Henri Saladin’s Tunis et Kairouan was published in 1908 in Paris by Librairie Renouard, H. Laurens as part of the book series ‘Les Villes d’Art célèbres’. The text by Henri Saladin is structured in four chapters on Tunis and one chapter on Kairouan. It is accompanied by many monochrome reproductions of photographs. Having started with the historical background of the city of Tunis, Saladin gives a general description of the city, and then focuses on the built environment, looking at houses, palaces, and mosques; there follows a chapter on markets (les souks) and artists. The final chapter on Tunis gives information on the suburbs and the palaces outside of the city. The chapter on Kairouan focuses on its mosques, houses, and cemeteries.
Throughout the text Saladin repeatedly mentions stucco and glass windows and includes a lot of information on traditional craftsmanship.

In addition to mentions of the stucco and glass windows of certain buildings, such as a residential building near Halfaouïne Square in Tunis (Saladin, 1908, p. 76), the Palais de la Manouba in Tunis (p. 87), or the Mosquée du Barbier du Prophète in Kairouan (p. 136), Henri Saladin refers to the stucco and glass windows he commissioned for the Tunisian pavilion of the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889 (p. 75, see also IG_92). Rather than focussing on their production technique, Saladin explains the stucco and glass window’s stylistic development in the general context of architectural decoration in Tunis, the transfer of craftsmen, the preservation of heritage, and the contemporary status of traditional craftsmanship. Saladin’s Tunis et Kairouan can be read as a plea for maintaining the artists and craftsmen in Tunis and for preserving their traditions (Saladin, 1908, pp. 80–83).

The text does not offer any in-depth description of the typology of the windows. The only information in this regard is Saladin’s description of some designs drawn on paper and inherited from the ancestors of a Tunisian sculptor as a collection of interlaced motifs, scrolls, rosettes, and star-shaped polygons (Saladin, 1908, p. 76). This characterization fits the type of the stucco panel shown in one of the publication’s photographs (IG_249).