Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

The Museum of Islamic Art in Doha stands at one end of the seven-kilometre Doha Corniche, built to the specifications of the architect I. M. Pei on an island off an artificial peninsula near the traditional dhow harbour; it was opened by the then Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad, on 22 November 2008 and to the public on 8 December 2008. ¹ It is owned by Qatar Museums, and its director since 2024 is Shaika Nasser Al-Nassr. ¹

Pei, then 91, was coaxed out of retirement for the project; he spent six months travelling the Muslim world and reading its texts for inspiration, and said the light fountain of the Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo was his source. ¹ He declined the proposed sites and suggested a stand-alone island some sixty metres off the Corniche so that no later building could encroach, within a crescent-shaped park of about 290,000 square metres. ¹ The building covers 45,000 square metres in five floors with a main dome and a central tower, faced in cream limestone that shows different shades through the day, with a glass facade to the north over the Gulf; the galleries were designed by Wilmotte & Associates and the construction was carried out by the Turkish company Baytur in 2006. ¹

The museum shows Islamic art from three continents over 1,400 years: metalwork, ceramics, jewellery, woodwork, textiles and glass from the seventh to the twentieth century, from Spain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India and Central Asia. ¹ Its manuscripts include the Qur'anic manuscript MS.474.2003 and a page of the indigo-dyed Blue Qur'an. ¹

Closed from June 2021 to upgrade its entrance and galleries, the museum reopened in October 2022, ahead of the World Cup in Qatar, with eighteen renovated galleries showing more than 1,100 mostly newly acquired objects arranged by era and region, a new gallery for China and Southeast Asia and a nineteenth-century Damascus room, and the exhibition "Baghdad: Eye's Delight" with loans from the Metropolitan Museum and the Louvre. ¹ In November 2022 it became the first museum in the Middle East certified carbon-neutral. ¹ It lent four objects to the first Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah in 2023 and eight to the second in 2025. ¹ Its exhibitions have included "Hajj: The Journey through Art" (2013–2014), "Muhammad Ali: Tribute to a Legend" (2016–2017), "Syria Matters" (2018–2019), "Mosques in Qatar" (2023), "A Seat at the Table: Food and Feasting in the Islamic World" (2025) and "Empire of Light: Visions and Voices of Afghanistan" (2026). ¹

The museum has a bilingual library, the waterfront MIA Park with a weekly bazaar, and travelling exhibitions, among them "Islamic Art: A Journey of Splendour" at the National Museum of Korea from November 2025 to October 2026. ¹

• English Wikipedia article on the museum, revision of 28 October 2026. ¹