Tales of the Unexpected: Qatar and Japan

For travellers, these are indeed Tales of the Unexpected, and over the coming weeks we will be turning the spotlight on further examples of this much-cherished genre including the extraordinary Prada store found in the village of Marfa in the middle of a Texan desert, the almost completely unexplored ruins in the old Roman settlement of Timgad in Algeria and the artistic haven that is Fogo Island off the coast of Newfoundland.

We will be looking for more such treasures, and hope that you, too, will share with us a few discoveries of your own.

A Qatar castle filled with a sheikhs curios

Surrounded by shiny skyscrapers, five-star hotels and artificial islands, it feels like there is little here in Qatar of any great age; after all, this is a country which has seen most of its development happen in the last 20 years. Yet one man here is trying to document and preserve an idea of history. Sheikh Faisal, a close relative of the ruling emir, is a successful businessman here although his hobby, as he calls it or his obsession, as others might is less well known.

Half way across the peninsula that is Qatar, resembling a thumbs-up in the Persian Gulf, is the Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani Museum. When its namesake built this modern-day fort 15 years ago, it was the only interruption in an otherwise blank canvas of a landscape. Today it stands next to a recently completed superhighway on the outskirts of the hazy sprawling capital, Doha.

Turning off the main road, I approach the museum down a long avenue of dusty trees. At the end of the road is an imposing crenellated fortress.

It feels even bigger on the inside with a floor space of five football pitches and that is just as well because there are 15,000 objects on display from a half-century of amassing, labelling and hoarding.

Sheikh Faisal describes how he travels all over the world to add to his collection: visiting the auction houses of London and Paris; dealers offices in Istanbul and Miami, the markets of Sanaa and Tunis. Certainly there are treasures among the cluttered galleries, from Lydian coins to Umayyad pottery to an entire Syrian house brought brick-by-brick from Damascus old town and reconstructed here. The section on Qatari heritage which may be the greatest draw for tourists has a whole flotilla of traditional fishing boats displayed in giant indoor pits; there is a traditional Bedouin tent, and antique weighing scales used in the local pearling industry. There are also oddities such as the Sudanese dagger sheath made from a desiccated crocodile; a gold AK-47, a gift from Saddam Hussein; and the suit he wore for his ill-fated trial.

But the museum also houses the ordinary: there are cabinets of the sheikhs exercise books from his school days, as well as boarding cards from trips in his youth; in the gallery displaying currencies from around the world, there is a selection of modern British banknotes, which I could have pulled out of my wallet.

Ive been a collector since I was a little boy, Sheikh Faisal tells me. I want to keep everything. I still remember a toy car I had when I was small that a friend of my mothers picked up and gave to her son. I still think about not having that car in my collection.

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Tales of the Unexpected: Qatar and Japan