The term ?Shangri-La? means a place of peace and prosperity. In Hawaii, the term Shangri-La refers to an Islamic style mansion located at the capital city of Honolulu.

Shangri La was built by Doris Duke and this mansion is the utopian source for Islamic art in the islands. In cooperation with the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the mansion serves as a museum for artifacts pertaining to Islamic art and culture.

The museum?s collections include decorative arts, furnishings and architectural elements from several places with Islamic influences such as Morocco, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Spain, and India. One of the museum?s gallery is called the Playhouse, which is a scaled-down version of the Chehel Setun in Iran. The mansion-museum is also notable for its outdoor landscape design that blends the ?formality of an Indian Mughal garden? with the ?intimacy of Hawaiian fishpond and scenic marine vista of the Pacific Ocean?.