Urbanity in the Middle Eastern studies and the paradigm of Max Webers Islamic City

Searching for an explanation for the distinctiveness and uniqueness of the occident as a birthplace of capitalism, Max Weber proposed a theory of urban life and development taking the medieval European city as an ideal type. He suggested that there were five distinguishing marks of the city in the full sense: fortifications, markets, a court administering an autonomous law, distinctively urban forms of association, and at least partial autonomy.1 In this sense, Weber maintained, the city had fully existed in Europe, never in Asia, only in part and for short periods in the Near East. The first publication of The City coincided with the advent of the French orientalist school of urban studies,2 which contributed to the importance of Webers concept for the development of the discourse on the Islamic city. Establishing his concept of the city, Weber clearly distinguished between two different perspectives the economic and the political one. Economically defined, the city was a settlement the inhabitants of which live primarily off trade and commerce rather than agriculture.3 According to Weber, central to this definition was the city market that often converted the settlement into a city. Within the economic concept, a further differentiation could be made that between consumer and producer city. The
1

Max Weber, The City (Munich, 1921), translated and edited by Don Martindale and Gertrud Neuwirth, Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1958, p. 81. This and all further references are to the 1958 edition. 2 For the French Orientalist school of urban studies see Andr Raymond, Islamic City, Arab City: Orientalist Myths and Recent Views, in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 21:1, 1994, pp. 3-18 and R. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. 3 Max Weber, The City, p. 66.

consumer city was characterized by the presence in it and the decisive economic importance of large consumers while the thriving of the producer city was based on the location in it of factories, manufactures, or homework industries supplying outside territories. However, Weber admitted that actual cities represent mixed types and should be classified by their prevailing economic component.4 From the political perspective, if a locale performed political or administrative functions, it could be held to be a city even if it did not qualify as a city economically. Urban economic policy, moreover, could be determined by a sovereign to whom political dominion of the city with its inhabitants belonged.5 The political definition, however, also had its deficiencies villages, like cities, could both be strong economically and even possess their own authorities. The ideal city type that emerged in the occident during the Middle Ages, as established by Weber, conformed to both the economic and political concepts. According to Weber, [t]he city of the Medieval Occident was economically a seat of trade and commerce, politically and economically a fortress and garrison, administratively a court district and socially an oath-bound confederation.6 In Weber concept, the citys role as a fortress was very significant although, like the economic and political functions, it was far form universal. While some cities, like those of Sparta, either never had walls or remained open for long periods, in certain frontier regions not only cities but even villages fortified themselves.7 Fortresses, however, were important for the development of civic identity, with guard and garrison duty representing the oldest specifically civic obligations. The first burghers were bound as citizens to the performance of military duties which also predetermined
4 5

Ibid., pp. 69-70. Ibid., p. 74. 6 Ibid., p. 104. 7 Ibid., p. 75.

membership in their estates. Disposal of a castle, on the other hand, not only signified military dominion over the country but also opened the way for the development of a politically independent gentry. As Weber pointed out, in Northern Europe vassal independence was bound up with enormous castle construction.8 The assumption of military functions on the part of urban families together with their participation in the civic economy played a crucial role for the development of the city towards the ideal medieval type. Weber argued that this shattered the monopoly of the ruler who was considered only to be primus inter pares in the ruling establishment or even simply as equal.9 This leads us to the main theme in Webers analysis of the development of the city, namely the development of an autonomous urban community. The emergence of an urban community, according to Weber, was a phenomenon observed only in the Occident. The revolutionary innovation of medieval occidental cities in contrast to all others was the usurpation by the urbanites of the right to violate lordly law. The new political equality allowed for the existence of municipal councils that served as counter balance to the ruler. Participation in these councils was based on free elections.10 According to Weber, by the close of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times nearly all cities in the occident were dominated by an urban council or a corporation of burghers. In contrast to antiquity, when the individual could be a citizen only as a member of his clan, in the new urban communities of the Middle Ages burghers joined the citizenry as single persons. In the accomplishment of this fundamental change Weber discerned the crucial role of Christianity and its contribution to the dissolution of clan associations. The newly emerged commune was characterized by the burghers
8 9

