The most extensive display of modern and contemporary Arab art ever staged in Britain, possibly in the West, begins at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London today 9 September 2015], and runs, chronologically in four successive parts, until January 2017. All 100 works in this marathon exhibition hail from one privately owned collection in the Gulf which has a mission in these troubled times to share the beauty of Arab art with the world. The Sharjah-based Barjeel Art Foundation Collection, which numbers over 1,200 works by artists from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea dating from 1900 to the present day, has been built by Sheikh Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, commonly described as a journalist and commentator on Arab affairs but who also belongs to the ruling family in Sharjah and is chairman of a successful investment company.

Read More: An Arab Autumn Begins

The dealer in Islamic art Oliver Hoare is putting on a marvellously eclectic show of 250 objects, ranging from a Chinese winged rider in stone (5th-6th century AD), a marble emperor’s foot from the Roman empire, obsidian bell-stones from the Andes, erotic Japanese prints, a 1930s Italian baboon, Islamic manuscripts to Ottoman instruments. Most of the works are for sale at prices starting at about £500 to more than £1m, from May 6-June 26 at 33 Fitzroy Square in London. Hoare had a gallery in London in the 1980s and is well known for the swap he engineered in 1994 with Iran, when a 16th-century Persian manuscript, the famed “Houghton Shahnameh” was dramatically exchanged at Vienna airport for Willem de Kooning’s “Woman III” from the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

Read More: Pieces with Tales to Tell

“Most people from Edinburgh hate the festival,” admits Yuka Kadoi, as we tour her quietly impressive contribution to the world’s biggest arts event. “It’s too noisy.” The Edinburgh Fringe certainly does dominate Scotland’s capital in August, with many of the 3,000 performances taking place at buildings borrowed from the University of Edinburgh. This year, the university library is hosting a momentous event of its own, however, celebrating a significant anniversary for its most priceless asset. The World History of Rashid Al-Din was compiled 700 years ago, in 1314, “when Iran was under the Mongols,” explains Kadoi, the exhibition’s curator.

Read More: Edinburgh University Gives Visitors Rare Chance to See the 700-year-old The World History of Rashid al-Din

Over the years it’s been identified as an oriental box, a work basket, a document wallet and even a saddle bag. Now London’s Courtauld Gallery confidently believes one of its most prized possessions is really a 700-year-old handbag – probably the oldest in existence.

Read More: A Handbag? Courtauld Gallery Opens up Identity of 700-year-old Treasure

Post 1979 Iranian revolution artworks by 29 Iranian artists, many exhibiting in the UK for the first time, will be on display at The Brunei Gallery at SOAS, University of London from 16 January – 22 March 2014. Recalling The Future challenges assumptions about ‘Iranian’art. As Iranian artists in the 1960s and 70s increasingly combined signifiers of their local, national identity with formal approaches fit for the increasing modernity of their environment, this exhibition demonstrates artwork that radically shakes up the basic conception of the country’s modern canon.

Read More: Recalling the Future

Ferozkoh: Tradition and Continuity in Afghan Art, is the result of a collaboration between the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Doha, Qatar and students and teachers from the Turquoise Mountain Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture, in Kabul. The result is a striking exhibition that represents real social change. The exhibition will be on display at Leighton House Museum in London from 15 November 2013 until 23 February 2014 as part of both Qatar UK 2013 Year of Culture and the Nour Festival of Arts.

Read More: Unique Islamic Art Exhibition at Leighton House, London

As a successful artist in his own right, Sir Howard Hodgkin certainly has an eye for striking objects. So it comes as no surprise to learn that he’s amassed an his impressive collection of sought-after Indian paintings, some of which date back to the 16th century. Now he’s sharing the work for the first time in Wales during an exhibition which opens at National Museum Cardiff today [27 July, 2013].

Read More: Indian Treasures at National Museum Cardiff

During the run of Light From the Middle East, the much-heralded photography show at London’s V&A last year, the Syrian photographer Issa Touma was asked if he thought of his work as political. His answer was telling. “Everything in the Middle East can be political if you have censorship,” he said of his homeland and the harassment he has faced from the Assad regime. “They do not like the freedom I have, but they also do not have much choice. I exist in some way.”

Read More: Arab Identity in Political, Funny and Unforeseen Forms on Show in Liverpool

Trade routes have connected the major centres of civilisation in Europe and Asia since antiquity. These routes not only made the exchange of goods possible, but also fostered cultural exchanges between distant regions. The group exhibition, ‘Trade Routes’, on view at Hauser & Wirth’s Piccadilly gallery, presents a diverse picture of where these trade routes stand in today’s globalised society through the lens of 15 artists. The exhibition features video installations, sculptures and two-dimensional works by artists based in Africa, China, Europe, India, and the Middle East including Adel Abidin, Fatima Al Qadiri & Khalid al Gharaballi, Alighiero Boetti, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Subodh Gupta, Gülsün Karamustafa, Bharti Kher, Rachid Koraïchi, Lee Xe, Maha Malluh, Bettina Pousttchi, Hassan Sharif, Wael Shawky and David Zink Yi.

Read More: Trade Routes

Called The Mirror of Health: Discovering Medicine in the Golden Age of Islam, and curated by Professor Peter E Pormann from The University of Manchester, the exhibition shows how medical tradition developed in Europe and the Middle East. At its heart are newly researched manuscripts depicting the medical traditions that developed in the golden age of Islam from the 9th to the 17th centuries.

Read More: Islamic Medical Science Collection on View for First Time

An elderly Afghan woman holds a faded portrait of her son, killed in the Iran-Iraq war. A Palestinian woman rally driver prepares for her race, her red car surrounded by men. A child with amputated legs plays on the beach – he survived a cluster bomb. These arresting images are among many by Rawiya, the first all-women photographic collective to emerge from the Middle East. Rawiya is currently showcasing its first major exhibition in the UK at the New Art Exchange gallery in Nottingham.

Read More: Rawiya Exhibition in Nottingham

See also: Realism in Rawiya

Central Asia and the Caucasus is the latest region to pique the appetite of the art world. As falling auction prices for contemporary art from China, Turkey and the Middle East hint at satiation, salerooms and dealers are looking to this less-discovered territory as the next big thing.

Read More: Birth of a Power Bloc

Britain is, it seems, becoming the place to see Palestinian contemporary art. After exhibitions in Manchester and London in 2012 devoted to or with major representation of Palestinian artists, the capital has now upped the ante with the opening of P21, a gallery specializing in work by Palestinian artists or engaging with the theme of Palestine.

Read More: Palestinian Art Comes to London

The North East of England boasts a proud maritime and industrial heritage that has all but disappeared from today’s landscape along the River Tyne. Over the course of 100 years, thousands of seamen from Yemen settled in the small town of South Shields and made it their home. This multimedia exhibition, running through to March 22nd, 2013 at The Mosaic Rooms, London, features interviews with and portraits of 14 of these sailors, the last survivors of the first-generation who settled in South Shields.

Read More: Last of the Dictionary Men

Featuring more than sixty rare examples of 13th- to 18th- century Persian, Mughal Indian and Ottoman Turkish illustrated manuscripts from the Bodleian Library’s collection, Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond, celebrates the beauty of these texts, and the stories of human and divine love they tell. These magnificently illustrated works come from one of the richest periods in the history of the book and give a fascinating insight into the great artistic and literary culture of Persia and its timeless stories. The exhibition is at the Bodleian Library until April 28th, 2013.

Read More: Love and Devotion at the Bodleian Library