Door

The calligraphy adorning Shangri La’s front door is mostly drawn from the Qur’an (Arabic: recitation), Islam’s holy book. The most evocative inscription is found in the top panel and concerns, appropriately, the crossing of thresholds: “Enter them in health, secure. God the magnificent has spoken the truth” (15:46). The small medallion in the center of the door includes the phrase “bismillah al-rahman al-rahim” (In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful), which opens the Qur’an and all but one of its chapters (surahs). Made in Egypt in c. 1900, the door’s overall format—consisting of horizontal registers above and below a large central roundel, with additional embellishment in the four corners—parallels book bindings of Egypt’s Mamluk period (1250–1517). It is therefore one of the DDFIA’s many examples of Mamluk Revival art (compare it to the dining room appliqués, 83.21, for example).