marwantosolve/archforge-mamluk-cairo

ArchForge — Mamluk / Islamic Cairo Architecture Dataset

A small, curated, licence-documented image dataset of Mamluk and Islamic Egyptian architecture, built for LoRA style adaptation on FLUX.1-dev. 39 images at 512x512px, 33 train / 6 validation.

Built as part of ArchForge — a time-boxed proof of concept, not a production dataset. The evaluation, the LoRA adapter and the comparison grid are linked from there.

Why this dataset exists

The target is a style, not a subject: carved limestone facades, pointed arches, muqarnas vaulting, mashrabiya screens, ablaq striped stonework, domes and minarets of historic Cairo. The curation work was therefore mostly rejection — Wikimedia Commons categories mix architecture with book scans, museum objects, architectural plans, paintings, lithographs, and buildings from other countries entirely.

Provenance and licensing

Every image comes from Wikimedia Commons and retains its original licence. No image was scraped from a source without a checkable licence, and no licence was inferred. Attribution for each file is recorded in metadata.csv and listed below.

Licence	Images
CC BY-SA 4.0	14
CC BY-SA 3.0	14
CC BY 3.0	4
CC BY-SA 2.0	3
CC BY 2.0	2
Public domain	1
No restrictions	1

Reuse obligation: most files are CC BY or CC BY-SA, which require attribution and (for SA) share-alike. If you reuse this dataset, carry the per-image attribution in the table below. Public domain and "no restrictions" files carry no such condition.

Curation method

1. Collection (scripts/collect_dataset.py) — MediaWiki API enumeration over 36 Mamluk/Islamic Cairo categories, filtering on a 800px minimum edge and JPEG/PNG only.
2. Review — every candidate was inspected visually on a contact sheet at two zoom levels. 123 candidates were reviewed; 39 were kept.
3. Rejection — 20 candidates were rejected for a recorded reason. The dominant failure modes were:
   • Wrong country — Portuguese colonial facades, Agra and Delhi monuments, Aleppo, the Armenian Quarter, all reaching these categories through shared vocabulary ("mashrabiya", "muqarnas").
   • Not a photograph — 19th-century lithographs (David Roberts), orientalist paintings (J. F. Lewis), book scans, architectural plans.
   • Modern architecture — 20th/21st-century apartment towers, modern mosques with no Mamluk vocabulary, construction cranes, night shots dominated by LED lighting.
   • Museum objects — mashrabiya screens photographed as artefacts, not in situ. Each rejection and its reason is recorded in data/exclusions.csv.
4. Quality control (scripts/build_dataset.py) — corrupted-file drop, perceptual-hash deduplication (64-bit pHash, Hamming distance <= 10), 512px centre-crop and resize, deterministic 85/15 split seeded at 0.

Deduplication found 0 duplicates at that threshold; this was verified rather than assumed, by confirming the hash function separates a JPEG-recompressed copy of an image (distance 0) from a genuinely different image (distance 36).

Structure

data/train/         33 images, 512x512 PNG
data/validation/    6 images, 512x512 PNG
metadata.csv        image_path, caption, source, architectural_style, split,
                    license, license_url, artist, title, category, phash
captions.jsonl      caption, style token, VLM base description, provenance
data/selected.csv   the curated allowlist (pageid + note)
data/exclusions.csv rejected candidates with reasons

Captions

Each caption follows [STYLE TOKEN] + description + structural elements + materials + viewpoint, for example:

mamluk_architecture, historic Islamic courtyard in Cairo, carved limestone facade, pointed arches, geometric stone ornamentation, warm natural light, architectural photography

The architectural vocabulary is grounded in the image's recorded Wikimedia category rather than generated freely, so the template cannot invent a minaret on a doorway.

Limitations

• Small (39 images) and heavily weighted toward Cairo. Not a general Islamic architecture dataset.
• Wikimedia Commons bias — photographs are skewed toward well-documented, tourist-accessible monuments, and toward the aesthetics of the contributing photographers.
• Not deduplicated against the wider web — only against itself.
• Some images contain minor modern intrusions (street furniture, signage, vehicles) that were judged not to dominate the frame.