Ibid., pp. 76-78. Ibid., p. 79. 10 Ibid., p. 94.

abidance to a common law which made it a guild of legal associates who formed an autonomous status group.11 The oath-bound fraternity of burghers in the medieval occidental city was strengthened over the course of the wars between the communes. The period of insecurity accelerated the internal structuring of the communes, forcing the mass of the burghers to join the sworn communal brotherhood. Weber stressed the importance of this period for the regulation of the legal status of the urban commune. The purely personal oath-bound confederations became permanent political associations and their members were treated as urban citizens who were subjects to a special and autonomous law.12 The real participation of the burgher class in civic administration, however, was closely related to the rise of the guilds which, according to Weber, could not be identified simply as guilds of artisans but rather as political units which competed for power with the patriciate. The success of the guilds led to the achievement of full political independence and strong external power for the city. Membership in a guild provided citizenship and, as far as internal administration is concerned, it could secure a place in the municipal council.13 This extraordinary importance of the guilds in the occidental city, however, led to their total transformation from an economical institution into a purely electoral association of gentlemen with access to communal offices. In the process, membership in the guilds came to be acquired through inheritance and purchase rather than through apprenticeship and initiation.14 Another crucial factor in the development of the occidental city, as presented by Weber, was the popolo an association of economically varied elements ranging from
11 12

Ibid., p. 95. Ibid., p. 111. 13 Ibid., p. 139. 14 Ibid., p. 154.

artisans to entrepreneurs that displaced the unruly burgher fraternities which, in the thirteenth century, led the fight against the noble families. As a political sub-community it had its own official, finances, and military organization thereby functioning as a state within a state. Once its legal institutions assumed shape, the popolo became so important that often obtained universal importance for the populace. What is most important for Webers argument, however, is the juridical autonomy of this urban institution. The popolo not only had its own legislation but even at times managed to obtain priority of its statutes over those of the commune.15 With the development of the patrimonial bureaucratic state, the occidental city, as described by Weber, began to lose its distinguishing features. It was gradually overwhelmed by the state and lost its characteristic autonomy. The administrative structure of the city was transformed into a representative corporation with status privileges, independent only with respect to the circle of its corporate interests, but without meaning for the administrative purpose of the state.16 Webers concept, in which the medieval occidental city emerged as an ideal type, was elaborated through constant comparisons and contrasts with the urban situation of other regions of the world. It conformed to the contemporary level of knowledge and the dominating paradigms in the perception of the world. For Weber the medieval commune and the ancient polis were similar in essence as associations of citizens subject to a special law; the essence of the oriental city, on the other hand, was defined as a series of absences thus establishing it as a foil to the ideal occidental model. Edward Said has pointed out that Webers and other early twentieth-century sociologists use of types as

15 16

Ibid., pp. 157-159. Ibid., p. 185.

analytical categories has both neatly associated them with Orientalism and enabled them to influence the field considerably.17 According to Weber, the oriental, or Asiatic city, both in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, shared some of the features of the occidental city being often a fortress and a center of trade. Despite these similarities, however, it lacked the defining characteristic of the occidental city, namely its function as an autonomous urban community; even the concept of a joint association representing a community of burghers per se was missing. The oriental urbanites themselves did not really feel a strong attachment to the city bonds such as clan, tribal, or caste loyalty held precedence over the participation in an urban community. Indicative of this significant difference between the occident and the orient was the case of India where, according to Weber, the hereditary caste system excluded the emergence of a citizenry and urban community. To put it in Webers words, [t]he triumph of ritualistic caste estrangements shattered the guild associations and royal bureaucracies in alliance with the Brahmans swept away, except for vestiges, such trends toward a citizenry and urban community in Northwestern India.18 The Chinese urban dweller, on the other hand, belonged to his family and native village, rather than to the city he lived in.19 This prevalence of clan, tribal, or caste affiliation, as emphasized by Weber, eliminated the possibility of civic confederations thereby preventing the development of an urban community that was dependent on the emergence of the city fraternizations.20 In these circumstances, an autonomous city law in the occidental sense could never develop;

