This monochrome photograph shows different furniture and architectural fragments exhibited at the Museum of Arab Art in the Al-Hakim Mosque in Cairo. It is part of an album entiteled Musée arabe à la Mosquée El-Hakem, au Caire with 25 photographs by Pascal Sébah. Photograph number 25 is described in the caption as general view of part of the Museum of Arab Art with the so-called Kalaoun chandelier in the background and on the left, six so-called Ghouri lamps (Mosque)(‘Vue générale d'une partie du Musée Arabe au fond, Lustre de Kalaoun. à gauche, 6 Lampes de Ghouri. (Mosquée.)’). In the background of the photograph, about six stucco and glass windows can be seen, though these are not the picture’s main focus and are only partially visible. They are of different typology, showing a geometrical pattern, flowers within a medallion, or a mosque with minarets and courtyard that combine a frontal view and a bird’s eye view.

The album Musée arabe à la Mosquée El-Hakem was part of František Schmoranz’s collection of photographs. On the first album page the name J. Franz-Bey is noted. This may indicate that it was given or sent to Schmoranz by Julius Franz, who in 1881 instigated to use the Fatimid Al-Hakim Mosque as a provisional location for the Museum of Arab Art (Asker, 2006, p. 1).
Neither the photograph nor the album is dated. However, since the Museum of Arab Art was not established in the Al-Hakim Mosque until 1881, the photograph must have been taken between 1881 and 1884, when a new building was erected in the courtyard to house the collection after 1884 (Asker, 2006, p. 1).

The photograph documents the provisional state of the museum by showing a depot-like situation rather than a clearly arranged exhibition setting. The windows were presented leaning against a wall amongst many other pieces, with the result that visitors would not have been able to perceive the effect of the light coming through the coloured glass.

Some of the stucco and glass windows in the photograph’s background correspond to windows published in 19th-century books. One window partially visible on the photograph shows two identical rectangular sections with a grid of diagonal lines and hexagons that are flanked by cypress trees, and quite large pieces of glass in the corners. It corresponds to a window published in 1884 in Gustave Le Bon’s La Civilisation des Arabes (fig. 208, p. 451, IG_77) as well as in 1897 in Lewis F. Day’s Windows. A Book About Stained & Painted Glass (p. 16, fig. 4).
Another window partially visible in the photograph shows under a round arch alternating fields of large arched perforations and rhombus-shaped fields with more delicately perforated stucco. Again, it corresponds to a window published in 1884 in Le Bon’s La Civilisation des Arabes (fig. 209, p. 452, IG_192) as well as in 1897 in Day’s Windows. A Book About Stained & Painted Glass (p. 18, fig. 5).
The caption in Le Bon’s publication says that the provenances of the windows are respectively a Cairene mosque and an Arab mosque, and that the photographs were taken by the author (‘Vitraux d’une mosquée du Caire; d’après une photographie de l’auteur’, p. 451; ‘Vitrail d’une mosquée arabe; d’après une photographie de l’auteur.’, p. 452). Most probably he took the photographs in the Museum of Arab Art and not in the mosques from where the windows were supposedly removed.