-painted glass.

The collector is an Iranian Jewish property developer, Nasser David Khalili, who now lives in London.

Khalili has lent 350 objects from a collection of more than 20,000 to the exhibit, which he hopes will improve understanding of Muslim culture.

"If you open any design book of any other culture in the West you cannot escape seeing something Islamic and this is something that the world is not aware of," Khalili said in an interview with CBC News.

"This exhibition is a step toward that direction to tell the world that there is tremendous amount of influence of Islamic culture into the culture of the West."

Khalili is a longtime admirer of Islamic culture, and founded a chair of Islamic art at University of London and research fellowship of Islam Art at Oxford University.

His collection comes from a range of time periods and many different countries.

Early 18th-century hookah base and mouthpiece from India from the Arts of Islam exhibit, which features works from around the world.
(Art Gallery of New South Wales)

There is a segment of a Chinese Qur'an, dating from 1401, rare because China has largely suppressed its religious heritage. Another Qur'an is one of the few written by a woman.

"Almost every single Qur'an written in the history of Islam is written by a man. But what you see here is written by the daughter of Aurangzeb, who ruled India for 50 years," he said of the beautiful document.

Aurangzeb's father is known for building another beautiful object, the Taj Mahal.

Many of the objects show the overlapping religious heritage of Muslims, Jews and Christians, he said. For example, a group of 15th-century miniatures features Moses, a Madonna and child, and the Prophet Muhammad.

"So in one place you see three religions portrayed, and it showed that, at the time, when this miniature was made, it was a question of understanding each other's faith and depicting it," he said.

There has never been a greater need for Islam's true artistic power and heritage to be shown, Khalili said.

In Australia, Muslims have felt a backlash since the bombings in a Bali in October 2002 that killed 88 Australian citizens and wounded others.

Khalili said one of the strengths of culture is that it transcends the boundaries of faith and nationhood.

Some historic Islamic art resembles modern abstract art, and there is no reason a contemporary Islamic artist could not produce work of equal beauty, he said.

"The majority of this art falls into the category of beautiful objects, and I often say a very famous saying of the Prophet, which comes from the hadith, which says … 'Truly, God is beautiful, and loves all beauty,'" he said.

"So this is the message that the rest of the Muslim world has to adopt, that beautiful objects don't only belong to the Muslim people. They belong to humanity at large."

The Arts of Islam runs until Sept. 23 in Sydney.

 

With files from the Australian Broadcasting Corp.