![David Roberts - The Bazaar of the Coppersmiths, Cairo [1842]](http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1460/25953684656_eb5d54b083_o.jpg)
Roberts arrived in Egypt in 1838, and soon embarked on a journey up the Nile. On his return to Cairo in December of that year, he was determined to augment his already valuable portfolio of sketches of ancient Egyptian monuments with views of the colourful buildings of the Islamic city. It was not an easy task, since a European sketching openly in the crowded streets was the subject of curiosity. Despite the difficult conditions and his bewilderment at the ‘extraordinarily picturesque nature of the streets and buildings of this most wonderful of all cities,’ he made a visual survey of many of the Islamic monuments, changing into Ottoman dress and observing local proprieties in order to draw inside the mosques.
The area known to Westerners as the Bazaar of the Coppersmiths was the Sharia al-Nahhasin, part of Sharia Mu'izz id-Din Allah, the Qasaba or the great ceremonial high street of Fatimid Cairo upon which subsequent rulers built. The building most prominent on the left of Roberts’s painting is part of the façade of the Madrasa of Baybars, 1262-63. Since this building was destroyed in 1874, Roberts’s depiction of it is valuable as documentary evidence.
[Sotheby’s, London - Oil on canvas, 143 x 112 cm]