Mamluks: Legacy of an Empire, which is the first exhibition on this subject to be showcased in the United Arab Emirates, is also Louvre Abu Dhabi's first show to date devoted exclusively to Islamic art. It covers the full breadth and richness of almost three centuries of Near-Eastern history from the transregional and transnational perspective of the Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1517).

First presented in Paris in spring 2025 under the title Mamlouks,1250-1517, the exhibition's curators - Carine Juvin and Souraya Noujaim,the curator and director, respectively, of the Musée du Louvre's Department of Islamic Art - have presented fresh insights, based on recent studies. into this golden age of the Islamic world. Indeed, apart from architectural research, this period has not been the focus of such a review since 1981 when an exhibition was held in Washington, D.C., followed by a symposium in London in 2009, the proceedings of which were only published three years later. Thanks to Louvre Abu Dhabi's close relationship with the Musée du Louvre, and given the size and quality of the latter's collections. as well as, more broadly, the research on this period that has been carried out in France since the nineteenth century, the framework for this exhibition quickly took shape.