Abdulnasser Gharem's "Message/Messenger" sold for $842,500 at Christie's Dubai.

Christie's sale of contemporary Middle Eastern art in Dubai on Tuesday totaled almost $8 million and set auction records for a whopping 42 artists. The top lot was Saudi Arabian artistAbdulnasser Gharem's "Message/Messenger," a large installation incorporating a wood and copper dome resembling the Dome of the Rock. The crowded salesroom erupted into applause when the sale price reached $842,500 — over eight times its high presale estimate of $100,000.

Gharem's sculpture was part of a group of six works sold by the non-profit Edge of Arabia to benefit its educational program and art workshops in Saudi Arabia's schools and universities, Christie's said in a statement. Together, the six works sold for $1.05 million, some eight times their combined presale estimates of $135,000.

Other artist records at the sale include Egyptian Surrealist Abdul Hadi El-Gazzar (1925-1965), whose painting "Fishing" fetched $746,500, more than doubling its high estimate of $350,000, and the Iraqi artist Jewad Selim, whose 1941 wood sculpture "Standing Figure" achieved a price of $662,500 after a many-sided bidding war. One of the most contemporary pieces, Lebanese artist Ayman Baalbaki's "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom," a 2011 portrait of a veiled woman surrounded by a background of bright flowers, fetched $206,500 after an intense bidding war that launched it far above its presale estimate of $50-70,000. This sale also set an auction record for the artist, who was born in 1975.

Michael Jeha, managing director of Christie's in the Middle East, said in a statement that "we were delighted to add 42 records to the 318 already established by Christie's sales in the Middle East since 2006." Last fall, Christie's sale of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art netted $14 million and set a world record for a Middle Eastern artwork at auction when Mahmoud Said's 1929 painting "Whirling Dervishes" sold for $2.5 million.