17 18

Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, 1979, p. 259. Weber, The City, p. 84. 19 Ibid., p. 81. 20 Ibid., p. 119.

neither could the concept of the law as a rational creation. 21 In Asia, as Weber maintained, the very idea of a legal status of citizenship was unknown; so was the idea of the city as a corporate unit. The lack of an autonomous city law was not the only characteristic absence in the oriental city. The participation of its inhabitants in local administration was also out of question. According to Weber, this was due to the oriental citys being the seat of a high official or ruler and thus under his direct supervision.22 Another major difference between the occidental and oriental city, that explained why civic development had not started in Asia but in Europe, Weber maintained, was the urban military composition of the orient. In contrast to the situation in Europe, in the orient the army was incorporated by the monarch into his own bureaucratic management. The soldiers, drafted and equipped by the monarch, were therefore separated from ownership of the means of warfare which led to their military helplessness as subjects. Weber argued that no political community of citizens could arise on such a foundation. While in the occident the individual conscript enjoyed military independence and the lord of the army was dependent on the good will of its members, in the orient, despite the financial power of the gilds and individuals, the urban residents could not unite and effectively oppose the city lords in a military manner.23 In Webers juxtaposition of occident and orient, the strongest dichotomy was that between Christian Europe and the Islamic world. In contrast to Christianity and its role for the dissolving of clan associations, Islam never overcame the rural ties of Arabic tribal and clan associations remaining the religion of a conquering society structured in
21 22

Ibid., pp. 81-82. Ibid., p. 82. 23 Ibid., pp. 119-120.

terms of tribes and clans. During Muhammads time the Islamic state largely destroyed the existing urban autonomy. In Webers argument Mecca appeared as a standard reference for non-civic development. Despite the importance of some rich guilds, the dominant military and political position of the Qurayshi family prevented the rise of a government by guilds. Webers description of urban realities in Mecca and the contrast with his ideal medieval city model deserves quotation at large: The idea of an association which could unite the city into a corporate unit was missing in Mecca. This furnished its characteristic difference from the ancient polis and the early medieval Italian commune. However, when all is said and done, this Arabic condition of course omitting specific Islamic traits or replacing them by Christian counterparts may be taken to typify the period before the emergence of the urban community association.24 Weber admitted that he made reference to Mecca in order to describe the typical civic conditions before the emergence of the ideal medieval occidental commune. However, he argued that until modern times civic life in Mecca had been characterized by the constant competition of various authorities without fixed competences. Thus Weber contributed to the creation of a frozen image of the Islamic city that never managed to overcome its precommunal condition.25 In a recent article discussing the historical sociology of the city and its relationship with orientalism, Engin In has pointed out that historical sociology in the way Max Weber, Henry Pirenne, and Lewis Mumford have written, has been very little practiced in the past century; in contrast to the growth of urban history, historical sociology has been neglected.26 The analytical frameworks, within which urbanists have
24 25

Ibid., p. 88. Ibid., p. 88. 26 Engin F. In, Historical Sociology of the City, in Gerard Delanty and Engin F. In, eds., Handbook of Historical Sociology, London: Sage, 2003, p. 312.

