Over the course of five decades, Professor Sir Nasser David Khalili has assembled eight of the world’s most important collections of art. Together they consist of over 35,000 objects, with each collection providing an exhaustive account of its subject. In acquiring, conserving, researching, exhibiting, publishing and digitising these collections, Sir David has contributed, significantly yet unostentatiously, to numerous fields of scholarship and in the process helped foster a greater understanding of the world’s traditions. One of these eight collections – Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage – was compiled not only on the basis of its intrinsic aesthetic merit, but principally as a means of telling a complete visual story of Hajj and the importance of the sanctuaries of Mecca and Medina.