PARIS There is a moving attraction to great art that survives in bits and pieces. "Les Tresors fatimides du Caire" show at the Institut du Monde Arabe here until Aug. 30 is more like the broken mirror of a major culture than a "treasure" none remains from the golden age of Islamic Egypt, which started in 973 when the Fatimid ruler of North Africa, al-Mu'izz, entered Cairo and named the newly built city al-Qahira ("Cairo" to the Venitians) al-Mu'izziya. Even history is fragmentary. The chronicles of 11th- and 12th-century Egypt have vanished. Considerable uncertainty surrounds the emergence of the first leader of the Ismaili Shiite branch of Islam, 'Ubaydullah, some time in the 9th century, in the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzistan. How Ismaili propaganda spread to Eastern Iran and from there to India eludes us. So does the growth of Ismaili communities and the diffusion of their esoteric message in Syria where 'Ubaydullah sought refuge.

It reached North Africa. The Berbers of present-day Algeria responded enthusiastically, conquered the neighboring emirate of Qayruwan (or Kairouan), and in 910, 'Ubaydullah, again forced to move, arrived to be proclaimed Mahdi (Guided by God) and Caliph, in defiance of the Baghdad Caliphate.

What followed was even more astonishing. Eager to wrest wealthy Egypt from the nominal control of Baghdad, the Ismailis were favorably looked upon by the Egyptian establishment, which secretly negotiated with them. They marched eastward and their takeover of Cairo sent tremors rippling through the Middle East.

Fatimid rule, which ended in 1179, laid the foundations of Islamic art and culture in the Egypt we know. Of their monuments, the mosque of the Caliph al Hakim alone stands more or less in its entirety. Remains of the others, wood revetments particularly, allow glimpses into a moment of classical perfection.

Panels, saved as construction material when Sultan Qala'un built in 1284-1285 an architectural complex where the Fatimid palace once stood, reveal stunning figural carving in low relief. The spring in the movement of two gazelles on either side of a stylized motif and the calligraphic flow of the outline matching that of the abstract pattern are unsurpassed. They betray contacts with the Eastern Iranian world, home to Naser-e Khosrow, the Ismaili metaphysician and poet who went to Cairo and described the Fatimid palace.

Court scenes represent the Iranian type of wine banquet. In one, a princely character raises a beaker and clutches a bronze decanter while facing a female companion who raps a tambourine. In another panel, musicians play the other two traditional instruments of the wine banquet, the flute and the guitar.

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HUNTING and travel scenes a camel carrying the tent-like structure in which ladies of the court moved around are like stills from a film on the Eastern courts 1,000 years ago. The age-old symbol of the hawk pouncing on a bird discreetly points to the royal associations of the panel. The surface toning is lost but, failing that, an ivory-inlaid panel from Edfou with a large hawk clutching a hare gives some idea of lost splendor.

One would like to understand the transition that led to the stage represented by a famous wooden mihrab of the mid-12th century from the mosque of Sayyida Nafisa. A complex geometrical pattern zigzags around the shallow niche with an explosive vigor that contrasts with the narrow compact bands of square Kufic calligraphy framing it. The sophistication of this extraordinary school of architectural design implies a long evolutionary process of which nothing more is known.

The art of the object is equally intriguing. The development of a marvelous school of luster pottery has yet to be staked out. The diversity in design, quality, color (from pale gold to brown) is tremendous. There must have been several workshops, some with close ties to a court atelier of book painting.

The scene of a trainer with his cheetah, or the griffin striding across the surface of another bowl bear witness to its impact. The painter of the griffin must have been a skilled artist the fine hatching on the chest in short strokes done with a reed pen are typical of the draftsman's craft. Powerful personalities can be sensed behind the anonymity of many pieces. The artist who painted a musician playing the two-stringed guitar chose to crush the tip of his brush laden with golden color to give him a truculent expression.

Signatures can raise rather than answer questions. One "Muslim," presumed to be the same man as "Muslim ibn al Dahhan," is so versatile that one wonders whether he did not, in the kindness of his heart, append his name to the work of esteemed disciples.

The same artists probably worked in various media. A glass fragment is painted on the underside with a leaping gazelle strikingly reminiscent of a gazelle on one of the bowls signed Muslim. The tray and the bowl may not have been decorated by the same hand, but they surely came out of the same workshop. The catalogue ignores that point.

Metalwork does not come out very well, in part perhaps because it is not well known. Not as rare as the catalogue suggests, it is widely scattered, often inaccessible and, like pottery or glass, plagued by commercial looting few pieces ever seem to come out of archaeological excavations. One sensational discovery is the silver casket to the name of the vizier Sadaqa ibn Yusuf, in office between 1044 and 1047, which belongs to the San Isidoro Museum in Leon, Spain. That alone would justify seeing the show. Regrettably the highly important silver mirror in the Benaki Museum in Athens is missing. Could this be because the exhibition budget was drastically cut at the 11th hour?

Rock crystal adds some glittering uncertainties to the show. A 10th century ewer in the Victoria & Albert Museum to the name of the "Imam al 'Aziz bi'llah" represents the art in its grandest form but a shallow tray from Venice with a shape and pattern found in Iranian art is not particularly likely to be Egyptian. Nor is a small cylindrical "flask" from the Victoria & Albert, the function of which was not recognized. This is a kohl container (sormedan in Persian) of a shape frequently seen in bronze and cut glass from Iran.

There are other weaknesses. The cataloguing is sometimes careless. Commenting on the inscription of a funerary wooden tablet from Fostat, the entry notes that "the last two characters are Shiite Imams." And so are the first 10 characters, whose names have not been read. This is a mainstream Shiite invocation to the Twelve Imams. When mentioning "the many texts with a religious Ismaili content," Heinz Halm writes that they "only survived outside Egypt in the Ismaili communities of Syria, Yemen, India and Pakistan." Not quite. There is a large and early body of Ismaili literature from Iran, in Persian and Arabic.

These deficiencies are made up for by great ideas. The presentation of fragmentary Hebrew pages from the Old Synagogue geniza (or repository for discarded sacred texts) in Cairo and of a 12th-century Gospel in Coptic, reveals remarkable calligraphy in scripts other than Arabic, highlighting a fundamental cultural feature cutting across creeds. The display is mostly beautiful in its spartan austerity. No one should miss this show, on a theme never dealt with before.

The exhibition reopens at the Kunst-historisches Museum in Vienna on Oct. 19 and runs through Jan. 31.