December 8


Ahlan from Qatar! Today is the eigth of December and we explored the Sheikh Faisal Museum with a few of our hosts. We all met at Middle East International School around 8 this morning and we headed off on the bus with Ustaz, Kristin and two MIS teachers, Ms. Lottie and Ms. Pagano. We got a bit lost on the way there as our bus driver didn’t know where to go and our GPS led us astray. Eventually, we made it. We waited for our tour guide in an enormous hall with these gorgeous ceilings covered in colorful criss-cross patterns and we mingled for a few minutes until we were told to leave our things in the hall and continue to the museum for our tour. Our guide gave us a brief history of Qatar and described the collection to us.
The entire collection is privately owned and collected by Shaikh Faisal! The collection is huge- from bright red Cadillac convertibles to camel saddles from the 19th century.
The tour guide emphasized the main functions of Islamic art - everything was meant to be high quality, highly detailed and practical. The amount of detail and work put into the art we saw today was absolutely insane.
There were engravings of tiny words on metal bowls and ceramic tiles shaped and painted by hand and then glazed. The entire museum was gorgeous and the stone it was built with was hand cut to give it the look of an old Middle Eastern building. It was an amazing experience and I would definitely go back to have a look around for myself.
- Fiona Malcarney
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