Sargent painted the interior of the same empty mosque in Cairo three times. This oil is the most complete of the three, as Sargent concentrated not only on the geometric designs of the mosaic pavement, but also on the spatial depth and the Classical columns. The artist was obviously fascinated by the mazes of circles, spirals and rectangles of the pavement. In 1898, Sargent painted the mosaics of St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice and those of Montreale Cathedral in Palermo, Sicily. The intrinsic volubility of the Islamic mosaics were the inspiration for the Florentine mosaics.

This painting will be included in Richard Ormond's and Odile Duff's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.