The Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization occupies a former souq building on the Sharjah waterfront, converted and opened as a museum in 2008. It holds one of the most substantial collections of Islamic art and material culture in the region.
The collections
The museum is organised chronologically and thematically. Galleries cover the origins and practice of Islam, the history of Islamic science and technology, and the arts and crafts of the Islamic world — ceramics, metalwork, glass, textiles, manuscripts, astrolabes and scientific instruments, coins and jewellery. The collection ranges from early Islamic material through to the Ottoman and Qajar periods, and includes objects from across the Islamic world rather than only from the Gulf.
The building
The museum's interior centres on a hexagonal hall with a large dome, decorated with Islamic geometric and calligraphic ornament, and galleries arranged around it on two floors. The conversion retained the structure of the original market building while adding the museum's interior architecture.
Sharjah's museum cluster
The museum is one of a group in Sharjah that includes the Sharjah Art Museum, the Sharjah Archaeology Museum, the Sharjah Heritage Museum and the Sharjah Maritime Museum, and it is part of the emirate's programme of museum development begun in the 1990s.