The exhibition opens with an anonymous painting in which 16th-century Venetian diplomats, identifiable only by their simple dress in comparison with the rich garb of the locals, are being presented to a Mamluk leader.

ECONOMIST: Venice and the East

Muslim rulers, from the Abbasids in the eighth century to the Mamluk sultanate in Egypt and the Ottomans, developed the institution of military slavery to lessen nepotism and the internal conflicts created by tribal loyalties.

ECONOMIST: Theories of history

The exhibition overflows with surprising hybrids, such as a Mamluk carpet woven with a menorah from a synagogue in Padua and the first printed Koran, made in Venice for the Turkish market in the 15th century.

ECONOMIST: Venice and the East

Spend the day plumbing the depths of the city's Mamluk-era souq (market), which dates back to the 14th and 15th Centuries and is home to a plethora of historic madrassas (religious schools), mosques and khans (travellers' inns).

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Some 20, 000 pieces--including arms, armour, ceramics, earthenware, seals and decorative arts from ancient Persia, Mamluk Egypt and the Mughal emperors in India and Kuwait of the Bronze Age--were packed in crates and driven to the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad in a 17-lorry convoy.

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On that day the musketry and artillery of Selim the Grim, the Ottoman sultan, blasted to shreds the sword-wielding cavalry of Egypt's 250-year-old Mamluk sultanate, opening the way to 400 years of Ottoman Turkish rule over all but the peripheries of the Arab world.

ECONOMIST: The history of the Arabic-speaking peoples