Balkans | The Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in Athens displays more than 12,000 works

More than 12,000 works reflecting Islamic culture shed light on Islamic history and culture at the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in Athens, the capital of Greece.

More than 12,000 works reflecting Islamic culture shed light on Islamic history and culture at the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in Athens, the capital of Greece.

The museum, which was established in 2004 with the private collection of Antonis Benakis, who was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1873, has a wide range of activities such as India, Iran, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, North Africa, Sicily and Spain. Featuring a rich collection of geography.

In the museum, various Islamic handicrafts such as ceramics, gold work, weaving, wood carving, glass and mother-of-pearl work are on display with the finest examples.

The collection includes Bursa weaving, Iznik and Kütahya ceramics.

While most of the tiles and faience, which are distinguished by their blue and turquoise hues, come from Iznik and Kütahya, the woven fabrics and carpets of Bursa are also included in the collection.

The room belonging to Kituda, where guests were entertained in Cairo in the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, reflects the living conditions of that period with its furniture and fountain.

The collection, which began to be collected in Egypt and contains works from a wide time period from the seventh to the nineteenth centuries, when Islam was born, is among the 13 most important collections of Islamic work in the world today, according to a magazine titled “Saudi Aramco World.”

The works in the museum are from the private collection of Antonis Benkais of Alexandria.

Mina Moraito, director of the Benakis Museum of Islamic Arts, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that most of the artifacts on display belonged to Benakis, who gave the museum its name, for his collection during his stay in Alexandria.

Moraito emphasized that the works in the museum are one of the Greek museums that display a civilization other than the Greek civilization, “It is a very important museum because it reflects the arts of societies not far from Greece but very different from Greece.” He said.

Moraitu stated that visitors from many different countries as well as Greeks come to the museum, and that he sometimes thinks that the museum is known abroad rather than in Greece.

Moraito affirmed that most of the artifacts in the museum are from the Ottoman era, especially textiles, ceramics and metal, which were obtained from Egypt, and emphasized that these works reveal the characteristics and identity of Ottoman art.

Moretti drew attention to the fact that most flower shapes were used in Ottoman works.

Reminding that the British traveler and artist Thomas Hope, who traveled to Istanbul in the late eighteenth century, also collaborated with the Turkish Embassy in Athens on the exhibition “Sketches of Ottoman Istanbul”, Moraiti wrote “The Magic of Iznik Porcelain” published by Benaki and indicated that he wrote the book in collaboration With John Carswell.

Most of the Iznik ceramics in the collection were included in an exhibition in Alexandria in 1925, Morietti said, noting that this was “the first exhibition of Islamic art in Egypt”.

AA