This monochrome photograph shows different objects exhibited at the Museum of Arab Art in the Al-Hakim Mosque in Cairo. It is part of an album entiteled Musée Arabe à la Mosquée El-Hakem, au Caire with 25 photographs by Pascal Sébah. Photograph number 24 is described in the caption as general view of marbles, faïence, and glass windows (‘Vue générale de marbres, fayences et vitraux’). Most prominently placed of all the objects exhibited are six stucco and glass windows. Three of them show the motif of flowers in a vase, two within medallions and one under a round arch. The other three windows show mosques with minarets and courtyard, combining a frontal and a bird’s eye view. Two of them include cypresses flanking the architecture. The other one is a window with several sections. While only one section depicts architecture, the other sections are embellished with Arabic inscriptions.

The album Musée arabe à la Mosquée El-Hakem was part of František Schmoranz’s collection of photographs. On the first album page the name J. Franz-Bey is noted. This may indicate that it was given or sent to Schmoranz by Julius Franz, who in 1881 instigated to use the Fatimid Al-Hakim Mosque as a provisional location for the Museum of Arab Art (Asker, 2006, p. 1).
Neither the photograph nor the album is dated. However, since the Museum of Arab Art was not established in the Al-Hakim Mosque until 1881, the photograph must have been taken between 1881 and 1884, when a new building was erected in the courtyard to house the collection after 1884 (Asker, 2006, p. 1).

The photograph documents the provisional state of the museum, showing a depot like situation rather than a clearly arranged exhibition setting. The stucco and glass windows were presented leaning against a wall, with the result that visitors would not have been able to perceive the effect of the light coming through the coloured glass.

The window positioned in the centre of the photograph, with its flowers in a vase within a medallion, hexafoils, and fan-shaped ornaments in the corners, corresponds to a window shown in a coloured illustration in Julius Franz’s Die Baukunst des Islam of 1887, p. 60 (in the second edition of 1896, p. 68) (IG_68). ). In the illustration, the measurements of the window are indicated as 1.40m by 0.70m. In the caption it is characterized as a window closure consisting of a perforated plaster panel with colourful glass (‘Fensterverschluss in durchbrochener bunt verglaster Gypsplatte’). Apart from that, the publication gives no further information about the window, its provenance, or its connection to the Museum of Arab Art.