Cairo: Mandarah: Reception Room, ground floor, with pool and fountain; from L'Art Arabe d'apres les Monuments de Kaire; pub. 1877 (chromolithograph). Mandarah is the name for a room for receiving visitors in much of the Middle East; detailed study of a domestic interior; sunken pool with fountain dominates central space, walls are ornately covered in complex tile work designs; from L'Art Arabe d'apres les Monuments de Kaire; illustrations of Islamic art, architecture, woodwork, tiling, interiors, furnitute etc.; ?mile Prisse d'Avennes (1807-1879) was a French archeologist, Egyptologist, architect and writer of the nineteenth century.