This drawing shows the qibla wall of of the Mosque of Sultan al-Muʾayyad in Cairo. To the left, the pointed arch window located in the centre of the wall is duplicated in enlarged form. The window is divided by a horizontal band with an Arabic inscription. Above it a medallion with a second inscription is surrounded by a floral pattern. The lower field shows a sebka pattern (drawn only in the right corner).

Pascal Coste drew only half of the window and commented on the colouring: the plaster was white and the ground azure blue.

Between 1818 and 1827, Pascal Coste documented the buildings in Cairo extensively. The Sultan al-Muʾayyad Shaykh Mosque (818–24 AH / 1415–21 CE) was the first one to be documented by the French architect, and more than 30 drawings of the complex, made in 1822, are preserved (Volait, 1998, p. [3]). His plates, published in Architecture arabe ou Monuments du Kaire, mesurés et dessinés, de 1818 à 1826 (1837), show two different types of stucco and glass windows: the round-arch windows with star motifs in the courtyard (pl. XXX, IG_159) and the pointed arch windows with inscriptions in the qibla wall (pl. XXVIII). For the latter, the present drawing served as basis. In the plate, the windows are depicted with the same ornament, but in significantly less detail. In Coste’s coloured version of his book, the windows consist of white plaster and blue glass. However, without the specification ‘vitraux’ on the drawing, it would not be clear whether they were stucco and glass windows or merely stucco panels without glass.

Windows divided by a horizontal band with an inscription can be found in other mosques (see Dome of the Rock, IG_71; Mosque of Sultan Hasan, IG_202). For the exact type, with a medallion in the upper part and the sebka pattern below, no other specimens are known.