Sharjah's museums compared: Islamic Civilization, Archaeology and Maritime

The short answer

These three museums are run by the same body, the Sharjah Museums Authority, but they answer different questions. Pick by subject:

• Islamic faith, science and art across the Islamic world: Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization, whose page describes more than five thousand objects from the 1st to the 14th century AH (the 7th to the 20th century AD).[1]
• Sharjah before Islam: Sharjah Archaeology Museum, whose page says it holds the artefacts found in Sharjah since excavations began in 1973, from the Stone Age to the rise of Islam.[2]
• Life at sea: Sharjah Maritime Museum at Al Khan, beside Sharjah Aquarium, covering fishing, pearl diving, dhows and trade voyages.[3]

None of the three is on the authority's Heritage Joint Ticket, which covers five other museums.[6] Each has its own single-museum ticket, and two have joint tickets of their own, described below.

Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization

The authority tells the building's story in two moves. The collection first opened as the Islamic Museum in the Heritage Area on 6 November 1996; it was then moved into the former Souq Al Majarrah, which had opened as a market in 1987, and reopened under its present name on 6 June 2008. The page places it on the Al Majarrah waterfront in the Heart of Sharjah and calls it the first museum of its kind in the UAE.[1]

The permanent galleries run in two directions. The Abu Bakr Gallery of Islamic Faith introduces the five pillars and the rituals of Hajj and Umrah, with a model of the Ka'ba, original parts of its covering, the Kiswah, and rare historical Qur'an manuscripts; the Ibn Al Haitham Gallery of Science and Technology uses models and panels on astronomy, medicine, navigation, chemistry and engineering by Muslim scholars. Four numbered galleries then carry the art chronologically, from early pottery, metalwork and manuscripts through Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal works to 19th- and 20th-century crafts and weapons, with early Islamic coins in the atrium and temporary exhibitions twice a year.[1]

The page counts its own rooms two ways: one paragraph says the collection is displayed in six distinct galleries, and the next section says the museum comprises seven galleries and display areas.[1] The page does not explain the difference.

Sharjah Archaeology Museum

The Archaeology Museum opened in 1993 and moved to its current building, in the Al Abar area, on 10 May 1997. It is the narrowest of the three in place and the widest in time: the page says excavation reports show people settled in Sharjah for more than 125,000 years, and the displays run from the Stone Age to the rise of Islam, with coins, jewellery, pottery, weapons and models of tombs and houses. It also traces trade links from the Indus Valley to the Mediterranean and the first forms of writing in the area, which it dates to more than 2,500 years ago.[2]

Since May 2022 it has had a Little Archaeologist Hall for children aged 5 to 12, which the authority describes as the first interactive archaeology hall in the UAE.[2]

The page says the museum contains all the archaeological artefacts discovered in Sharjah, and among the highlights it shows is a golden bridle of 150 BC to 200 AD found in Mleiha, buried with the remains of a horse and a camel.[2] Mleiha, a separate site in the Emirate of Sharjah, has its own archaeological centre: Shurooq, the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority, says Mleiha National Park has an archaeological centre with exhibits from prehistoric tools to Bronze Age tombs of the Umm an-Nar period.[8] XTOUR does not know how finds are divided between the two. Mleiha has its own guide: Mleiha Archaeological Centre and national park.

Sharjah Maritime Museum

The Maritime Museum first opened in 2003 in the Heritage Area and reopened in a new building at Al Khan on 7 June 2009, next to Sharjah Aquarium. Its subject is how the sea shaped the lives of Sharjah's people: traditional fishing methods, sea songs, pearl diving and trading voyages, the wooden dhows used for all three, and Arabian pearls. Among its pieces the authority lists a pearl found on a coastal cemetery site in Sharjah, which it describes as one of the oldest known and estimates at seven thousand years old.[3] The authority's history-route page calls it the first maritime museum in the Arabian Gulf devoted to the UAE's, and particularly Sharjah's, maritime history.[7]

Tickets, as the authority's pages list them

Each of the three pages publishes its own single-museum entry fees, and the three fee tables are identical.[3][2][1] The differences are in what each can be combined with:

• the Archaeology Museum's page lists a joint ticket with Sharjah Science Museum;[2]
• the Maritime Museum's page lists a joint ticket with Sharjah Aquarium, and the authority's page for that ticket says tickets are available at the two venues;[4][3]
• the Museum of Islamic Civilization has no joint ticket on its page, but lists the month of Ramadan among its free-entry days, which the other two do not.[1]

XTOUR does not restate the fees or the hours; each page lists its own, with separate Ramadan hours, and the authority's pages are the place to check them.

Al Mahatta Museum, the aviation museum

Al Mahatta is the authority's aviation museum. The authority says it opened in 2000 in the first airport in the region, built in 1932 and used in the 1930s as a staging post on commercial routes from Britain to India. On 11 October 2026 its page said: "The museum is closed until further notice."[5] The authority's history route still lists it alongside the Archaeology and Maritime museums.[7]

Choosing between them

XTOUR's reading of the three pages: the Museum of Islamic Civilization is the one whose subject reaches well beyond the UAE; the Archaeology Museum is the one about the ground under Sharjah itself; the Maritime Museum is the one about the coast and the pearl trade, and the only one of the three sold on a joint ticket with the aquarium beside it.[3][2][1] The authority's own "Exploring Sharjah's History" route combines the Archaeology and Maritime museums with the fort, Bait Al Naboodah and the Heritage Museum, but not with the Museum of Islamic Civilization.[7] For the five museums on the Heritage Joint Ticket, see the Heart of Sharjah museums and the joint ticket.

XTOUR plans these museums from the Sharjah destination. It has no travel times between them and has not checked their accessibility.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not know when Al Mahatta Museum will reopen, how the Archaeology Museum and the Mleiha centre divide Sharjah's finds beyond the Mleiha pieces the museum names, or what the authority's online shop sells. XTOUR does not restate opening hours, which it has not verified.