One of the finest collections of Islamic art anywhere, rebuilt after a car bomb destroyed the front of it in 2014.
The collection holds around 100,000 objects, of which perhaps 2,500 are displayed, spanning from the seventh century to the nineteenth and drawing on Egypt, Syria, Iran, Turkey, North Africa, Spain and India. It is generally reckoned among the two or three most important collections of Islamic art in the world.
The bombing
On 24 January 2014, a car bomb aimed at the Cairo Security Directorate across the street destroyed the museum’s façade and damaged around 170 objects, some beyond repair. It happened on the eve of the third anniversary of the revolution.
The museum was closed for three years. Restoration was carried out with international support — UNESCO, the UAE, Italy, Switzerland, the United States — and it reopened in 2017. Some of the restored objects are displayed with an account of the damage, which is unusual and worth reading.
Highlights
The Mamluk metalwork — inlaid brass basins, candlesticks and incense burners of a technical standard that has never been surpassed.
Enamelled glass mosque lamps, mostly Syrian and Egyptian, of the fourteenth century.
Carved woodwork from Fatimid palaces, including panels showing hunting and dancing scenes, which are unusual for their figurative content.
A key to the Kaaba, textiles, carpets, ceramics from Iznik and Kashan, astrolabes and scientific instruments, and manuscripts including early Qurans in Kufic script on parchment.
The Ottoman rooms and the reconstructed sabil-kuttab elements.
The building itself, of 1903, is in a neo-Mamluk style, and the courtyard is a good place to sit.
Why it is quiet
It is not on the standard tourist circuit. Most visitors to Cairo have three or four days and spend them on the pyramids, the Egyptian Museum and Islamic Cairo, and this gets missed. It should not be.
Practicalities
Ticketed and inexpensive. Photography permits are sold separately. Allow two hours.
The National Library and Archives — Dar al-Kutub — occupies the upper floors of the same building and holds one of the great manuscript collections of the Arab world, though it is a research institution rather than a public display.
Metro Line 2 to Mohamed Naguib is a ten-minute walk. The area around it, Bab al-Khalq, is busy and unremarkable; the museum is the reason to come.
More Museums
The Grand Egyptian Museum
Two decades late, a kilometre from the pyramids, and holding the complete Tutankhamun collection for the first time.
The Egyptian Museum, Tahrir
The old pink museum on Tahrir Square, crowded, under-labelled, and still one of the great collections on earth.
National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation
The royal mummies in a darkened underground hall, and the only museum here that treats Egypt as continuous rather than ancient.