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The Benaki Museum of Islamic Art is a satellite of the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece. It features one of the world’s most important collections of Islamic art.
History of the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art
The Benaki Museum of Islamic Art opened to the public on July 27, 2004. It’s housed in two Neoclassical buildings in the Kerameikos district donated by Lambros Eftaxias. The collection features Islamic art from the 7th through the 19th centuries, and includes artifacts such as ceramics, metalwork, gold, woodcarvings, glasswork, textiles, weapons, and more.
Visiting the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art
Admission to the museum is €9 (as of August 2023). It’s open Thursday through Sunday from 10am to 6pm.
Café
The museum includes a café on the top floor with an outdoor terrace. There are great views of the Kerameikos archaeological site from there. The café is open during museum hours but closed throughout the month of August.
Lobby
First of all, before exploring the museum, make sure to admire some of the artifacts on display in the lobby. During my visit, there was a beautifully carved wooden door to a mosque and a pair of 20th century wooden chairs from Egypt.
Excavation
The galleries at the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art are situated on alternating floors of two Neoclassical buildings that have been merged together. On your way up to the first gallery, you may notice some ancient remains. After 1996, when the buildings were being reinforced and renovated for their conversion to the museum, workers discovered a section of the ancient city wall of Athens and an ancient tomb. The museum modified the building plans to preserve the finds and make them accessible to visitors.
Gallery I
The first gallery of the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art covers the Islamic world from the 7th to the 12th century. Items on display include ceramics along with a handful of metal and glasswares.
Most of the works in the first gallery are from Egypt, with ceramics and textile works standing out. Textile production was the most developed industry of the Islamic world during this period, and fabrics were a symbol of social status and prestige.
Fatimid wares from Egypt in the 10th through 12th century reflected their good relations with the Byzantine Empire, Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), and the Islamic Emirate of Sicily. Metalwork from Egypt and Iran mostly consisted of items for everyday use made of copper alloy. Glass vessels were also made mostly for everyday use.
Umayyad Doors from Iraq
Among the most interesting pieces in this gallery are a pair of doors from Iraq during the late Umayyad period in the middle of the 8th century. According to the information panel, the carvings represent “the so-called ‘tree of life’ in the midst of dense foliage and under a lobed arch.”
Inscribed Mat from Tiberias
Nearby is a mat inscribed with good wishes for the owner. It was made at a royal workshop in Tiberias, which was an important weaving center in the eastern Mediterranean.
Tiberias; 10th century
Tombstone from South Arabia
Finally, there’s a basalt tombstone from south Arabia. It’s dated 1080 and the inscription reads:
“Uthman, son of Asim, son of al-Bistami, who died on the 20th day of the month of Rajab of the hijra year 473.”
Gallery II
The second gallery covers the Islamic world from the 12th to the 16th century. It features many of the same materials as the first gallery.
This period in time saw the introduction of new techniques. For metalwork, inlaying with gold, silver, and copper was introduced in eastern Iran during the 12th century. This transformed ordinary brass objects into luxury items. In the 13th century, Mosul, northern Syria, and Damascus became major metalworking centers. Cairo followed in the 14th and 15th centuries.
For ceramics, the Persians developed a white ceramic body with possibilities for moulding and painting. This was similar to how the Chinese produced ceramics at the time.
Highlights in Gallery II
Impressive items include a pair of 15th to 16th century wooden doors from Egypt and late 12th to early 13th century tiles with relief Quranic inscription from a mosque in Iran. There are also marble panels from late 15th century to early 16th century Egypt, inlaid with red and green pigment, depicting an arabesque and a palm tree.
Stone Mihrab from Iran
One of the most interesting artifacts in Gallery II is a 12th century stone mihrab from Iran. It contains an inscription on the arch reading “In the name of God the Most Compassionate, the Merciful”, which is the opening verse of the Quran.
Gallery III
The third gallery of the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art covers the Islamic world from the 16th to the 17th century. During this period, in addition to ceramic works from Iran, we start to see Ottoman ceramics as well as calligraphy from both nations.
Ceramics
During the Safavid period in Iran, potters were finally able to reproduce the blue and white porcelain wares from China. When China closed its borders in the 17th century, Europeans turned to Persian and Japanese imitations of Chinese porcelain to meet demand.
Meanwhile, starting in the late 15th century, Iznik became the most important center of pottery production in the Ottoman Empire, supplying the Ottoman court and the upper class. In the beginning, the designs were a variation of Persian arabesque and floral decorations with blue as the predominant color.
From the beginning of the 16th century on, however, designs started to take a more Ottoman style with multicolored floral designs. This was especially prevalent during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent.
Ceramic tile production became a major industry in the Ottoman Empire in the 1550s. Wall tiles were produced for imperial mosques, sometimes covering the entire interior.