been working, however, have been profoundly influenced by the historical sociology of the city and its typologies. The essence of the occidental civitas described by Weber and the orientalist discourse were interdependent. Weber borrowed from the orientalists the notion of the stagnancy of Islamic society and contributed to the emerging field of oriental urban studies with a typological framework of analysis. Elaborating his concept of the city based on a cultural East-West dichotomy, Weber rarely referred to any primary sources. As for the secondary literature he was drawing on, he made use of the publications of eminent nineteenth-century scholars, such as Theodor Mommsen and Henry Sumner Maine.27 Webers idea of the Islamic city, especially his argument for Mecca as an epitome of non-civic development, was heavily based on Snouck Hurgronjes works which represented orientalisms contemporary level of development. Hurgronjes refined studies of Islamic society, conforming to the dominant colonial vision of the essence of the power-relationship between Orient and Occident, naturally expressed the orientalist concept of the stagnancy of the world of Islam and its role as a contrasting image of the West.28 The first publications in this new branch of orientalism were the product of the work of French scholars on the cities of the Levant and North Africa between the 1920s and 1950s.29 As Andr Raymond has pointed out, [t]he doctrine of the Orientalists concerning the Muslim city and Muslim town planning fits naturally into the fundamental concept of Orientalism, according to which any phenomenon arising in the civilization of a Muslim country is totally conditioned by Islam.30 The approach of the French school
27

See, for instance, Theodor Mommsen, Rmische Geschichte, Leipzig: Reimer & Hirsel, 1854-56; Henry Sumner Maine, Early History of Institutions, London: John Murray, 1875. 28 For a discussion of Hurgronjes contribution to the development of orientalism, see Edward Said, Orientalism, pp. 209, 256. 29 See note 2. 30 Raymond, Islamic City, Arab City, p. 3.

of Islamic urban studies was based on the need for a detailed description that had to facilitate political control. Influenced by Weber and the traditions of historical sociology, the French orientalists formulated a model that was then applied to all Islamic territories. Much like Weber, they read the salient features of the cities they were describing in terms of a dichotomy between a progressive European and a stagnant Muslim world. Conforming to Webers approach and employing well-developed orientalist schemes, the French urbanists created a frozen image of an Islamic city that wasnt changing over time. This city was characterized by what it was not in comparison with the cities of Antiquity and the European Middle Ages rather than by an analysis of its geographical, political and social context. The first researchers working in the field of the urban studies of the Middle East were fascinated with antique urban planning and especially the ancient cities gridpatterned layout. They lamented that the Islamic city with its irregular streets and cul-desacs had lost the regularity and grandeur of its predecessor from classical antiquity. Thus they conformed to Webers idea of the detrimental role of Islam on the urbanism of classical antiquity. Since French colonization represented itself as re-establishing Roman imperium, it followed the model of ancient town planning: the return to an orthogonal layout, triumphing over the irregularity of Arab streets, was understood as a victory of civilization and progress over the anarchy that had characterized Islamic urbanism.31 The second quarter of the twentieth century, though still dominated by an orientalist attitude to the Middle East, witnessed some positive developments. Of particular importance for the move toward a more balanced view of the Middle East and its urban history was the work of Turkish scholars led by mer Ltfi Barkan. They
31

Raymond, Islamic City, Arab City, p. 4.

10

pointed at the existence and outstanding value of documents kept in the Ottoman archives. Studies on the tax system and demography, extensively based on Ottoman archival sources, began to appear in the 1930s.32 The use of this vast amount of sources qadi registers, tax documents, waqf deeds, among many others radically transformed the notion researchers had of the cities in the world of Islam. The examination of the qadi registers shed light on law and administration and posed serious challenges to Webers concept of the Islamic city as a non-administered one. Apart from emphasizing the considerable role played by the qadis in the management of the city, new consideration was given to institutions such as the trade guilds, the communities of the neighborhoods, as well as those of religious and ethnic character. Despite some innovative attempts and the achievements of the Ottomanists, however, the bulk of the research on the city in the world of Islam remained focused on the Levant and North Africa in an attempt at delineating an urban model that would be valid for all cities in the Muslim world. The first sustained challenges to the Orientalist concept of the Islamic city were not undertaken until the 1970s. Most of the contributions to the debate were published in the proceedings of conferences, including those organized by Ira Lapidus in 196933 and Albert Hourani and Samuel Stern in 1970.34 The articles included in the latter volume addressed many aspects of the Islamic city paradigm, including the ideas proposed by Weber. The new generation of scholars had evidently overcome the old attempts at creating an ideal model of the city. Albert Hourani clearly expressed the doubts of recent
32

