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ver the course of nearly 50 years, Prince Sadruddin and Princess Catherine Aga Khan managed to amass quite the collection of Indian and Islamic paintings. The couple boasted everything from paintings and manuscripts to drawings and miniatures, spanning the 16th to 19th centuries and each of indelible quality. On October 28, 2025, the Aga Khan collection broke records at auction, becoming the highest-value sale of South Asian art across any category in history.

Hosted by Christie’s in London, the auction gathered 95 works from the Aga Khan collection, including art produced by such celebrated figures as Dust Muhammad, Basawan, Ghulam Ali Khan, Bishan Singh, and Reza Abbasi. Prince Sadruddin, who was the younger son of Sultan Sir Mohammad Shah, originally began collecting these works in the 1960s, but his efforts only ramped up in earnest once he married Princess Catherine in 1972. Up through the 1990s, the royal couple assembled what Christie’s calls “exquisite examples of textiles, rugs, and paintings from Persia and India,” as well as artworks from the Pahari hills and the Deccan and Safavid courts, selected for their “beauty and symbolism.”

But according to Edward Wilkinson, Christie’s global head of Indian, Himalayan, and Southeast Asian Art, a collection of this caliber would be virtually impossible to create today. This is in part due to the sheer volume of Indian and Islamic art coming to market following World War II, when British colonialists and Armenian and European dealers were beginning to disperse their collections en masse. In a market abounding with rare works from an overlooked region, Prince Sadruddin thrived, quickly building one of the world’s most valuable collections of Indo-Persian art.

“In those days, Islamic art was a neglected field, so you could pick up a good page of Kufik calligraphy, an Islamic script, for less than $100,” Prince Sadruddin once recalled.

That’s precisely why the Aga Khan collection caused such a splash when it finally headed to the auction block last month. Taken in its entirety, the collection garnered a total of £45.8 million (about $61 million) in sales, significantly outperforming auction pre-estimates of £8 million (about $7.9 million). Notable highlights from the Christie’s auction include Mihr Chand’s Colonel Polier’s nautch, depicting the eponymous Swiss-French adventurer during his romp through India in the late-18th century; several highly detailed paintings from the Fraser Album, which was commissioned by William and James Fraser of the East India Company; stunning Mughal art from 14th-century Persia; and illustrations inspired by the Hindu epic poem Rasikapriya.

Topping the auction, however, was A Family of Cheetahs in a Rocky Landscape, produced by Basawan around 1575-80. The painting showcases several cheetahs resting beneath an enormous tree, flanked by lush grass and red rocks. The composition ultimately snagged £10.2 million (about $13.6 million), making it the most expensive classical Indian or Islamic painting ever sold at auction. For Wilkinson, A Family of Cheetahs is only one of many exceptional inclusions in the Aga Khan collection.

“We’ve grown used to using the collection as a touchpoint for exceptionalism,” Wilkinson explains, “so this is a big moment in auction history, and highly anticipated. There is no better collection anywhere in the world. Anyone with an eye will fall in love with [these paintings].”

To learn more about the auction, visit the Christie’s website.

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Sources: Paintings from the personal collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan: ‘Anyone with an eye will fall in love with them’; Exceptional Paintings from the Personal Collection of Prince & Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan; Led by £10.2m cheetah miniature, Aga Khan collection breaks all-time record for South Asian art sale; Last personal treasures of Aga Khan’s great-uncle go on sale