Camille Saint-Saëns enjoyed travelling and working in northern Africa and incorporated musical ideas he had absorbed there into several compositions. During 1889 - 1891 he wrote the concertante work Africa in Las Palmas; in 1894 he returned there and, as he wrote to his publisher Durand, found some "Arabian documents ... that I thought I had lost," further noting that he would make a "little Africa" out of these themes.

What emerged from these "documents" was the Caprice arabe, an attractive eight-minute work for two pianos. The Caprice is particularly notable for its middle section, which exhibits unusual rhythmic inventiveness. As he wrote to Durand, "It has one quality, which distinguishes it completely from all my other Orientalia and from all others as well. You will find cross rhythms ... that may amuse you for a moment." Saint-Saëns derived this complex rhythmic procedure from Arabic music practices, prefiguring its widespread use among Western classical composers in the twentieth century.

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