The so-called ‘House of the Mufti’ refers to a qāʿa (reception room) of a residence in Cairo owned by the grand mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Muhammad al-ʿAbbasi al-Mahdi (1827–1897) between 1847 and 1886. The qāʿa was installed by 1704/1705 at the latest, as indicated by an inscription recording the year 1116 AH / 1704/5 CE formerly on a column there (Herz, 1913, 120). The room was located on the ground floor, measured 10 × 31m, and was flanked on each side by three niches.
The ‘House of the Mufti’ became a popular painting subject for artists travelling to Egypt during the 19th century. The British architect James William Wild made the oldest known drawings of the room in c. 1847, with special attention to the stucco and glass windows. Two citizens of Berne, the architect Theodor Zeerleder and the painter Rudolf Durheim, followed in 1848. Zeerleder created several watercolours of the room, showing detailed views of the windows (IG_471, IG_473; see also Burgerbibliothek Bern, inv. no. Gr.B.1211, Gr.B.1212, Gr.C.898). From Durheim two drawings in oil have been conserved (IG_49, IG_60), one of them also showing a detailed view of a window.

In 1866, Richard Phené Spiers (1838–1916) made several sketches (Victoria and Albert Museum, E.3145-1918, E.3143-1918, no stucco and glass windows depicted). In the following years, Frank Dillon (IG_98, IG_99), František Schmoranz (IG_415), and Franz von Lehnbach (Palastinterieur in Kairo, 1876, oil on board, 88 × 70cm, Lenbach-Nachlass im Familienbesitz, reproduced in Baranow, 1986, p. 130) also visited and painted the place and its windows. In a lecture to the Royal Institute of British Architects, Spiers described the windows as follows: ‘In the House of the Mufti the mandarah is lighted by windows on three sides of the principal decision, and also, in the upper portion of the durka’ah, by windows known as ‘kamareeyehs,’ which are formed of pieces of coloured glass sunk in an arabesque pattern, in which gypsum takes the place of lead, as in our leaded lights or windows.’ (Spiers, 1890, p. 236).
As Mercedes Volait (2021, pp. 119–122) has noted, from 1891 the South Kensington Museum was interested in purchasing the disused room, but in the end this never happened. Herz stated in 1913 (p. 119), that the room was in a bad condition, and it ultimately disappeared in 1922–25, when a new major thoroughfare, al-Azhar Street, was opened, leaving only the modern quarters built in the 1850s as the sole remains (still visible in 2018; Volait, 2021, p. 119 n. 83, p. 122; Volait, 1987, pp. 86–87).

Baranow, S. von (1986). ‪Franz von Lenbach: Leben und Werk. Köln: DuMont.‬‬‬

Herz, M. (1913). 2° Beit el-Moufti, à châra' el-Khalîg el-Masri. Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l'Art Arabe 29, exercice 1912, pp. 119–120. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/ccmaa.1913.9088

Schmoranz, F. (1876). Katalog der historischen Ausstellung des islamitischen Orientes. Umfassende Darstellungen von Cultus- und Profanbauten (Beilage zu Nr. 126 der Mittheilungen des k. k. Österr. Museums für Kunst und Industrie). Vienna: C. Gerold’s Sohn Verlag.

Spiers, R. P.. (1890). “Notes by R. Phené Spiers, F.S.A., Member of Council.” In: Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. VI., London: Published at the Royal Institute of British Architects, p. 221–242.

Tabbal, S. (forthcoming). Studying Stucco and Glass Windows in the 19th century: the House of the Mufti in Cairo. In Giese, F., Tabbal, S., Wolf, S. (eds.). Glass in the Islamic World. 19th Colloquium of the Ernst Herzfeld Society for Studies in Islamic Art and Archaeology, Vitrocentre Romont, 4–6 July 2024. Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie (BIKA).

Volait, M. (1987). Grandes demeures du Caire au siècle passé. Cahiers de la recherche architecturale 20/21, pp. 84–93.

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