The reception of Islamic stucco glass windows (qamarīyāt) in the West is a highly neglected topic in art history. Orientalist paintings are undervalued as documentary sources in the field of Islamic art history and are often reduced to being the product of the Western gaze on the East. However, numerous European artists travelled to the Middle East during the 19th century and were fascinated by the luminosity of the stucco glass windows, which contained pierced decorations filled with multi-colored glass. In their sketches and paintings, artists recorded the fragile qamarīyāt of buildings that often no longer exist today. In her essay “The imaginary Orient” (1983), Linda Nochlin uncovered the realistic representation of Islamic material cultures as a means of authenticating the East. Based on Nochlin’s approach, I argue that Orientalist paintings, despite their often-imaginary subjects, can be evaluated as an important source for documenting and reconstructing interiors and qamarīyāt lost in the Middle East. Egypt, which belonged to the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, became an important destination for painters from all over Europe during the age of rising imperialism. Using a postcolonial, transcultural and transregional methodology, I discuss and compare works of Orientalist painters in three case studies: the British painters Frank Dillon (1823–1909) and John Frederick Lewis (1804–1876), as well as the Italian painter Alberto Fabbi (1858–1906), depicted interiors of traditional Egyptian houses with qamarīyāt in their Orientalist genre paintings. Although European artists travelled to the Middle East or even lived there for several years, their paintings often show ambivalences between a historically authentic and an imagined domestic architecture in Cairo. Conceived for a Western audience, the portrayal of the qamarīyāt in Orientalist paintings not only has the value of an unexplored documentary source, but could also contribute as a stylistic device to reinforcing the stereotypical image of an exotic Middle East, staged and constructed by Europeans during the age of colonialism. By approaching Orientalist paintings as a historical document and focusing on the qamarīyāt, a multi-faceted and differentiated view on a range of various European Orientalisms of the 19th century can be highlighted, and our knowledge about lost Islamic interior architecture and material cultures can be expanded.