The gouache A Room in the House of Shayk Sadat, Cairo (also known as Kaah in the Harem of Sheykh Sadat, Cairo), which was painted around 1875 by the British painter Frank Dillon (1832–1908), depicts a genre scene in an interior (qāʿa) in Cairo. It represents a so-called ‘harem scene’ in the ‘house of Shayk Sadat’. Two women sit on a divan in a recess: one holds a fan made of peacock feathers in her hand, the other a plucked instrument, while a man with a turban leans against the wall. The interior contains components of painted and carved wood, stone, and blue and white tiling, as well as a prayer rug and a wooden table. Wooden screens are depicted in the lower part of the wall, and coloured-glass windows with geometric ornament can be seen in the upper part. Four windows on the right-hand side have geometric ornament with pieces of glass in green, yellow, orange, and white. Three other windows, depicted in the niche on the left side, also have a geometric design, with blue, yellow, green, and white glass.

Dillon campaigned passionately for the preservation of Islamic architecture when the wave of modernisation imposed by Europe and the local dynasty in the mid-19th century threatened to destroy ‘old Cairo’ (Arnhold, 2008, p. 235). With a view to protecting and recording the city’s ancient buildings, Dillon produced accurate paintings of Cairene domestic interiors in the 1870s. A detailed pencil drawing (IG_105) with a similar view of part of the interior of Sheik Sadat’s house in Cairo could have been a preparatory study for this watercolour. The interior of the ‘house of Shayk Sadat’ also features in another work by Dillon (IG_101). The house was also captured in contemporary photographs, for example by Beniamino Facchinelli (V&A, 1060-1917).