CLEVELAND, Ohio - By asking the right art dealer the right question at the right time, the Cleveland Museum of Art has acquired what it believes to be the only imperial Iranian tent in an American art museum.

The tent, a legacy of the 19th-century Qajar Dynasty, is inscribed with the name of Muhammad Shah, who ruled from 1834 to 1848 over a territory slightly larger than present-day Iran that stretched into portions of present-day Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Art handlers at the Cleveland Museum of Art rigged a temporary installation of the museum's newly acquired 19th-century Persian imperial tent in the museum's textiles storage area for study.

The circular tent measures roughly 12 feet high and 13 feet in diameter, and is made of wool embroidered with silk, flowers, vines and exotic birds.

When viewed from inside the tent, the embroidered panels create the effect of being enveloped in a warm and cozy paradise garden.

The tent's entire roof of faded red cloth is intact, and it has retained seven of the 14 side panels that once served as a circumferential wall. It features a flounced rim with characteristic diagonal stripes of color.

After figuring out how to rig the tent with the requisite number of poles and a minimum number of support cables, the museum plans to display it publicly for the first time in a special focus exhibition for 11 months in its textile gallery, starting July 19.

"I think it's a spectacular piece, which, when it's installed, will provide a wonderfully immersive experience for the visitor," said museum director William Griswold.

"The visitor will be able to walk into and under it and be able to see the very richly embroidered interior of the tent," he said.

Louise Mackie, the museum's curator of textiles and Islamic art, said that collections in Turkey have many examples of Turkish tents from the Ottoman Empire, but that Persian tents are extremely rare.

She and Griswold said that to their knowledge, the only other American museum with a Persian tent is the St. Louis Art Museum. That tent, a gable-roofed design held up by two poles, is not imperial, Mackie said.

The Cleveland museum acquired its tent in London from art dealer Francesca Galloway, who specializes in Indian painting and courtly objects, and Islamic and European textiles.

Mackie said she called Galloway on a hunch to ask whether the dealer could help the museum fill a gap in 19th-century Persian textiles.

Mackie said the dealer told her: "I'm about to get a tent."

The museum, knowing that Persian tents are extremely rare, acquired it.

Now temporarily rigged with supporting cables and metal brackets pinned to the walls of the museum's textiles storage area, the tent is being studied to figure out how best to rig it in the textiles gallery.

At Islamic courts, tents were often viewed as symbols of wealth and power, Mackie said. Cleveland's tent was intended for ceremonial purposes, although royal tents were also used during military campaigns, imperial travel or as lavish gifts.

The tent's one-time owner, Muhammad Shah, reigned over a territory vastly diminished in size since the height of the ancient Achaemenid Empire, which stretched from parts of present-day Turkey, Greece and Libya to portions of present-day Russia and China.

Muhammad was the son and successor to Fath 'Ali Shah, who tried unsuccessfully twice to expand Persian territory east into Afghanistan and to capture the trading city of Herat, according to the website of the Iran Chamber Society.

After Muhammad's short reign, his son, Naser o-Din Shah, who reigned until 1896, embraced Western science and technology and began the country's modernization, according to the website.

Mackie said the museum's tent was made in Rasht, a traditional center of silk trade and high-quality textiles in northwest Iran near the Caspian Sea.

When asked what it means to see an object from Iran at a time when the United States is negotiating a delicate agreement with the country over its nuclear program, Griswold said: "I would like to think that this provides our visitors an opportunity to reflect on one of the world's greatest and most influential cultures."

He said the tent "is emblematic of a remarkable civilization ... and has a great wow factor. It's a remarkable survival and a spectacular object."