Cities and Caliphs: On the Genesis of Arab Muslim Urbanism

by Nezar AlSayyad

The history of the Islamic world includes many unique cultural, religious, scientific, and architectural developments. Among these was the evolution of the Arab Muslim city, which occurred during the rapid expansion of the Muslim empire in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. In this probing volume, Nezar AlSayyad examines the extraordinary characteristics of Islamic urbanism and the process by which cities and towns were absorbed and physically transformed by Islam. The early leaders of the Muslim empire--caliphs, amirs, and other rulers--had a lasting effect on what the modern scholar would call their cities' urban form. AlSayyad demonstrates that the stereotypical model of the Muslim city is inadequate, not only because individual rulers in regions of the empire were different, but also due to various cultural influences that were indigenous to conquered areas.

After a prologue, the study begins with a historiography of the concept of the Muslim city and how it was paralleled by the development of its physical form. Garrison towns, established as military camps by early Arab conquerors, are examined next by AlSayyad. His research shows that building methods and urban form in the Arab cities were products of Islamization and consolidation of Caliphal power. New capital towns and cities, AlSayyad maintains, were also results of elaborate personal expressions of politico-religious authority by certain Muslim rulers. The book ends by suggesting that the Arabs' and their leaders' changing view of the role of architecture was a major factor behind the fluid urban forms of Muslim cities. This significant contribution to the study of the Arab world and its cultural history will be of great value to Middle East, urban, and architectural historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists, as well as to students of Islamic history and urbanism.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published May 30, 1991

About the author

Nezar AlSayyad is emeritus professor of architecture, planning, urban design, and urban history at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also served as chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He was founder and past president of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments. Among his numerous books are: Nile: Urban Histories on the Banks of a River (2020), Cairo: Histories of a City (2011), Cinematic Urbanism (2006), Making Cairo Medieval (2005), and The End of Tradition (2004).

Reviews

[Mohammad Awny Hamouda El-Mesallamy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was made for American audience obviously.... The idea itself is good .. the book is not ... It would take forever to state why it is not a good book ... But from the top of my mind: there where at least more than five cities built in the first stages of Islam that the author could have used to evaluate and analysis the first cities of Islam but he refrained, another thing he analysed Cairo -which was the forth settlement in the area- and just mentioned without analyizing other settlement/cities attached to it.

My conclusion was that the author wanted to confirm his hypnosis so he chose what would ascertain his thoughts and neglected important facts ... Hopefully in the future I would make a full article with what I saw as flows in the book.

[S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I happen to have known Al Sayyid's work on urban informality before reading this one and I can say that this book although written for a good purpose its quality or maybe its audience wasn't supposed to be me.

In studying Islamic cities, there was a clear confusion to me at least in the definition of the context and the region of study. On one hand, the author have made the difference between Arabic and Islamic but as to what this distinction serves him as he deploys his argument on urban planning during the caliphates. I was equally disappointed that the quality of the references didn't match my expectation of citing rather more local scholars and less orientalists.

And don't even get me started on symbols and other tales ...