A DYNASTY REVISITED

About a millennia and a half after the construction of the Great Pyramids of Giza and a few centuries before the Sphinx lost its nose, a dynasty known as the Fatimid Caliphate populated parts of North Africa, Iran and Sicily, establishing Cairo as its capital while fostering the spread of art, culture, education and faith across large swaths of the world. A thousand years on, the dynasty finally reaches a corner of the world it left untouched, courtesy of the Aga Khan Museum’s The World of the Fatimids. Ceramics, marble reliefs and metalware from the period arrive in North America for the first time and, when paired with modern virtual reality technology, breathe new life into this ancient civilization. —MC