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IG_87: Book illustration: Moucharabié ancien à là légation de France au Caire
(MISC_IG_Saladin_Migeon_1907_IG_87)

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Title

‘Moucharabié ancien à la légation de France au Caire’

Type of Object
Dimensions
23.4 x 15.6 cm (page)
Artist / Producer
Saladin, Henri · Author
Gervais-Courtellemont, Jules · Photographer
Dating
1907
Research Project
Author and Date of Entry
Sarah Keller 2025

Iconography

Description

Fig. 105 in Henri Saladin and Gaston Migeon, Manuel d’art musulman, 1907, vol. 1, p. 156.
The photograph shows the oriel window with mashrabiyya in the mansion of Gaston de Saint-Maurice, which housed the French diplomatic mission in Cairo 1884–1937. In the upper part, a row of eight stucco and glass windows with floral motifs is displayed.

Iconclass Code
25G41 · flowers
41A382 · bay-window, oriel
Iconclass Keywords

History

Research

The French architect and specialist in Islamic architecture, Henri Saladin, wrote the section on architecture of the Manuel d’art musulman, published in 1907. He describes the stucco and glass windows of Damascus and Constantinople in brief and praises their ‘charme singulier’ (vol. 1, pp. 68–70, 168). An accompanying photograph, made by the French photographer Jules Gervais-Courtellemont (1863–1931), illustrates the description. It shows the oriel window with mashrabiyya in the mansion of Gaston de Saint-Maurice in Cairo, built in 1875–79, with a row of eight stucco and glass windows in the upper part.

The mansion of Saint-Maurice was built by reassembling older architectural elements for the interiors, among them marble-mosaic floors and walls, ivory-inlaid doors, polychrome wooden ceilings, and the mashrabiyya with its eight stucco and glass windows. In 1884, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs bought the house for diplomatic use. In 1937, when the French embassy moved to new premises, the house was demolished, but some of its decor was dismantled and reassembled in the new chancellery (Volait, 2012, p. 171; Volait, 2021, chap. 1.2). There is still a niche there with a row of six stucco and glass windows, which seem to be the ones taken from the house of Saint-Maurice.
Some years before Saladin, the journalist and illustrator Charles Lallemand (1826–1904) published the same photograph of the mashrabiyya of Saint-Maurice in his book Le Caire (Lallemand, 1894, p. 19). The image is not cropped as in Saladin’s illustration but shows the façade of the house with the oriel window. Lallemand was the father-in-law of the photographer Gervais-Courtellemont, who had been married to Hélène Lallemand (1860–1922) since 1894 (Devos, 2013, p. 216).

As in the publications of Pascal Coste (IG_69) and Delort de Gléon (IG_269), in Saladin’s illustration the stucco and glass windows are shown from the outside in their original setting.

Dating
1907
Related Locations

Bibliography and Sources

Literature

Devos, E. (2013). À travers Le Caire, l’œuvre de Gervais-Courtellemont en Égypte de 1894 à 1911. In M. Volait (éd.), Le Caire dessiné et photographié au XIXe siècle. Publications de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.inha.4886

Herz, M. (1895). Catalogue sommaire des monuments exposés dans le Musée national de l'art arabe. Cairo: G. Lekegian & Cie.

Lallemand, Ch. (1894). Le Caire. Alger: Gervais-Courtellemont et Cie.

Saladin, H. & Migeon, G. (1907). Manuel d’art musulman (Vols 1–2). Paris: A. Picard. Retrieved June 26, 2024, from: ark:/13960/t2f76hh6w

Volait, M. (2012). Maisons de France au Caire. Le remploi de grands décors mamelouks et ottomans dans une architecture moderne = Buyūt Faransā fi l-Qāhira. Al-Athār al-mamlūkiyya wa-l-ʿuthmāniyya fi l-ʿimāra al-hadītha (bilingual publication in French and Arabic). Cairo: Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale.

Volait, M. (2021). Antique Dealing and Creative Reuse in Cairo and Damascus 1850–1890. Leiden: Brill.

Image Information

Name of Image
MISC_IG_Saladin_Migeon_1907_IG_87
Credits
Saladin, & Migeon, 1907, vol. 1, fig. 105.

Citation suggestion

Keller, S. (2025). ‘Moucharabié ancien à la légation de France au Caire’. In Vitrosearch. Retrieved December 5, 2025 from https://vitrosearch.ch/objects/2712931.

Record Information

Reference Number
IG_87