8 - The city and the nomad

Summary

Cities

The ‘Islamic city’ has been an important focus of historical discussion for at least a century; scholars have drawn attention to the importance of cities in Islamic society, the vast size of certain cities in the medieval Muslim world and the importance of merchants, not only as generators of wealth but as religious leaders, intellectuals and exemplars of good and worthy citizens. All this is in implied contrast with the societies of north-west Europe, in which, it is argued, elite power was based in the countryside and the rural estate and where cities were comparatively small and merchants regarded with suspicion and contempt by the upper reaches of both secular and religious hierarchies.

The built environment of the Islamic city also appears to have certain definable characteristics. The most obvious of these was the apparent absence of formal planning, the narrow winding streets, the closed-off residential quarters. The main arteries of such a Muslim city were narrow and sometimes stepped because they were not designed for wheeled vehicles. Medieval Muslim society almost disinvented the wheel: it was the pack animal and the human porter that shifted goods, not the cart. This meant that there was no need for wide, well-engineered streets of the sort that Roman towns had required. The closed residential quarters were a result of the Muslim concern with the privacy and sanctity of domestic family life, which had to be protected from prying eyes.