Sanaa Boutayeb

Since 1970 Pro­fes­sor Nasser D Khalili has been assem­bling his his­toric col­lec­tion of Islamic art. This he has done under the aus­pices of The Khalili Fam­ily Trust. With hold­ings of more than 20,000 objects doc­u­ment­ing the range of artis­tic pro­duc­tion of the Islamic lands over a period of some 1,400 years, the Col­lec­tion now ranks among the best in the world.

The Khalili Col­lec­tion rep­re­sents a new gen­er­a­tion of Islamic art col­lec­tions. Its hold­ings include an out­stand­ing array of minia­ture paint­ings and illus­trated man­u­scripts, and the cov­er­age of the dec­o­ra­tive arts — ceram­ics, tex­tiles, glass, met­al­work and oth­ers — is com­pre­hen­sive. In this it ful­fils the long­stand­ing West­ern con­cep­tion of what is impor­tant in Islamic art, but the Col­lec­tion has not been overly influ­enced by this essen­tially alien, and dis­torted, view. On the con­trary, it was formed with an acute aware­ness of the cri­te­ria by which Mus­lims them­selves have judged and still judge their art. As a result a cen­tral place has been given to the art of cal­lig­ra­phy, which plays an essen­tial role in the art of the Islamic world. Read More

Bar­rie Osborne, part of the Oscar-winning team behind the Lord of the Rings films, says the new pro­duc­tion ‘will edu­cate peo­ple about the true mean­ing of Islam’.

Pro­ducer Bar­rie Osborne cast Keanu Reeves as the mes­siah in The Matrix and helped defeat the dark lord Sauron in his record-breaking Lord of the Rings tril­ogy. Now the Oscar-winning Amer­i­can film-maker is set to embark on his most per­ilous quest to date: mak­ing a big-screen biopic of the prophet Muhammad.

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