by explaining the background of this term,
we hope you understand the limitations and objections of this terminology.
Much has been written on the Islamic city.
But why do we interpret towns with
a majority population of Muslims in terms of the dominating religion?
We do not after all label towns in Europe as Christian or Jewish.
Is there indeed something in the Islamic city that justifies this religious labeling?
The concept of a Muslim or Islamic city,
described as a recurring structure or pattern in scholarly writing,
became popular between the 1920s and the 1950s and first only occurred in France.
However, it was soon adopted elsewhere and is
now often used by scholars in the Middle East itself as well.
The initial accounts were strongly based on
a black and white worldview of East versus West,
whereby the defining feature of the East is considered the dominant religion, Islam.
The description of Islamic cities was therefore mostly
a comparison to a superior example of the European city.
A typical Islamic city is generally described as a place of limited central planning.
So, a quarter is a collection of
individual houses and a city is a collection of individual quarters.
That way of building inevitably leads to
a labyrinth-like structure with irregular winding streets,
many ending in a cul-de-sac.
Some of the quarters almost functioned as a town within a town.
Ethnic communities and religious minorities tended to unite within their own quarters.
These communities would function fairly autonomously.
Another distinguishing feature that is often
mentioned is a strong contrast between zones.
There are public zones and private zones.
In the public zone, the central mosque and
one or more souks or marketplaces formed the heart of the city.
Other distinguishing buildings in an Islamic city center were
the madrasa school and the Hammam bathhouse.
Not surprisingly, in larger cities that fulfilled a regional or national function,
elements of governing structure could be found as well,
such as palaces, courts, and a citadel.
In residential areas, houses were typically turned inwards.
The image of a Muslim house is one which on
the outside would be made of plain-looking blank walls.
All the splendor of the house,
like a rich garden or courtyard,
would remain hidden from the public view and was only
accessible to the select few who had permission to enter the house.
Though often mentioned as a typical Islamic building style,
we can in fact find examples of enclosed gardens and
courtyards throughout the Mediterranean and predating the rise of Islam as well.
Since most interpretations of Islam forbid the depiction of human beings,
and especially of the Prophet Muhammad,
alternative styles of decoration evolved,
most notably calligraphy and geometrical mosaics.
These decorations tend to be very prominent in mosques,
but we do find them in many other buildings as well.
Though the shapes are different from one region to the next,
they are very recognizable as Islamic decoration.
Not as visible as landmarks like the central mosque,
but essential to the functioning of the towns were elaborate water structures.
Hydraulic engineering was already an important factor in the success of
the Romans and the Persians but it was further developed by the Arabs in the Middle Ages.
Since the heartland of the Muslim Empire was in a warm and dry area,
careful water management was essential to the growth of Islamic cities.
Can we justify what we call these cities Islamic cities?
One reason for calling cities Islamic would be the presence of Islamic laws,
sharia that determine the shape of cities.
If we look at the early sources,
Koran and Hadith, we hardly find any texts worth mentioning.
If we look at later text,
we do though, not surprisingly,
find legislation concerned with city life,
for instance, with regard to property, ownership, and commerce.
However, there's no reason to assume that
the architectural shape of the city was determined by that legislation.
Indeed, it makes more sense to conclude that
the legislation derived from common practice.
We do see that behavior or city life was in some ways dictated by Islamic laws.
We see, for instance,
that due to dietary changes,
pigs quickly declined in number.
But again, this hardly affected the architecture of the city.
One thing we can argue affected city planning was the presence of
fairly large communities of religious and ethnic minorities.
Because Islamic laws protected Jews and Christians,
we can see large communities living in
their own quarters building their own houses of prayer and other institutions.
Since the labyrinth structure of Islamic cities is largely
due to these different communities creating towns within a town,
we can state that
one of the determining features of the medieval Islamic city
paradoxically is the presence of non-Muslims with their own institutions and structures.
