The Virtual Museum - Arts of the Islamic World - Magazine

Arts of the Islamic World (AIW) is a not-for-profit public education initiative with a mission to reach and educate a wide audience about Islamic culture through its cosmopolitan artistic heritage - over fourteen centuries of cultural expression from across a wide geographical expanse stretching from Europe to Asia.

AIW initiated its mission via the creation of a virtual museum. The AIW virtual museum presents a powerful new tool for replacing the perception of Islamic culture as unknowable and therefore alien with a widely accessible medium for the appreciation of Islamic culture.

Building on best-of-breed technologies for online presentation of material culture, AIW’s virtual museum will meet its goal of delivering an enhanced understanding of the Islamic world with a comprehensive online resource that aggregates multiple collections of Islamic art (both public and private) in one place, presents context and perspective on the whole of the collection, and enables easy interaction with the art and the ideas it represents.

Working in collaboration with private collectors, major museums, foundations and universities, AIW offers global audiences a resource for Islamic art and culture by providing information about Islamic arts and culture in various media: digital images of diverse art work complemented by traditional museum didactics as well as essays, podcasts, and audiocasts by leading experts, documentary films and relevant scholarly materials. This platform will additionally serve as a means of creating a dynamic online community.

The virtual museum is designed to serve the needs of diverse Muslim and non-Muslim audience ranging from the casual browser, to the student, teacher, curator, connoisseur or scholar; anyone seeking to locate, view and learn about arts from the Islamic world.

Amazing folios and fragments from the Collections

FOLIO FROM A LARGE EARLY 11TH-CENTURY QU’RAN, Calligraphy, 17 11/16 x 11 13/16 in. (45 x 30 cm), Tunisia | Almoravid, early 11th century Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Image: Â© Copyright The Nour Foundation

ILLUMINATED FRONTISPIECE OF ZANGID QU’RAN, 22 x 15.6 cm, Iraq | Zangid, late 12th - early 13th century Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Image: Â© Copyright The Nour Foundation

QUR’AN FOLIO IN KUFIC SCRIPT, 23.8 x 33.1 cm, North Africa or Near East, 10th century Aga Khan Museum Collection, Image: Â© Copyright The Aga Khan Trust for Culture

FRAGMENT FROM JUZ’ 30 OF THE QUR’AN, 25.4 x 19.5 cm, Iraq or Iran, 11th century Aga Khan Museum Collection, Image: Â© Copyright The Aga Khan Trust for Culture

FOLIO FROM “BLUE QU’RAN”, 11 1/8 x 14 13/16 in. (28.3 x 37.7 cm), Tunisia | Umayyad of Spain, 9th century Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Image: Â© Copyright The Nour Foundation

SELJUK QU’RAN, 39.2 x 32.4 cm, Northwestern Iran (Azerbaijan) | Seljuk, late 12th - early 13th century Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Image: Â© Copyright The Nour Foundation

TWO ILLUMINATED FOLIOS OF SAFAVID QU’RAN, 26.6 x 17 cm, Iran, Shiraz | Safavid, 1545-1546 Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Image: Â© Copyright The Nour Foundation