' Spirit & Life ' at The Ismaili Centre, London

Sunday, 15 July 2007 09:43

LONDON - Spirit & Life, an exhibition of rare Islamic art and manuscripts never before displayed in the UK, will run this summer at The Ismaili Centre, South Kensington, London. Highlights will include miniatures from one of the finest illustrated manuscripts ever produced, the Persian epic Shahnama (The Book of Kings) and an extremely rare copy of the Canon of Medicine of Ibn Sina, used in Europe and the Middle East as the standard medical textbook for over 500 years.

Organized by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Spirit & Life will present treasures from the permanent collection of the Aga Khan Museum, which will open in Toronto, Canada, in 2010. The museum is an initiative of His Highness the Aga Khan, (Spiritual Leader) of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, who intends the museum to be a centre of education and learning dedicated to the presentation of Muslim arts and culture in all their historic, cultural and geographical diversity. Surrounded by a large landscaped park, the museum will be housed in a 10,000 square-metre building designed by the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. The Aga Khan Museum will offer unique insights and new perspectives into Muslim civilizations.

“This exhibition of artistic masterpieces from the Islamic world underlines that the arts, particularly when they are spiritually inspired, can become a medium of discourse that transcends the barriers of our day-to-day experiences and preoccupations,” said His Highness the Aga Khan. “Many questions are currently being raised in the West about the Muslim world, with countless misconceptions and misunderstandings occurring between our contemporary societies. I hope that this exhibition will hold a special significance at a time which calls for enlightened encounters amongst faiths and cultures.”

The London exhibition will display over 165 objects from the collection showing the diversity of artistic traditions in the Muslim world. Textiles, exquisite miniatures, rare manuscripts, ceramics, precious pages from the Qur’an, scientific medical texts, books of fables, and tiles and musical instruments will be shown alongside some of the finest portraits of Ottoman sultans and Qajar shahs of the 19th century. The exhibition covers a geographical area stretching from India in the East to Morocco in the West and spans over a thousand years from the ninth to the 19th century. A page from the Blue Qur’an, one of the most extraordinary and most luxurious Qur’an manuscripts ever produced. Created for the Fatimid imam-caliphs ruling North Africa in the early 10th century, it is a wonder of Islamic calligraphy is one of the rare highlights.

One of the most sumptuous and rarest examples of a complete robe from the Mongol period. The cut of the robe is typically Mongol, with its full skirt, its broad wrap-over, and the extremely long sleeves. It is likely that this robe originated in Central Asia in the late 13th or early 14th century.