The Museum of Islamic Art of MIA is the largest Islamic Art Museum in the world, as it houses close to a hundred thousand antique Islamic artifacts of various types collected from India, Iran, all the way to the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Egypt, North Africa, and Andalusia.
This collection is characterized by its breadth of coverage of all the branches of Islamic art throughout the ages (from the beginning of the Islamic era up to the period of the family of Mohamed Ali), which makes it a beacon of Islamic Art and Civilization for all times. These collections vary between rare woodwork, plaster artifacts, metal, ceramic, glass, crystal, and textile objects. The museum displays these collections in 25 Halls. Some halls are a chronology, while some are thematic.
The history of MIA Originally, the museum did not be existing in this place. In 1881, Julius Franz suggested allocating a part in Al-Hakim Mosque to be a museum for displaying 111 objects of Islamic Art, and it was called the Arab Museum. These collections kept increasing, resulting in the construction of the current building in 1903 by Khedive Abbas Helmy II, in Bab al-Khalq in the heart of Historic Cairo.
