An Islamic symphony: David Khalili talks about his collection: Abu Dhabi is hosting the most comprehensive exhibition of Islamic art ever staged in the Middle East. It is drawn solely from the great collection of David Khalili, who explains to Susan Moore how it has been put together like a piece of music

Apollo, March, 2008 by Susan Moore

David Khalili puts most collectors to shame. In an age in which so many rich men call themselves collectors and seem more interested in displaying their wealth than the art they have acquired through it, Khalili has done rather more than simply raise a paddle in the saleroom. During the almost 40 years in which he has been buying works of art--his collection now runs to some 25,000 pieces, including the world's largest and most comprehensive holding of Islamic art in private hands--he has pursued a policy of acquisition, conservation, exhibition and publication.

'To be a collector you need time, patience, knowledge, understanding and passion, and a feel for colour, form and shape. But that is only the first step,' Khalili tells me: 'You have to make sure you give each object its identity--so you research it--but you only make that identity permanent by publishing it and you give an object life by showing it.' We meet in the palm-fringed Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, on the eve of the opening of the latest--and largest--show drawn from the collection: 'The Arts of Islam'.

The exhibition is, astoundingly, the first major comprehensive display of Islamic art ever seen in the Middle East, as well as the largest Islamic show staged anywhere. An extended version of a show staged at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney last year, it has--revealingly--been chosen by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage as the exhibition to launch Abu Dhabi's entry onto the international arts exhibition circuit. Under the patronage of HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, it marks the 'soft opening' of the extraordinary, visionary cultural initiative of Saadiyat Island, just off the coast, which will transform the capital of the United Arab Emirates into an architecturally thrilling global cultural hub. The first of its museums, which include Frank Gehry's outpost of the Guggenheim, Jean Nouvel's Louvre Abu Dhabi, Tadao Ando's maritime museum, Foster Partners' Sheikh Zayed National Museum, as well as a performing arts centre designed by Zaha Hadid, are set to open in 2012-13.

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To date, Ottoman art from the Khalili Collection has been exhibited in Geneva, London and Jerusalem, as well as 13 American museums. Decorative arts from Meiji-period Japan in the collection have similarly toured Europe, the us and Japan; the collection of Swedish textiles has been shown in Malmo, while the Spanish damascened metalwork opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum before touring Spain. As to the task of researching and publishing the extensive collections, 17 out of the projected 27 volumes have been completed by a team of international scholars, and all have been published by the Khalili Family Trust's Nour Foundation. Documenting the collections has cost around 5m [pounds sterling]. As well as a chair in Islamic art and architecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, Khalili has also endowed the Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East at the University of Oxford.

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What has become a vast and highly focused enterprise sprang from modest roots. 'I had no idea what I was doing when I began collecting,' muses Khalili. With characteristic linguistic flourish he continues: 'I was a dreamer. I started off with a pack of seeds thinking I might have a nice garden. I had no idea it would grow into a forest.' He could also never have imagined the part this forest would come to play in furthering the understanding between East and West. However, his early life provided a key, for Nasser David Khalili grew up a Jew in a Muslim country. He was born in 1945 in Isfahan, Iran, into a dynasty of antiques dealers, and from the age of eight would accompany his father on buying expeditions. In 1967 he left for New York to take a degree in computer science. He spent a great deal of time looking at Islamic material in museums and began to deal, keeping the best objects for himself. After he met his future wife, Marion, he moved to London in 1978, where he began channelling profits into property. He gave up dealing long ago (and took a PhD in Qajar lacquer), but his acumen in buying both art and property has propelled him up the world's rich lists.

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Khalili is nothing if not prescient. When he began buying Islamic art in the 1970s it was inexpensive and there were few rivals. Serious buyers could be counted on one hand: Sheikh Nasser Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah of Kuwait; the David Collection in Copenhagen; London-based Edmund de Unger; Kuwaiti Jasim al-Homaizi; and the Iranian oil magnate Hashem Khosrovani. Prices were brought still lower by the Iranian revolution in 1979 and a dip in the Turkish art market, and Khalili bought deeply--and discreetly. The fabulously rich Sultan of Brunei, whom he has advised, entered late into the fray, as did Sheikh Saud al-Thani of Qatar, whose high-profile, multi-million-pound spending sprees sent prices for Islamic art spiralling in the mid '90s.