OXFORD UNIVERSITY is getting a large donation to set up a research center on the Middle East. The headline from the London Times is misleading: "Islamic studies gain �21/4m". The remit of the institution seems to be considerably broader. The article says:

OXFORD University has been given �21/4 million to ensure that no government cuts can ever harm its teaching of Islamic art and culture.

Professor Nasser Khalili, Britain�s most influential collector of Islamic art, has given the money to enable the university to set up a research centre for the art and material culture of the Middle East.

[...]

The donation will be used to increase the number of teaching staff, broaden research into pre-Islamic Iran, pre-Islamic Arabia and Jewish art, and safeguard the teaching at Oxford of minority languages such as Aramaic.

The centre will employ scholars with expertise on ceramics and metalwork, painting and iconography, textiles and carpets, archaeology, numismatics and the interaction between Christian and Muslim cultures in the medieval Mediterranean.

[...]

So the new centre (to open next year) will deal not only with Islam but more broadly with the "art and material culture of the Middle East." And also, it appears, Middle Eastern languages such as Aramaic. This is excellent news.