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 By approaching Orientalist paintings as a historical document and focusing on the qamarīyāt, a multi-faceted and differentiated view on a range of various European Orientalisms of the 19th century can be highlighted, and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.

Remnants of antiquity were a powerful presence in the medieval Mediterranean, where the vestiges of the past served as evocative reminders of great empires and civilizations. Their subsequent reuse across the sea confirmed visually the conceptualization of the Mediterranean as an ecological, economic, and cultural unit in the medieval period. The circulation of people, goods, technologies, and ideas provided the impetus for but also was the product of a shared visual culture. A particularly ubiquitous manifestation of this shared culture was the integration of ancient spolia, or reused architectural elements, into public structures. The use of spoils from the ancient past constituted a common visual language or koine among cultures across the sea that appropriated antiquity to highlight the power, longevity, or legitimacy of a medieval ruler, dynasty, or empire. Forged through cultural contact and mixing, the koine brought together a mutually intelligible vocabulary that crossed confessional lines and united cultures across the sea in a shared appreciation of the ancient past. Participation in this Mediterranean visual koine was of particular significance for the Mamluk dynasty, whose presence in this region was precarious in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This paper will argue that the integration of the Mamluks into the Mediterranean—its politics, economy, and culture—was essential for the identity formation of these former slaves from the Caucasus and Central Asia. The Mamluks employed ancient pharaonic spolia to connect themselves to their capital in Egypt and the people they ruled. References to an ancient Egyptian past highlighted a continuous line of succession from the pharaohs and conferred legitimacy on these foreign rulers. The use of ancient Roman spolia had global rather than localized understandings; through the incorporation of Roman materials into their architectural structures, the Mamluks announced their Mediterranean presence and belonging, turning to the west rather than the east for meaningful cultural referents. This Mediterranean integration forged an identity for the Mamluks that differentiated them from other Muslim polities while connecting them to the rich historical traditions and common visual language that united cultures across the sea throughout the Middle Ages.

Starting in the year 1870 a new type of public recreation space called “people’s garden” or millet bahçesi started to take root in the Ottoman Empire’s urban centers, from the Balkans to North Africa. These formally landscaped spaces took as their inspiration the Haussmann-era Parisian promenades designed in the “English style.” Proponents of the recreation movement in Europe advocated for the establishment of public parks to give residents of industrializing cities a respite from pollution and overcrowded slums. Calls for the necessity of new public gardens were concurrently being voiced by Ottoman municipal leaders as well as members of Ottoman civic society. Unlike the sprawling Bois de Boulogne or Bois de Vincennes, however, Istanbul’s new parks occupied a much smaller footprint, especially in relation to the city’s plentiful meadows or river banks that were already in use as popular sites of recreation. Ottoman government documents, newspaper articles, and personal memoirs provide documentation of the belief that these new public gardens would promote better public health and hygiene. Yet the establishment of these public gardens were less about giving urban residents much needed access to outdoor recreation and fresh air than about serving as symbols of Istanbul’s modern urban transformation. This paper looks at textual and visual documentation of some of first public gardens built in key Ottoman cities in 1870, and contrasts them to longstanding Ottoman public recreation spaces and their aesthetic lineage. Studying Ottoman urban renewal in the late nineteenth century raises questions about public access, civic engagement, and the health of growing cities and their publics that are still relevant for urban centers caught in the grip of neoliberal transformation today.