Interior of the Mosque of Sultan Hassan, Cairo

Edward Angelo Goodall was in many ways a stereotypically intrepid Victorian artist, journeying from England to British Guiana as official artist and also painting in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Morocco. In this painting he takes us inside the open courtyard, or sahn, of the great 14th-century Mosque of Sultan Hassan in Cairo, Egypt. The courtyard features a domed ablutions fountain surrounded by iwans (recessed spaces for prayer and instruction) with oil lamps hanging from their arches. Goodall’s depiction of the building, which by the 19th century had fallen into semi-decay, was described by one critic as ‘an immense interior peopled with worshippers, full of dust and heat, with sun rays striking through the lofty openings in the walls’.