See, for instance, mer Ltfi Barkan, Osmanl mparatorluunda bir skn ve Kolonizasyon Metodu Olarak Vakflar ve Temlikler, in Vakflar Dergisi, II, 1942, pp. 279-386; Tarihi Demografi Aratrmalar ve Osmanl Tarihi, in Trkiyat Mecmuas, 10, pp. 1-26; Quelques Observations sur lorganization conomique et sociale des villes ottomanes, des XVIe et XVIIe sicles, in Recueil Socit Jean Bodin, vol. II, 1955, pp. 289-311, 33 Ira M. Lapidus, ed., Middle Eastern Cities: A Symposium on Ancient, Islamic and Contemporary Middle Eastern Urbanism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. 34 A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern, eds., The Islamic City: A Colloquim, Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1970.

11

scholarship about the validity of the Islamic city model: Over this wide area of the world and these many centuries, can we really speak of something called the Islamic city? Did cities in the Muslim world have any important features in common, and if so can they be explained in terms of Islam, or must we look for other types of explanation?35 The question regarding Islams role as a defining factor in the urbanism of the Middle East was to be asked frequently in the next several decades. Houranis argument was that urban life could not be expected to have taken the same form in all regions, not so much because of any supposed differences of national or religious character, as because of varying soils and climates, different inheritances, and involvement in various commercial systems.36 He suggested that scholars should distinguish between the cities of the different parts of the Islamic world those of the western half, representing Greek, Roman and Byzantine heritage, those in the area of Iranian culture, and those of the Indian subcontinent, for instance. Within each area one should also be able to make further sub-divisions, like those between the cities of North Africa, the Nile valley, and the Levant, or between the cities of Mesopotamia, the Persian plateau, and Transoxania. Addressing more explicitly Webers concept, Hourani agreed that Islam did not recognize corporate personality except in a limited sense. This, however, was explained with the spirit of Islamic social thought that went against the formation of limited groups within which there might grow up an exclusive natural solidarity hostile to the allinclusive solidarity of an umma based on common obedience to Gods commands.37 The development of autonomous municipal institutions, on the other hand, was prevented by the fact that the power of the state was rooted in the city. The local bourgeoisie and the
35

A. H. Hourani, The Islamic City in the Light of Recent Research, in A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern, eds., The Islamic City, p. 11. 36 Ibid., p. 11. 37 Ibid., p. 14.

12

ulama could not serve as the basis for the formation of local autonomous institutions because they needed the government for maintenance of peace and security and, moreover, for food supply and protection of the trade routes. Again addressing Weber, Hourani argued that the autonomous cities of the classical world and of medieval Europe were not the norm to which all cities at all times had tended to approach but rather an exception which itself needs explanation. Hourani rightly pointed out that Webers main problem was always to explain the emergence of the rational, bureaucratic, industrial society of modern Europe; Webers emphasis on Europes uniqueness made it easy to draw the inference that this unique society was the norm and all others were arrested or diverted in their natural development towards it. It would not however be true to say, Hourani argued, that because municipal privileges in the world of Islam never existed, urban life never existed.38 In another important contribution to the 1970s volume on the Islamic city, Samuel Stern set out to examine the character of civic life in Islam and the constitution of the Islamic city and how these two distinguished it from the cities of other societies. The constitution of the city was defined by Stern in the sense of the citys character and structure.39 Stern was determined not to deal with the frequently discussed material and topographical aspects of the Islamic city but with its inner structure which, according to him, was characterized by its looseness, i.e. the absence of corporate municipal institutions. He began his exposition with an analysis of the antique heritage and its influence on the development of the cities in the world of Islam. Stern made the argument that Islamic civilization did not inherit the municipal institutions of Antiquity because,
38 39

Ibid., p. 15. S. M. Stern, The Constitution of the Islamic City, in A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern, eds., The Islamic City, p. 25.

