Songs of the world Eager to see the Louvre's new exhibition of
Safavid art? Best arrive early to beat the crowds, writes David
Tresilian in Paris The Louvre museum in Paris is presently
hosting two exhibitions of Islamic art, the first a major show
of the art of Iran under the Safavid dynasty evocatively
entitled "song of the world", le chant du monde, and the other a
selection of pieces from the collection of His Highness the Aga
Khan before it makes its way to Toronto for exhibition in the
Aga Khan Museum, which is scheduled to open in 2011. Both
exhibitions are very much worth seeing, the first spectacularly
so, but both necessitate arriving early in the day. Even outside
the summer season the Louvre still manages to attract enormous
crowds. The Safavid dynasty ruled Iran between the early 16th
and mid 18th centuries, and it was under the Safavids that the
country took the shape that we know today. Safavid rulers
established Shi'ism as the state religion, and they successfully
unified the various ethnic an