Highlights 

Forging a Legacy: The Jambiya, Yemen’s Iconic Weapon
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Forging a Legacy: The Jambiya, Yemen’s Iconic Weapon

For many cultures and societies across the globe, arms and armour played an important role off the battlefield, particularly as markers of social status, military rank, courage, and wealth. In Yemen, this tradition continues to prevail with a dagger known as the jambiya or janbīyyah.

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Fringe Benefit: The Margins of Islamic Art at Shangri La
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Fringe Benefit: The Margins of Islamic Art at Shangri La

The Islamic art collection housed at Shangri La in Honolulu, Hawai‘i is unique for a publicly accessible collection. Numbering more than 2,500 objects, it includes important works of art and represents a sustained commitment to collecting for nearly 60 years. However, no professionally trained curator or renowned art historian ever oversaw or even advised on the purchase of its pieces.

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Muslim Blue, Chinese White: Islamic Calligraphy on Ming Blue-and-white Porcelain
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Muslim Blue, Chinese White: Islamic Calligraphy on Ming Blue-and-white Porcelain

Nearing the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the world is witnessing a global pivot toward Asia in international affairs. Meanwhile, China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative is predicated upon the global importance of mutually beneficial relations between China and its westward neighbours, a vast proportion of whom are Muslims. The success of the initiative, with its economic and political aspirations, depends on bringing together people of diverse cultures, evoking the history of ancient commercial overland and maritime trade networks, romantically imagined as the ‘Silk Roads’.

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‘An Oriental Collector’: Calouste Gulbenkian’s Taste for Arts of the Islamic World and China
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‘An Oriental Collector’: Calouste Gulbenkian’s Taste for Arts of the Islamic World and China

Born in 1869 in Istanbul, the crossroads of Eurasia, Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian always defined himself as an ‘oriental collec-tor’. His cultural view was expansive, extending beyond the Ottoman Empire of which he was a citizen to the east and west. By the time of his death in Lisbon in 1955, at age 86, this vision was reflected in a splendid art collection comprising some 6,000 objects originating from England to Japan, and dating from antiquity to the early 20th century.

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