13

owing to their gradual decline, there was by the time of the Muslim conquest of the eastern parts of the classical world nothing left to inherit. According to him, after a period of a gradual and complicated decline, with the administrative reorganization and centralization of Byzantium in the seventh century, municipal city government was altogether destroyed. Therefore, since the municipal institutions had ceased to exist by the time the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire were conquered by the Muslims, the emerging Islamic civilization could not inherit and develop them. Thus Stern criticized Weber who had attributed the absence of municipal institutions in Islam to the tribal traditions of the Arabs.40 The problem of the relationship between Antiquity and Islam had become a major theme in the discussions of Islamic society and the Middle Eastern city since the 1950s. Samuel Sterns convincing argument was only one of the many contributions. It gradually appeared that many of the negative aspects that the Orientalists thought characteristic of the Islamic city were apparent in the antique city and had resulted from an urban evolution that spread over a few centuries. This argument was also expressed in 1985 by Hugh Kennedy in his authoritative article From Polis to Madina. Kennedy maintained that in the urban communities of the fifth and sixth centuries in Syria there was no classical town plan to affect later growth The streets were narrow and winding paths, there was no agora, no colonnades, no theatre.41 Discussing the constitution of the Islamic city, Samuel Stern admitted that Islamic civilization not only did not have the chance to inherit the municipal institutions of Antiquity, but it did not even develop any of its own. Despite some groping towards

40 41

Ibid., pp. 26-30. Hugh Kennedy, From Polis to Madina, in Past and Present, 106, 1985, pp. 13-14.

14

urban autonomy, nothing comparable to the situation in Western Europe could develop. The first Islamic centuries saw a splendid development of urban civilization but the intense civic life did not produce formal, juridical, civic institutions. Stern points out that this was a period of comparatively stable central government that was not particularly propitious for the rise of municipal autonomy.42 Similarly to the unsuccessful attempts for the creation of civic institutions, the craft organizations in Islam too never assumed a proper corporative form. Though, according to Stern, this lack of corporations could be explained in terms of Islam, it could not be considered a specific characteristic of Islamic civilization, since this was a common feature of most civilizations.43 The peculiarities of the status of the individual in the cities of the Muslim world found a new explanation in the 1970s based not on a contrast with an ideal European type but rather on a profound examination of Islamic society. Albert Hourani pointed out that Islam did not recognize the corporation but only the individual and the community of believers. The emphasis was on the freedom of the individual to seek the goods of this world and the next in his own way and to dispose freely of them. In the interests of the community, the ruler had a duty to intervene in order to regulate the relations of individuals, to prevent one individual infringing the freedom of others. The separation between public and private life could also be explained in terms of the concept of the freedom of the individual. Thus a civitas, the city as association, what Weber and other sociologists were mainly interested in, could not be formed in a society whose basic units, the families, touched only externally.44

42 43

Stern, The Constitution of the Islamic City, p. 31. Idem, p. 49. 44 Hourani, The Islamic City in the Light of Recent Research, p. 24.

15

The status of the individual was also examined in the 1970s by Marshall G. S. Hodgson in his brilliant study of Islamic civilization.45 In volume 2 of The Venture of Islam Hodgson discussed Islamic society in the Earlier Middle Period of Islamic history, 945 1258. He argued that the period was characterized by its cosmopolitanism which became apparent in the notion that the individual was a citizen of the whole Dar alIslam. Despite the various local traditions, the only explicit unity was that of the Dar alIslam itself, which predetermined the maintenance of the universality of the whole society. Under these circumstances, it was impossible for cities to build up enduring bourgeois autonomy in the sense of the European commune. In Muslim lands such corporate entities as the communes could not thrive a person was not a citizen of a particular town, with local rights and responsibilities determined by his local citizenship. As a free Muslim he was a citizen of the world of Islam, with responsibilities determined by his presence before God alone.46 According to Hodgson, the reason for this cosmopolitanism of the Islamic world in the Earlier Middle Period was the central position of the Muslim regions in the geographical configuration of the expanding AfroEurasian Oikoumene., and the effects over time of that expansion.47 Studies focused on the city and its inhabitants in the Middle East over the last three decades have continued to provide new and meaningful insights, reflecting a growing sophistication of methodologies and approaches. Since there has been a growing awareness that every urban entity has its own unique identity, which is different from others in terms of geographical and historical circumstances, the perception of the impossibility of using generalizations to describe a unified model determined a change of
45

Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vol., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. 46 Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, v. 2, p. 124. 47 Ibid., p. 87.

16

approach and a new attitude dominated the field of urban studies of the Islamic world. The 1980s, however, witnessed the publication of the most critical and cogent analysis of the Islamic city, Janet Abu-Lughods The Islamic City Historic Myth, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance.48 Abu-Lughod maintained that the model of the Islamic city so far defined was the result of an orientalist perspective based on the observation of a few case studies in a limited area. The three particular cities, the studies of which stood as the basis for the development of the standard image of the Islamic city, were Fez in Morocco and Aleppo and Damascus in Syria. In each case, a very tentative set of placespecific comments and descriptions appears. These enter the literature and take on the quality of abstractions.49 Abu-Lughod further pointed out that the model of the Islamic city, focusing on the fourteenth-century situation, did not take into account the evolution of the three cities over time. She warned of the dangers of generalizing specific morphological and geographical data that had led the orientalists to assimilate cities from widely differing areas, and instead advanced an idea of the formation of the Islamic city through a morphological process based not only on legal, political, and religious systems but also on specific cultural factors. In another highly critical essay,50 Janet Abu-Lughod directly posed the question what made a city Islamic. She drew attention to the paradox of the existence of a large body of literature about an intellectual reality called the Islamic city, while there were almost no publications on other types of cities defined by religion. Abu-Lughod herself expressed preference for the term Muslim city, because it refers to cities built by
48

Janet Abu-Lughod, The Islamic City Historic Myth, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance, in International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19, 1987, pp. 155-176. 49 Ibid., p. 160. 50 Janet Abu-Lughod, What is Islamic about a City? Some Comparative Reflections, in Urbanism in Islam, The Proceedings of the International Conference on Urbanism in Islam (ICUIT), Oct. 22-28, 1989, v. 1, pp. 193-217.

17

Muslims, i.e., believers in Islam, rather than to cities built by a reified abstraction called Islam.51 She argued that Islam must not be used as an explanatory element; rather, one should demonstrate how specifically Islam characterized certain aspects of the city. AbuLughod addressed some key features of the Islamic city that had been perceived as typically Islamic and argued that they were rather based on geographical and cultural specifics. One of them was the street pattern of Muslim cities, notorious for its irregularity. According to Abu-Lughod, despite the influence of the Islamic property rights, what solidified this system of crooked narrow streets was the changing economics of transport. While in Roman and Byzantine times straight and wide streets were needed for the wheeled carts pulled by oxen, the new harness allowed for the use of camels to carry heavy loads thus making the straight and wide streets superfluous.52 Another feature of the Muslim city, typically explained as Islamic influence, that Abu-Lughod analyzed, was gender segregation. She admitted that this feature of the medieval Muslim city was one of the main differences distinguishing it from its medieval European counterpart, but emphasized the similar extent of gender segregation in the pre-Islamic world, especially in classical Greece, Persia, and within Jewish society.53 In this critical article, Abu-Lughod addressed one of the key aspects of the debate on the Islamic city, closely elaborated by Max Weber, namely the lack of municipal institutions in the cities in the world of Islam. It is interesting that, developing her argument, she contradicted the revisionist approach of Stern, Kennedy and others, regarding the influence of the ancient city on Islamic urbanism. Abu-Lughod argued that
51 52

Ibid., p. 211. Ibid., p. 203-204. 53 Ibid., p. 204, 214. For a detailed discussion of the origins and development of gender segregation, see Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, Yale: Yale University Press, 1993.

