The Museum’s considered the best of its kind anywhere in the world, and it’s easy to see why: the two huge floors it occupies are an amazing insight into Islamic art and its sheer variety. There’s just about everything here that’s got anything to do with art, applied and otherwise. There are countless illuminated Qurans, manuscripts (including treatises on medicine, astronomy, Islamic law, etc; illuminated histories, marriage certificates and samples of calligraphy from as far apart as China and Turkey, Iran and India), weaponry, jewellery, costumes and more.

To actually pinpoint one section as the best among the entire lot would be difficult; this entire collection’s stunning. There are sections on just about every Islamic dynasty that’s ever ruled anywhere in the world- the Safavids, the Turkomans, the Moors, the Mughals and others; and on just about every type of typically Islamic art ever produced. There’s an entire Ottoman room- complete with wall hangings, furnishings, and more, all in a sumptuous combination of fabulously dull reds, greens and browns.

There’s a section on household items- rosewater sprinklers, vases and more- crafted from brass, beaten silver and copper; beautifully painted pottery- much of it of the typical blue tile type; gem-encrusted, jade-handled khanjars (daggers) and swords; astrolabes, wooden chests and caskets inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory (some wonderful samples from Spain included), exquisite jewellery from Mughal-era India and from Turkmenistan. One of the best pieces on display is a large reproduction of the Quran, on a single bedsheet-sized piece of cloth, which had been commissioned by Nadir Shah. There are exquisite prayer rugs; a gorgeous white-and-deep-blue chandelier; coins; wonderfully embroidered pashmina shawls, beautifully wavy Malay krises, and- the pièce de resistance- a huge hall of major Islamic monuments of the world.

This last one houses exquisitely constructed models of major mosques and other Islamic monuments of the world, all made more or less to scale, beautifully decorated, and with each minute detail worked in. It must’ve taken them ages to craft- and it shows. The Taj Mahal, the Dome of the Rock, the mosques at Samarkand, Isfahan, Mecca (this one holds 7,30,000 worshippers normally and as many as 1 million during the Haj and Ramadan) and Medina, as well as lesser-known mosques in places like China and Indonesia, where local architectural styles have effected mosque designs considerably.

All in all, a museum worth every minute you spend inside it (we got here around lunchtime, and were so enthralled by it that despite the fact that we were ravenous, we couldn’t tear ourselves away from it!).

Entry to the museum is RM8 per person.