Museum Report: A New Scientific Instrument Museum Gallery

摘要

I had the opportunity recently to briefly visit the newly-open and widely-acclaimed, I. M. Pei designed Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar (Fig. l).The museum is a model of design both architecturally and in terms of the way it displays exhibits and, needless to say, the exhibits themselves are unparalleled in terms of their quality. The second floor presents exhibits themati-cally and I was surprised to see two galleries titled 'Science in Art'. The galleries show a series of scientific instruments from the Islamic world, ranging from India to Turkey, as well as the present-day North Africa and Middle East areas. Scientific manuscripts and instruments are presented which attest to the advanced level of knowledge that the Islamic world had attained before the sixteenth century. Readers will be aware of the place that Islamic instruments and scholars occupy within the wider history of science and the gallery does justice to this heritage. Where else, for example, can one see sixty astrolabes displayed in one place with most easily visible from both sides (part shown in Fig. 2)?