Few exhibitions can lay claim to robes from Kazakhstan, portraits from Qajar Persia, diamond-encrusted tables from India and metalwork from Afghanistan.
Yet that is only a part of a dazzling range currently on display in the Hermitage Rooms at Somerset House, off the Strand in central London.
The exhibition, which continues through to August 22, spans more than a millennium and includes pieces from across the Islamic world - from Central Asia to Moorish Spain.
"Most of the best Islamic objects from the Hermitage are included, and the forte of our exhibition is the Iranian part because we have a lot of very famous Iranian objects from different periods," said curator Anton Pritula.
The exhibition combines the collections of the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and of the private British collector David Khalili, a billionaire eager to showcase the artistic achievements of the Muslim world.
It is called "Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands," a title meant to emphasise both the religious theme and, perhaps, a lack of European awareness in Islamic art.
"This is the most representative Islam exhibition ever in Western Europe," said Pritula. "It is also the only one open at the moment, as the Islamic exhibitions at the British Museum and the Hermitage are both currently closed for restoration work."
The vast range of artistic styles and eras includes the earliest surviving Islamic object in metal, a bronze eagle traced to 8th-century Mesopotamia, as well as 19th-century portraits from Iranian artists who studied in Europe.
"One of the highlights is the great number of pieces of metalwork," Pritula said.
"The Iranian and Persian jewellery is unique because most didn't survive, but so is a rock crystal lamp probably made in Mesopotamia in the tenth or eleventh century and renovated in Europe in the late 16th century."
The exhibition focuses on two themes: art in the worship of God and art which exalted magnificent leaders of the day - leaders known by Muslims as "God's shadow on earth".
One recurring tendency is a desire to imitate, as the Abbasid Caliphate tried to resurrect the court grandeur of Ancient Persia, or as 18th- and 19th-century Qajar Persia adapted Western livery to its own forms.
The first of the Somerset House exhibition rooms features Koranic writing in Kufic and other, more cursive scripts. The book of the Prophet is so important in Islam that Muslims describe themselves as "people of the book."
Figural illustration was considered inappropriate for religious architecture and writings. Instead, frontispieces and chapter headings in copies of Islam's holiest text combine intricate arabesques with rich colours.
The exhibition turns next to metal work, often 3-D models of birds from Persia and Mesopotamia which once held water inside. The water was poured out through the beak for hand-washing.
Also on display are carpets from India and Turkey, and even an enamelled glass lamp from Egypt.
Two 13th-century bronze trays from Mesopotamia show, respectively, Buddhist influences in the use of haloes and Christian borrowings in the pictorial telling of stories.
The final two rooms emphasise outside contacts and influence. A 17th-century princely robe depicts a hopeless love-story in which a victim of unrequited love can finally only wander through the desert, befriending the animals.
Next up is Mughal splendour. A painting depicts the Timurid line in two seated rows. Timur sits cross-legged at their head, like a portly grandfather.
Two portraits show wives of India's Fath Ali Shah. "In fact he had over a hundred wives in his harem. It is also certain that he had more than a thousand children," Pritula said.
From the Middle Ages, Europe began to use objects from the Islamic world to house Christian relics, and the final piece is Fath Ali Shah's emblem for his Order of the Lion and the Sun, which adapted an Iranian symbol to the forms of European pageantry.
Thus the exhibition builds a narrative of cultural rapprochement, although the range of eras and cultural origins risks flummoxing unschooled viewers.
Pritula and others hope that its breadth will not only dispel myths about a stagnant Muslim culture, but also grow Western interest in Islamic art and architecture.
"It is important to make people be more tolerant towards Islamic culture," he said. "Most people ... have no idea that Islamic culture created many masterpieces and made a great contribution to world sciences and arts."
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