Tile of Muhammad’s Footprints
One of the most interesting ceramic tiles in Gallery III depicts the footprints left by the Prophet Muhammad before his Night Journey from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to the heavens. It was made in Iznik in 1706.
Tiles Depicting Mecca
Another impressive work is a set of six tiles depicting the holy shrine at Mecca with the Kaaba in the center. Below it is a tile with a Quranic inscription that once decorated a mosque. Both were produced in Iznik.
Metalwork
Metalwork during the period was dominated by the Mamluks in Syria and Egypt. Suffering from an economic depression after losing the monopoly on the spice trade, craftsmen started to engrave metal objects rather than inlay them with precious metals.
Textiles
In the center of the gallery is a Transylvanian type triple prayer carpet dating to the 17th to 18th century. In the early 20th century, a group of about 450 carpets were found in churches in the Transylvania region of Romania. The Transylvanian type would soon describe other prayer carpets similar in style, technique, and color. The carpets were probable made in western Asia Minor.
Reception Room from Cairo
Finally, the most spectacular display in Gallery III, and perhaps the entire Benaki Museum of Islamic Art, is a reception room from a 17th century mansion in Cairo. The room came from the palace of Kethüda Halafi, a senior official of the Ottoman Empire. It features an inlaid marble floor, wooden window screens, and stained glass windows.
In Cairo, the main reception room was only for the owner of the house and his guests. They would have sat on cushions around the central fountain, drinking coffee, smoking nargileh, conversing, and perhaps listening to story-tellers.
Gallery IV
The fourth gallery of the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art covers the Islamic world from the 17th to the 19th century. During this period, in addition to ceramic and woodworking, we start to see luxuriously decorated weapons and armor.
Ceramics
Continuing from the theme of previous galleries is ceramics. In the 18th century, Kütahya dominated the Ottoman pottery industry. Kütahya pottery dates back to the early 16th century, when Armenian potters started to produce ceramics similar to Iznik. In fact, Kütahya replaced Iznik as the center of Ottoman pottery production after the pottery workshops in Iznik closed down in the 18th century. Armenian potters became swamped with orders for tiles decorating mosques and churches, including orders in 1718 for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Kütahya potters also expanded production to include everyday items such as coffee cups, plates, and rosewater flasks.
Tiles from Edirne Palace
One of the most interesting ceramic works on display during my visit was a loan item from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. It was a panel of tiles from the Edirne Palace in Edirne, Turkey. The palace was destroyed during the Russo-Turkish War in 1878 and the tiles were dispersed among private collections and museums in Europe. The tile panel on display joined tiles on loan from the Gulbenkian Foundation with those from the collection of the Benaki Museum. The painted sections were based on tiles found in other museums.
Woodwork
As far as woodwork, there are a few impressive items on display. One is a writing chest made by Sheikh Muhammad Munshi Ghaznavi in Gujarat in 1587. It’s ornamented with inlaid mother-of-pearl and Persian verses. Writing chests decorated with mother-of-pearl were exported from Western India to Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Iran, and Europe. Western records first mentioned these chests in 1502, when Vasco da Gama (c. 1460s – 1524) was offered a chest decorated with shells from Cambay in western India.
Another item of note is a pair of Qajar doors from Iran. They depict courtly scenes and astrological symbols, and were made in the late 19th or early 20th century.
Jewelry
Gold jewelry and other accessories were important for both men and women in 19th century Iran during the time of Qajar rule (1779-1924). Many Persian court painters were sent to European schools of art in Great Britain, France, and Russia during the second half of the 19th century, leasing to an enrichment of Qajar art.
Weapons and Armor
The most prevalent type of artifacts in Gallery IV of the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art is weapons and armor. One display includes parade equipment used in processions of the Ottoman cavalry. Horsemen wore helmets and suits of armor made of gilded copper to show off the wealth of the Empire. Even the harness of their horses were made of gilded copper. The equipment was kept in the Ottoman armory in the former Byzantine church of Hagia Eirini in the 1st Courtyard of Topkapi Palace in Constantinople (now Istanbul).
Another display includes firearms, which were introduced to the Islamic world by the Ottomans. Firearms spread quickly in the middle of the 15th century and brought about radical changes to warfare tactics.
Shiite Processional Standards
Finally, on one end of the gallery are Shiite processional standards used in the Ashura festival, which commemorates the death of Hussein (626-680). The standards symbolize the members of Muhammad’s family: Muhammad; his daughter Fatima; his cousin and son-in-law Ali; and his grandchildren Hasan and Hussein.
The standards are flanked by two Ottoman suits of armor from the 16th century. They include chain mail shirts and steel plates, which were added to the chain mail shirts during the 14th century. The steel helmets are shaped like turbans and include inscriptions of overlaid silver or gold as well as the stamp of the armory of Haigia Eirini. The nasal guard on the helmet to the right is decorated with a tear-shaped medallion inscribed with the name of Allah.
