Islamic Arts Museum

About Islamic Arts Museum

The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia is a museum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was officially opened on 12 December 1998. The museum is the largest museum of Islamic arts in Southeast Asia with more than seven thousands artifacts from the Islamic world.

The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia is the largest museum of Islamic art in Southeast Asia, officially opened on 12 December 1998 and set in the heart of the city's green tourist belt between the Perdana Botanical Gardens, the National Mosque, the Bird Park and the National Planetarium. The building covers 30,000 square metres beneath domes decorated with Iranian and Uzbek tilework and holds more than seven thousand artefacts from across the Islamic world; it stands apart from other museums in its focus on the Islamic art of Southeast Asia, India and China, regions that have received too little scholarly attention. The collection is arranged in specialised galleries, chief among them the Qur'an and Manuscript Gallery, which traces the development of Arabic calligraphy and Qur'an illumination, including leaves from some of the oldest Qur'ans of North Africa and a rare 16th-century Qur'an from Uzbekistan in thuluth and naskh scripts, and the Architecture Gallery with finely detailed scale models of the world's great mosques, among them the Sacred Mosque of Makkah, the Prophet's Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, alongside galleries of textiles, jewellery, arms, ceramics and the Malay, Chinese and Indian worlds. Curiosities include a gilded Ottoman child's cradle with delicate floral ornament and a Mughal beard comb in gilt silver topped by two parrots and designed to hold rose water. The museum shows both the connection of Malaysian Islamic culture to the wider Muslim world and its uniqueness, is known for its large, high-quality shop and restaurant, and is one of the most interesting museums in Kuala Lumpur according to Wikivoyage.

Where:

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia