Hidden Treasures

Tucked away in a cellar in Bahrain is one of the largest collections of Islamic art in the world. It is the life’s work of Abdul Latif Jassim Kanoo – and now, for the first time, the public will be able to see it, when a new exhibition hall opens at the Beit Al Qur’an museum. Hamida Ghafour had a sneak preview.

In a darkened room of Abdul Latif Jassim Kanoo’s museum in Bahrain, a single spotlight picks out the brilliant blue tones of an exquisite vase painted with gentle scenes of rural Chinese life. It is an unusual piece, Kanoo explains, because it was made by Iranian pottery makers mimicking Chinese porcelain.

It is a rare and valuable item, but for Kanoo there is another more personal story attached to it.

He bought the pot in London but was not allowed to board the aeroplane because it was too big.

“The only way was to buy it a seat,” he says. “So it was me in one seat, Mrs Kanoo on the other side and the pot in between. We told people it was our child.”

The Iranian pot is among the hundreds of treasures that are part of an upcoming exhibition to open during Ramadan at the new Dr Abdul Latif Kanoo Hall at the Beit Al Qur’an museum in Manama, which he founded.

It is no ordinary exhibition, however. Kanoo has spent 50 years travelling around the globe and amassing one of the largest private collections of Islamic art in the world, much of it rarely or never seen in public.

One afternoon shortly before the hall opened I got a sneak preview of his incredible collection of Islamic treasures.

In his office he reaches into his safe and takes out four opaque plastic containers. He opens one and places in the palm of my hand an exquisite cup heavy for its small size.

“Are these emeralds and rubies?” I ask, touching the inlaid jewels. Yes, he says. It is a 16th century Mogul cup carved from a piece of rock crystal.

We try on a couple of Mogul archer rings, which were worn by Indian warriors in battle to protect their fingers when the bow was pulled. They are made of pale green jade studded with rubies, and I wonder if the archers were worried about losing a ruby when they fired arrows.

“I must catalogue these,” he mutters.


Kanoo rummages around the boxes for his collection of Islamic coins. He has one from every year of the Islamic calendar, except for the first year in which the young Muslim empire began minting coins, Hijri 77 (696AD).

“There are only eight in the world. I couldn’t afford it, the last one I saw was selling for US$200,000 to US$300,000 (Dh1.2 million to Dh1.8 million),” he says.

The basement of the Beit Al Qur’an Museum houses the Kanoo’s private collection of Islamic art.

When he steps out of his office to chat with his secretary he jokingly adds, “Don’t steal anything.”

Kanoo is in his 70s – he does not have a precise age because he was born in Bahrain at a time when the Bedouin did not keep such records – and is a scion of the Kanoo dynasty, one of the great merchant families in the Gulf who made a fortune in shipping, travel and oil, among other things, a century ago. Arabian Business last year estimated the family’s wealth at US$6.1 billion (Dh37 billion) and ranked them number nine in the top 10 richest families in the Middle East.

Kanoo, however, has never been involved very much or interested in the family business. He has divided his life between his family, his work as an engineer and his private passion as an art lover.

He is an avuncular, jovial figure who loves talking about his five grandchildren, teasing his secretary and calling the room in which he keeps his treasures “the dungeon”.

“Should we go to the dungeon?” he asks when he finishes speaking to his secretary. The dungeon is the basement of the Beit Al Qur’an museum where he stores the bulk of his personal art collection.

There is a special lift to take him to the basement but no one can find the key so he walks downstairs instead. A nondescript door leads to a large semicircular room with a massive pillar in the middle that is part of the supporting foundation of the building. A gorgeous wall of framed miniature paintings, Indian, Turkish and Iranian, dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, greets us.

“This one is very rare,” he says, pointing to a domestic Indian scene set against a subdued backdrop of gold and silver.

Kanoo feels that the new Abdul Latif Kanoo Hall and its contents – stored in the basement – will be an opportunity to show his gratitude for a life well lived.

It is hard to know where to look first. There are pieces of pottery laid out on the floor; glass, jewellery and metal objects behind cabinets, sculptures; embroidered textiles and clothing laid out on tables and on the floors. Paintings, four or five deep, are leaning against the walls.

There are many paintings by Bahraini artists, some of which he admits he bought out of duty rather than admiration for the work. “I like to support the arts scene here,” he explains. It is an Aladdin’s cave of priceless and exquisite treasures spanning several hundred years of Islamic arts.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London would be envious, I say. It has 400 objects in its Islamic gallery; Kanoo’s is much bigger.

He won’t give an exact figure – “I don’t know, really. I don’t have and don’t give numbers” – but in 2007, a selection of 5,000 items was on display in Abu Dhabi.

“There are few in the world with a collection like this. David Khalili has one,” he says, referring to the British-Iranian billionaire and art dealer whose collection was valued at US$900 million (Dh5.5 billion) by Forbes magazine.

Kanoo specialises in works from the 8th to 13th centuries and most of the collection has been purchased from auction houses in London and New York. But he also likes to trawl through Spanish markets in search of pieces from Muslim-ruled Andalusia.

“Every item I can tell you where and how I got it and whether they ripped me off or I ripped them off,” he says, laughing. He is too discreet to reveal what his collection is worth or what his favourite piece is. “All these things are my babies, my sons and daughters, how can I choose a favourite?”

Kanoo’s love of collecting began as a child when he picked up coins and shells on the beaches of Bahrain. But his interest took a more serious turn when he travelled to England to study. He earned a degree in engineering from Imperial College London and when he wasn’t learning, he was travelling to Europe’s capitals with his family, visiting its great museums including the British Museum, the Natural History museum and the Louvre in Paris. These visits left a deep impression on the young man from an island which had just started its modernising phase after the discovery of oil in 1932.

“The West has the nicest museums but all the content came from the Middle East, from Egypt in particular, from Muslim countries. So I was determined when I went back I’d make a museum if not equal but better that will display many things.”

He put his engineering degree to good use after graduation and worked for a short time in Saudi Arabia and then Kuwait where he built bridges and schools. Upon returning to Bahrain he got a job at the ministry of housing and was instrumental in planning and building many of the kingdom’s neighbourhoods.

One of his greatest accomplishments, he says, is the Beit Al Qur’an museum which he founded in 1990 and which is built entirely with donations from the public. The nucleus is his own spectacular collection of Qurans written on a range of materials from the skin of a gazelle to a grain of rice. The collection is unrivalled: there is the first translation into Latin, completed in 1535, and the first ever printed Quran produced in Germany in 1694.

“When you expose yourself to those beautiful collections in the West I thought, ‘How can they look after them in the West but not us in the Middle East?’ I’m grateful to European institutions, they did us a favour. Now, thanks to them, people have an understanding of the development of items and materials like textiles, carpets.”

The Kanoo family business started in 1890 when Haji Yusuf bin Ahmed Kanoo, a general merchant, began importing goods from Asia and Europe. It expanded to Saudi Arabia and later the UAE, and is now owned by the sixth generation of the family.

Like the Italian merchant dynasties, such as the Medicis who patronised the Renaissance in 15th century Italy, the Kanoos are playing a role in fostering and developing the arts in the young nations of the Gulf.

Kanoo’s daughter-in-law, Hoda Kanoo, founded the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation and has brought classical music and opera to the capital, while her husband, Mohammed, is an artist and co-owner of Ghaf, the first contemporary art gallery in Abu Dhabi.

When Kanoo began collecting Islamic art 50 years ago, it was not considered very important and only a few people were interested in buying. In the past 20 years perceptions have changed dramatically. The market has taken off – and so have the prices. A watershed moment came in 1997 when a Qatari sheikh paid £3.6 million (Dh21.9 million) for a 10th-century bronze fountainhead from Italy or Spain, the highest ever paid for a piece of Islamic art.

Kanoo says acquiring pieces is becoming difficult and expensive.

“I used to get miniature paintings for £500-£2,000 (Dh3,000-Dh12,000) but now they talk about £50,000 (Dh300,000).”

Most of the world’s major museums have had a usually small Islamic art collection, kept in a dusty, little-visited corner, but that is also changing. The Victoria and Albert in London has 400 permanent objects in its new Jameel Gallery. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is refurbishing the Islamic art galleries, which are scheduled to re-open in 2011 for its permanent collection of 12,000 objects. The Louvre will display its 2,000-item collection in a new gallery in the renovated Cour Visconti, which is expected to open next year.

Does he believe in returning artwork to its country of origins?

“It’s not about how it is or where it is,” he says. “Human civilisation shouldn’t be anchored in one unit but set in places where people can appreciate them. It is about preserving human history.”

His eyes notice a brilliant vase with a floral pattern from the Iranian Safavid period sitting on a plinth.

“Why is this here? It can fall. Here hold it,” he gives it to me as he moves the plinth to a corner and sets the vase on the carpeted floor where it won’t be knocked over.

You get a sense that Kanoo doesn’t take all this too seriously.

“These are my grandchildren’s, I made them sit down and paint,” he points to some framed crayon drawings. They are hung next to a 14th-century Turkish blue-glazed ceramic that was once part of a chandelier in a mosque.

He has tried to pass on his love of collecting fine things to his five grandchildren and indeed there is an entire antechamber in the basement devoted to the little things he has bought them when they were small children. There are spiders set in amber, rock crystals or just shells picked up in London’s markets.

“When we go to Portobello in London I’d give them money and they’d go and buy something. They’d say, ‘I’d like this rock,’ and I’d say, ‘It’s too expensive,’ and they’d say, ‘Please?’ Well, how can I refuse the beautiful Noor?” he says, referring to his granddaughter.

We wander back upstairs. He admits he has spent all his money on art. “That’s what my wife complains about,” he says with a laugh.

One year Prince Charles visited Beit Al Qur’an and Kanoo displayed a collection of Bahraini pearls. He cheekily borrowed a necklace belonging to his wife – without asking her permission.

“We had dinner with Prince Charles later that week and before leaving he said to my wife, ‘Your husband has been very naughty,’ and told her what I did.’ She just said, ‘What can I do with him?’”

The museum is closed for the summer, so specialists can carry out conservation work on the manuscripts.

In the new Abdul Latif Kanoo Hall, the public will now be able to see some of the fruits of a lifetime’s collecting.

“What can I do with it all? Lock it in a room? I want the public to appreciate it. I want people to know we have some of the most beautiful collection of Islamic art in the world. The tip of the iceberg will go on display. The idea is to have exhibitions which will not be permanent. It will be for three, six months to a year perhaps. We will specialise only in rings, or perhaps textiles or glass. It will rotate so people can appreciate the contents. I personally choose what will be on display but of course I have people who help me.”

One of the rarest items is an unglazed clay jug made in Iran in the 9th or 10th century. It is in perfect condition and the workmanship gives a hint to the style of Islamic art that would develop later on.

A favourite is an extremely rare silk carpet which covered the floor of a Moghul ruler’s private quarters. “It is so small so we know it was used in his home. Otherwise they would have used a very big carpet.”

The museum and its contents will be an opportunity for Kanoo to show his gratitude for a life well lived, he says.

“I am a man who is simple, straightforward, loves everything around me. I don’t carry ill feeling, always I look at the positive side, not the negative side. I have achieved everything I want to achieve.”

He looks content.
by Matt Kwong DUbai, UAE