Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur – Museum of Asian Art

🕌 Minarets and Manuscripts: A Morning at the Islamic Arts Museum, Kuala Lumpur

We hadn’t exactly planned it brilliantly. Turning up at one of Kuala Lumpur’s finest cultural attractions on the second of the two Eid holidays — Hari Raya Aidiladha, the Feast of Sacrifice — was, shall we say, optimistic. The city was buzzing. The streets around the Lake Gardens were lively with families dressed in their finest, and the air had that particular mix of festivity and humidity that makes KL so distinctly itself. Hot, sticky, and absolutely heaving. Still, we pressed on, and we were very glad we did.

The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia — known locally as the IAMM — sits on Jalan Lembah Perdana, not far from the National Mosque, Masjid Negara, which looms impressively across the road. The building itself gives you fair warning that you’re in for something special. Five turquoise domes rise above a gleaming white marble facade, the tilework on those domes crafted by Uzbek artisans in the tradition of Central Asian Islamic architecture. It’s a striking sight, even by KL’s standards. The museum opened on 12 December 1998, funded by the Albukhary Foundation, set up by Malaysian philanthropist Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary. It is, by some margin, the largest museum of Islamic arts in Southeast Asia, with a collection of over 12,000 artefacts spanning 1,400 years of Islamic civilisation.

Karen, who has seen a fair few museums in her time, took one look at the entrance — a grand iwan archway dressed in Persian tiles — and said it reminded her of something from a fairy tale. I told her not to get too excited before we’d even bought the tickets. She ignored me, which is usually the correct response.

🏛️ Inside the Building

The interior is as cool as the exterior promises, which was frankly welcome given the state of us after the walk from the car. The central atrium floods with natural light, and the pastel-shaded domes overhead — peach, cream, light blue — are decorated with arabesque and floral patterns. It sets a rather calm and reflective tone, which is quite the contrast to the noise and bustle of Eid outside.

The museum’s twelve permanent galleries are spread across two floors. On the first floor you find the architecture, Quran and manuscripts, India, China, and Malay World galleries. The second floor covers jewellery, textiles, woodwork, arms and armour, coins and seals, metalwork, and ceramics. It’s a comprehensive sweep through Islamic material culture, and it pulls it off without feeling like a warehouse.

The Architecture Gallery is a genuine standout. It houses a remarkable collection of scale models of famous Islamic structures from across the world — the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built by Caliph Abd al-Malik in 691 CE; the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, completed in 1616 under Sultan Ahmed I; the great mosques of Mecca and Medina. These are not rough approximations — they’re beautifully detailed miniatures that give you a real sense of how Islamic architecture evolved across different centuries and continents, from the Umayyad period in the 7th century right through to the Ottoman Empire at its height in the 16th and 17th centuries. It’s the sort of gallery that makes you stand there a good deal longer than you’d planned.

📜 Qurans, Manuscripts, and Treasures

The Quran and Manuscripts Gallery was, for us, one of the most quietly extraordinary rooms in the building. The collection includes illuminated manuscripts dating as far back as the 8th century, some produced on vellum in styles that reflect the extraordinary variety of the Islamic world — from the angular Kufic script of early Islam to the more flowing Naskh and Thuluth styles that developed from the 10th century onwards. There are copies of the Quran from Persia, from the Ottoman lands, from the Malay archipelago. Each one represents not just faith, but also craftsmanship of the highest order.

One of the great highlights — and a centrepiece of the museum — is a curtain from the Kaaba in Mecca, known as the Kiswa. This remarkable textile is made of black silk embroidered with gold and silver thread, and bears Quranic verses. The Kiswa has been replaced annually since at least the 7th century, the old one cut up and distributed as sacred gifts. Seeing a section of it up close is genuinely moving, whether or not you’re a Muslim.

The India Gallery traces the profound influence of Islam on the subcontinent from the arrival of Muslim traders in the 7th century, through the Delhi Sultanate (established 1206 CE), to the spectacular flowering of Mughal art and architecture in the 16th and 17th centuries. The jewellery and decorated vessels from the Mughal period in particular are extraordinary — the kind of craftsmanship that makes you wonder how on earth anyone did that with the tools available at the time.

The China Gallery was something we hadn’t quite expected. It turns out that Islam arrived in China as early as the 7th century, brought by Arab and Persian merchants along the Silk Road. The gallery displays ceramics and textiles that show the fascinating cross-pollination between Islamic and Chinese artistic traditions — blue and white porcelain carrying Arabic calligraphy, commissioned by Muslim rulers who wanted Chinese craftsmanship but with Quranic inscriptions. It shouldn’t work as a combination, and somehow it really does.

🌏 The Malay World and Closer to Home

The Malay World Gallery was particularly relevant given where we were standing. Islam arrived in the Malay peninsula in the 13th and 14th centuries, spread largely by traders from the Gujarat region of India and from Arabia. By the 15th century, the Sultanate of Malacca had become a major centre of Islamic culture in Southeast Asia. The museum makes the point — and it’s a fair one — that Southeast Asian Islam is often overlooked in the broader narrative of Islamic history. The Malay World Gallery puts that right with manuscripts, woodwork, and textiles that reflect a tradition as rich and as distinct as anything from the Middle East or Central Asia.

The ceramics gallery is another highlight. Ottoman Iznik ware from the 16th century sits alongside Persian lustreware from Kashan and Chinese export pieces made for Muslim markets. The colours on the Iznik pieces — vivid blues and greens and reds on a white ground — are as fresh as the day they were made, which is frankly astonishing for something 500 years old.

By the time we reached the arms and armour gallery, with its decorated swords, daggers, and armour from the Ottoman, Persian, and Mughal periods, we were starting to flag slightly. Karen declared that her feet were giving her grief, which is a reliable indicator that we’d done a thorough job of a museum. We found the café, sat down, had a cold drink, and agreed that it had been one of the better mornings we’d spent in KL.

The gift shop, since you ask, is excellent. We exercised considerable restraint. Mostly.

If you find yourself in Kuala Lumpur and you have half a day to spare, the IAMM is about as rewarding a way to spend it as you’ll find. Go in the morning, before the heat becomes truly unreasonable, and perhaps not on a major public holiday unless you enjoy company. We enjoyed the company. Mostly.