NARRATOR—This painting represents worshipers in the Mosque of Amir in Cairo, which the artist Jean-Leon Gérôme had visited in 1867. Like virtually all of Gérôme's works, this painting is distinguished by its smooth execution and photographic exactness of detail. Gérôme became one of the most virulent critics of the loose, sketchy technique of the Impressionists, and he often worked from photographs that he had taken during his various expeditions.

European colonialist expansion into North Africa and the Middle East was one of the defining phenomena of the nineteenth century. In France, this movement began with Napoleon's military incursions into Egypt and Palestine, and it was accompanied by an ever-increasing fascination with all things Oriental. Gérôme was one of the most celebrated of the Orientalist painters. After establishing a reputation in Paris as a specialist in archaeologically exacting scenes from classical antiquity, he made the first of many trips to the East in the mid-1850s. Thereafter he produced a whole series of paintings documenting the people and places he encountered in his travels.