Introduction to the Islamic City
Islam is seen by many scholars as an urban religion, which favours communal practice on individual worship. Although, piety is the only source of appraisal, it is widely accepted that most of Islam's teaching is best practised in an urban setting. It is not surprising that Islam made particular emphasis on the form and design of the city enabling it a greater functionality and responsiveness to meet the socio-economic and cultural needs of the community. This article presents an analysis of the spatial and functional arrangements of the Islamic city and assesses their socio-cultural meanings.
by Dr. Rabah Saoud*
The traditional city in the Arabo-Islamic world
It must be recognized that one cannot do that without being willing to live with the three conditions:
(1) juridical distinctions between Muslims and/or citizens and outsiders;
(2) segregation by gender and a virtually complete division of labor according to it;
(3) a fully decentralized and ex post facto system of land use and governmental regulation over space.
The story of the Hammam
For many centuries, the Hammam played
a central role in everyday life in much of the Middle East.
The reason that these public baths became so numerous can
in part be ascribed to Islamic ideas on ritual purity.
Before praying or reading the Quran,
Muslims should wash themselves.
On a day-to-day basis,
it suffices to do minor ritual washing,
wudu in Arabic, at the taps in the mosques or at home.
However, after sexual intercourse,
menstruation, or giving birth,
this will not suffice,
and a major ritual washing called ghusul in Arabic,
taking a full bath becomes obligatory,
and this was done in the Hammam.
But the Hammam also fulfilled an important social function,
where men and women,
not together of course,
would meet and hang out.
Islamic legal scholars debated extensively what water was suited to do the washing.
For example, what to do when a cat or bird,
which might after all have eaten from something that was considered unclean,
had drunk from the water.
Depending on the amount of water,
it might no longer be suitable for the washing.
It was safest and preferred to use running water,
which meant that mosques needed to have a constant supply of fresh water.
Obviously, this had quite an impact on how the Islamic city developed.
Besides water for drinking,
cooking, and other daily activities,
large quantities of water were needed for
the Hammams and for the water taps in the mosques.
The number of mosques and bath houses gives us some sense of
the ingenious waterworks that must have existed
to provide freshwater in such large quantities.
Historians now believe that the focus on personal hygiene is
one of the reasons why cities in the Middle East could grow expansively.
Indeed, it seems that the Crusaders convinced of the benefits of
bathing brought this innovative idea back with them to Europe,
which formed the turning point in European health history.
Baghdad
It is in fact not so easy to determine the exact size of Baghdad in terms of population.
But combining the numbers from different sources on bath houses and other infrastructure,
this generally assumed the city's population must have
been well over a million around the tenth century.
By comparison, Paris had a population of around 50,000 at that time.
Baghdad was indeed a city of unknown splendor and grandeur.
Baghdad was often referred to as the round city.
Arab contemporaries described the ground plan as unique.
But looking at earlier cities,
we find indications that these round settlements were actually not uncommon in the area.
Baghdad was divided into different quarters that were inhabited by
more or less homogeneous groups along ethnic and religious lines.
Residential quarters had walls and gates between them,
and were closed off at night.
Markets played an important role in Baghdad's urban life.
As a rich city on the crossroads of
several trade routes extending from Asia to Africa and Europe,
the diversity of foreign goods available must have been stunning.
Tradesmen from many places gathered in
this town that could truly be considered a metropole.
Each craft or trade had its own markets or
own section at one of the four large marketplaces.
Poets, writers, and travelers all agree that there was no place like Baghdad.
With its premises, large mosques,
and beautiful gardens, it was described as paradise on earth.
But other cities in the medieval Muslim world found equal admiration,
and water was everywhere.
Cordoba with its beautiful gardens, Cairo,
where public fountains decorated the city, Aleppo,
Damascus, Kufa, Samarkand, the list is endless.
The Islamic Roots of the Modern Hospital
March/April 2017 by David W. Tschanz in AramcoWorld
Nowadays there are hospitals because of the systematic approach—both scientifically and socially—to health care that developed in medieval Islamic societies. A long line of caliphs, sultans, scholars and medical practitioners took ancient knowledge and time-honored practices from diverse traditions and melded them with their original research to feed centuries of intellectual achievement and drive a continual quest for improvement. Their bimaristan, or asylum of the sick, was not only the true forerunner of the modern hospital, but also virtually indistinguishable from the modern multi-service healthcare and medical education center.