Per-image attribution

#	File	Source	Licence	Author
1	Ayyubid Wall Al-Azhar Park Cairo 01-2006.jpg	Commons	CC BY 3.0	Błażej Pindor
2	Islamic Cairo63.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Mohamed Ouda
3	A small mosque in the center of Cairo, Egypt, North Africa.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Mstyslav Chernov
4	Qaytbay sabil exterior decoration2.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Robert Prazeres
5	The Mausoleum of Sultan Qalawun.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Bassem Abdelaziz
6	Islamic Cairo60.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Mohamed Ouda
7	Sultan Qalawun Mosque at Mu'izz street.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Mariam Mohamed Kamal
8	بسطام.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Peymanpourkoushki
9	Cairo (4015028718).jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 2.0	M M from Switzerland
10	Al-Azhar 2006.jpg	Commons	Public domain	Tentoila
11	Cairo. Mameluke House.jpg	Commons	No restrictions	Cornell University Library
12	Hard work in el darb el asfar (old cairo).jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Eslamashrafrefaat
13	Mosque of Gawhar al-Lala DSCF3441.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	R Prazeres
14	Cairo - Islamic district - Cemetery.JPG	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Daniel Mayer
15	Bayn al-Qasrayn2.JPG	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Casual Builder
16	Flickr - HuTect ShOts - Dome of Madrasa and Masjid of Sultan Qaytbay مدرسة ومسجد السلطان قايتباي - Cairo - Egypt - 28 05 2010.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 2.0	Ahmed Al.Badawy from Cairo, Egypt
17	Museo gayer anderson, cortile 03.JPG	Commons	CC BY 3.0	Sailko
18	Cairo2761.JPG	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Samir I. Sharbaty
19	Al-Nasir Muhammad Mosque BW 1.jpg	Commons	CC BY 3.0	Berthold Werner
20	احدى غرف سكن المماليك بالحطابة.JPG	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Hanyfawwaz
21	Qaytbay sabil-kuttab.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Robert Prazeres
22	An alley in Muizz street..JPG	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	SalmaMSan
23	Sultan Hassan Mosque, Cairo.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Bekriah Mawasi
24	City of the Dead (south).jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Casual Builder
25	Complex of Al Sultan Al Zahir Barquq 011.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Keladawy
26	Flickr - HuTect ShOts - Masjid Qanibay Al Ramah مسجد قاني باي الرماح - Cairo - Egypt - 17 04 2010.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 2.0	Ahmed Al.Badawy from Cairo, Egypt
27	Tomb of az-Zahir Qansuh.JPG	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Tekisch
28	Cairo, the Mosque of Sultan Hassan and the Ar-Rif (6201079985).jpg	Commons	CC BY 2.0	Arian Zwegers from Brussels, Belgium
29	A small mosque in the center of Cairo, Egypt, North Africa-3.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Mstyslav Chernov
30	الزخارف العباسية.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Mohammed Harith Khalil
31	Cairo, madrasa del sultano qalaun, 01.JPG	Commons	CC BY 3.0	Sailko
32	Cairouni.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	user:mmustafa
33	Door in Al-Gamaliya street, photo by Hatem Moushir 01.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Hatem Moushir
34	Une vue en hauteur du caire.JPG	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Papillus
35	Flickr - Gaspa - Cairo, una casa storica.jpg	Commons	CC BY 2.0	Francesco Gasparetti from Senigallia, Italy
36	Aqmar Mosque.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Md iet ( talk )
37	Cairo,Qarafa1.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	Bertramz
38	QalaunMosque.JPG	Commons	CC BY-SA 3.0	المصري الأصيل
39	Door in Al-Gamaliya street, photo by Hatem Moushir 02.jpg	Commons	CC BY-SA 4.0	Hatem Moushir