£ 4.5 million for the "lesson of the Koran"

Turkish artist Osman Hamdi Bey's £ 4,640,100 painting was sold at Sotheby's in London, eclipsing many of the paintings by European Orientalist artists put up for sale in the so-called Najd collection at the same auction.

Hamdi Bey outweighed the sales of paintings by his French artist Jean-Leon Jérôme.

This interest coincides with a wave of interest in the arts of the Islamic world.