18

the urban heritage of the part of the classical world that Islam conquered in the early Middle Ages was found intact by its new masters. According to her, the seventh-century cities of the Middle East represented a high culture that was surpassed only by the magnificence of China. Therefore, the political system of Islam diffused from an urban base from the very beginning. That was a major contrast with the developments in Europe the Middle Eastern cities did not have the chance to grow in the cracks of secular and religious power; rather, they were the centers of power. Thus, cities could not be expected to have had their own municipal institutions. They actually were the institutions through which the economic, political, religious, and social systems worked.54 Abu-Lughods conclusion to the problem of Islam, or religion in general, as a defining factor for the character of urban centers was that religious beliefs and institutions were only one of the many defining factors. The differences between Christian and Islamic cities, therefore, were based as much on geographical and historical conditions as on the religion of their inhabitants. Although the discussion of the existence of an Islamic city per se has not been as central in the last couple of decades as it was in the 1970s and 1980s, there still have been major critiques of the Islamic city in scholarly literature. In his 1994 article, the eminent historian of the Arab cities Andr Raymond aptly posed the question: How can one speak of an Islamic city by only considering Mediterranean Arab cities (and sometimes cities of the Maghreb) and ignoring the remaining five-sixths of the Islamic world?55 Raymond rejected the orientalist vision of the backward Middle Eastern city. He challenged the orientalist assessments of French urban historians contrasting the Ottoman

54 55

Abu-Lughod, What is Islamic about a City?, p. 201-202. Raymond, Islamic City, Arab City, p. 12.

19

period with an alleged age of order and progress announced by French domination. Raymond argued that Ottoman rule represented a period of expansion, rather than decline, for the cities of the Middle East.56 The sustained efforts at debunking the vision of a unified Islamic city type notwithstanding, this orientalist concept has proved durable in the works of architects and urban planners, both theoreticians and practitioners. Besim Hakim, for instance, argued that the general principles for the construction of the Islamic city had been defined by Islamic law.57 In his research, based on the urban form of Tunis, by juxtaposing fourteenth-century Maliki law with the contemporary madina, Hakim discounts the possibility of evolutionary change over the centuries, and his model for the Islamic built environment suggests the orientalists frozen picture. In the last several decades, on the other hand, urban practitioners with a new-found respect for the great achievements of the past have been searching for ways to reproduce in todays cities some of the patterns of city building that have been defined as Islamic. In this quest, they have been influenced, whether wittingly or not, by the Orientalist literature and its alleged depiction of the essence of the Islamic city. This approach has been criticized by Janet AbuLughod, who has argued that none of the conditions which would allow for the reconstruction of Islamic cities by design still exist. Cities, according to her, are living processes rather than products with strictly defined characteristics; in this sense, they can only be encouraged to grow in the desired direction and not reproduced on the basis of a strict, be it Islamic or other, pattern.58

56 57

Ibid., p. 12. Besim Selim Hakim, Arabic-Islamic Cities: Building and Planning Principles, London: KPI, 1986. 58 Abu-Lughod, The Islamic City, p. 173.

20

The editors of a most recent publication dealing with urbanism in the Islamic world have formulated their leading concept as to consider the city as a living organism.59As any living organism, they argue in the introduction, the city should be seen in continuous transformation and not in frozen images. Thus they reject the orientalist approach, integral part of which has been Webers concept of the city, attempting not only to provide snapshots of urban fabric but also to deal with the transformation of this fabric over time. Contrary to the orientalist notion of a uniform Islamic city type, the editors of, as well as the contributors to, this two-volume set acknowledge the kaleidoscopic nature of the Islamic world and provide a close look at the regional and chronological differentiation of the city, representing cities ranging from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Entitling the volume The City in the Islamic World, the four prominent editors aim at putting an end to the no longer productive discourse on the Islamic city that had its origins in the typological approach elaborated by Max Weber in the early twentieth century.

59

Salma K. Jayyusi, Renata Holod, Attilio Pettruccioli, Andr Raymond, eds., The City in the Islamic World, Leiden: Brill, 2008, p. xiii.

21