This plate showing the windows of the qibla wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem was made after a photograph and a watercolour by Gustave Le Bon. He explains how the chancellor of the French consulate in Jerusalem, M. Malpertuy (or Malpertuis), helped him and his team to colour the photographs on site. Le Bon only generally comments on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He states that the windows over the mihrab date from the 16th AD century and that they had not been published before (Le Bon, 1885, p. 148).
The windows installed in the Al-Aqsa Mosque by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman Qanuni in the years 934–35 AH / 1528–29 AD did not survive. According to Flood, in 1233–34 AH / 1817–18 AD the windows of the dome of the mosque and probably also the ones of the mihrab façade were altered. A large restoration in the 1360s AH / 1940s AD, as well as the conflagration of 1386–87 AH / 1967 AD, seem to have destroyed all the windows from the 13th century AH / 19th AD (Flood, 2000, p. 449). Le Bon’s plate therefore shows the condition after the restorations of 1233–34 AH / 1817–18 AD. A photograph taken in 1890 by the Maison Bonfils (Fine Arts Library, Harvard College, IAA137243) shows the same windows. The stucco and glass windows existing today show similar patterns, but also numerous differences in colouring and composition. The wall decoration is also no longer the same as on Le Bon’s plate.
Apart from the wide borders, there are no compositional parallels to the windows of the Dome of the Rock, documented by de Vogüé, which presumably date to the early 10th century AH / 16th AD (IG_70–IG_73, VMR_1387). The most striking feature of the windows in the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the blankly glazed rectangle in the middle of the central window. The windows at the lower edge, which are just partially shown, have large pieces of blank glass within a stucco grille framed by a band of small coloured pieces of glass. This probably reflects the popularity of stucco windows with larger pieces of blank glass during the Ottoman Empire in the 12th century AH / 18th AD, especially in Constantinople (see IG_336, IG_369, IG_386).
Le Bon’s illustration was reprinted in Windows. A Book About Stained & Painted Glass, published in 1897 in London by the British artist and designer Lewis Foreman Day (fig. 3).