In its architecture can be found the footprint of decades of American and European influence stamped onto what was originally a small fishing and pearling village on the shores of the Arabian Gulf.

To appreciate what Pei has accomplished, it is important to understand some of the historic and political influences of these times. Pei has captured this moment in time, in his fine Museum of Islamic Art, commissioned by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Hamad bin Khalifa. Qatar today feels itself at the same fulcrum of a new world order, in which Arab culture is re-ascendant, perhaps in a more compact form, but well-suited to this tiny desert emirate.

Under his rule from Ar Raqqah, the Arab diaspora began, eventually claiming the present day Gulf states and extended along the north coast of Africa to Spain, the very frontier of Europe. He stood at the very epicenter of a civilized world, the crossroads of Eastern and Western culture. Harun al-Rashid, the 8 th century Abbasid caliph, presided over the full flowering of the Arabic empire and embodied its noblest aspirations.

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