The delegation includes Qatar Charity's Chairman of Board of Directors, Sheikh Hamad bin Nasser bin Jassem Al Thani, HE Faisal Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, Member of Qatar Charity Board, Mr. Yousef Bin Ahmed Al Kuwari . Unreliable citations may be challenged or deleted. (Qatar Investment Authority, one of the world’s largest sovereign-wealth funds, worth $300 billion), or the business activities of the emir’s family. In the 1930s the nizam of Hyderabad was considered the richest man in the world. “He has joined the ranks of the great collectors,” says Haidar. To illustrate his point, he calls for staff members to appear with a few of his favorite items.
“Unlike the great country houses, these London houses had no economy of their own and required vast outside fortunes to support them,” Stourton writes. India’s ruling nobility used their jeweled objects—which were frequently given as lavish gifts—to magnify their royal glory and enhance their prestige, as well as to foster alliances inside and outside India. I’m really impressed by how many great things he has been able to buy in a short period.”Seemingly unlimited cash must help, but Sheikh Hamad appears to be propelled more than anything by incredible enthusiasm and passion for art and antiques. Few of them are in India anymore. “It was so exquisite and divine, but all so refined and in such good taste.”Being something of a present-day maharaja himself, it’s fitting that Sheikh Hamad felt an affinity for these magnificent imperial objects. In 2011, Al Thani began studying in Los Angeles, California at Al Thani received a bachelor's and master's degree from USC. When I was seven years old I would run all through the Louvre, looking at objects. Qatari sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al-Thani, 33, has restored its 44,000 square feet of lost glory, emerging as a major collector and popular host to London’s elite, including the Queen. As a result of economic imperatives and the devastation of the Blitz, only a handful of examples of this building type remain out of the hundreds that once stood, and these have long since been carved up and converted into apartments, embassies, offices, clubs, and the like.Dudley House, at 100 Park Lane—the London residence of the Ward family since the 1730s—suffered such a fate, too, but thanks to a Croesus-like fortune originating in the Persian Gulf, it has recently been bought and restored to perhaps even more than its original glory.After a painstaking six-year refurbishment, the 44,000-square-foot, 17-bedroom domicile—which features an 81-foot-long picture gallery and a 50-foot ballroom—is London’s only surviving aristocratic palace that still functions as a private, single-family home; reportedly, it is also Britain’s most costly private residence, valued in the neighborhood of $400 million, which presumably does not include the tab for the extraordinary art and antiques that have been installed inside. For nearly every magnificent country-house estate in England, there was once an equally palatial residence in London; it was de rigueur during the 18th and 19th centuries for wealthy aristocratic families to maintain a metropolitan mansion, too. “He said, ‘I have a runner.’ I said, ‘Since when?’ I was shocked!”Fahad soon persuaded his big brother to establish Qatar Racing, which now has more than 300 horses in training all over the world, and Qatar Bloodstock, which owns more than 150 stallions, broodmares, and foals. According to By the turn of the century, the exorbitant cost of running an establishment as grand as Dudley House became prohibitive even for a still-wealthy family. “Mama gets along very well with Prince Charles and Prince Philip,” Hamad adds.“His entertaining could not be more perfect,” says Lily Spencer-Churchill, the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, who, as châtelaine of the 187-room Blenheim Palace, knows about these things. His elaborate dinner parties are among the hottest tickets in town. “So, I said to my parents, ‘I think we should have a family seat in London,’ ” he recounts. “I thought, How wonderful if I could own one such piece,” he remembers feeling then. “I had seen old photos of it in a book a few years before,” he recounts during an afternoon chat in one of the house’s reception rooms. You have to know where it is, so not to cross it. “If I had to choose one above all the others I’d choose this jade dagger,” he says as he fondles an exquisite weapon and then passes it to me.
Please help this article by looking for better, more reliable sources. Geographically, its investments span from the Middle East and Europe to the U.S. and the Far East.QIPCO has no connections to the Q.I.A. He just does things in the style of the house—in the way you saw things done up until the war.”“He has the taste of the gods, by which I mean there is no vulgarity,” adds Anson, who has planned numerous events with Sheikh Hamad over the past three years. “He’s bought top, top things.”As remarkable as the quality of his holdings is the speed at which he acquired them, adds Haidar: “He just started his collection five years ago. So sad for me.”Gorgeous as these items are, they also have great cultural and political significance.