In 1870, the Egyptian minister for foreign affairs, Nubar Pasha, commissioned the French archaeologist Auguste Salzmann to write a report on the conservation of Arab monuments in Cairo. In it, Salzmann advocated, among other measures, the foundation of a museum of Arab art. Salzmann entrusted the German Julius Franz (1831–1915) with the task of finding a space to store the valuable artifacts collected from the ancient mosques of Cairo. However, these endeavours came to nothing for a while until, through the commitment of various individuals, the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe was established in 1881 by khedivial decree, and, as part of the Comité’s primary mission, the museum was installed in the ruined Al-Hakim Mosque (Volait, 2002, pp. 320–321). Julius Franz was entrusted with the management of the museum until he retired as administrator of the waqf in 1887. In 1892, the Comité put Max Herz in charge of the museum, and in 1901 he was appointed its director. In 1895, Herz wrote and published a catalogue of the museum’s collection (IG_161), based on an inventory made by Julius Franz as well as on an older manuscript catalogue written by himself (Herz, 1895, p. VI). In 1899–1902, a new, large building in the Bab al-Khalq area of Cairo was constructed to house the collections.

In 1952, the museum was renamed the Museum of Islamic Art: https://www.miaegypt.org

Leturcq, J.-G. (2015). The Museum of Arab Art in Cairo (1869–2014): A Disoriented Heritage? In F. Pouillon, J.-C. Vatin, After orientalism: critical perspectives on western agency and eastern re-appropriations (pp. 145–161). Leiden: BRILL.

Volait, M. (2002). Amateurs français et dynamique patrimoniale: aux origines du Comité de conservation des monuments de l'art arabe. In D. Panzac and A. Raymond (dir.), La France et l'Egypte à l'époque des vice-rois 1805–1882 (pp. 311–326). Le Caire: Institut français d'archéologie orientale.

Herz, M. (1895). Catalogue sommaire des monuments exposés dans le Musée national de l'art arabe. G. Lekegian & Cie. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6226753n