The Islamic City

HATA Tut 3

SCQARE Review

SCQARE Review on The Islamic City by Janet

Article: The Islamic City Historic Myth, Islamic Essence and Contemporary Relevance Author: Janet L. Abu-Lughod Topic: Understanding the concept of the Islamic City and the construction of it to develop a reliable source on the

topic as previous articles on the concept are now seen as unreliable. This is done in terms of analysing the social, economical, political, cultural, historical and legal aspects of the concept.

Situation:
The situation which the author addresses is the makeup and construction of historical Islamic Citys namely in the regions of North Africa, Syria, Lebanon, Marrakech and the greater Saudi Arabian continent. This is to get a better understanding of past Islamic Citys due to the recent resurgence in Islamic beliefs and thus to try aid architects that have been influenced by Islamic Citys whether willingly or not.

Concern:
The concern is that research articles up until recently have been portraying the wrong image of The Islamic City repeatedly. We know this because we see that previous authors have only focussed on a handful of cities and to be purely correct one would need to analyse more cities. Secondly only certain legal codes (on which the Islamic form of the city is presumed to be based) have been studied. Furthermore researches have continually paraphrased the same original article that contained the above discrepancies. Thus the article aims to correct the above discrepancies and serve as an authoritative source on Islamic Citys.

The Question Posed:

Are the past oriental researches legitimate in their thinking processes regarding the principles on which Islamic cities were designed/constructed and if not what are the correct principles that historical Islamic Cities were built on?

Answer
The author suggests that previous researchers have been incorrect in their thinking processes regarding Islamic citys as they did not consider different time periods of the particular city and thus they have not recognised that the city has evolved over time. Secondly the researchers only focused on a handful of cities and in order to be entirely accurate they should have analysed multiple Islamic cities. Lastly only certain legal codes (on which the Islamic form of the city is presumed to be based) have been studied and there focus was on the whole of Islam not certain denominations. Thus the author solved this problem by analysing Islamic cities in a much more detailed fashion adding to previous research but also negating parts of the previous research that were simply put wrong. The author did this by using reputable sources and conducting her own research and even used a form of comparative analysis between Islamic cities and those of Western culture.

Rationale (Process):
The author starts by checking previous research and identifying whether or not the research is credible. If not the author negates that particular part of research, she does this in part 1 of her article (Part 1 solely focuses on past research that is incorrect). She then goes onto conduct her own analysis of The Islamic City in part 2, making sure to not repeat the mistakes she pointed out in part 1.

Rationale (Answer):
The author arrives at an answer, made up of three Islamic elements, which give rise to the design/makeup of Islamic cites:

Yusuf Parak

31/03/14

The Islamic City

HATA Tut 3

SCQARE Review

1. 2. 3.

A distinction between the members of the Umma and outsiders, which led to juridical and spatial distinction between neighbourhoods The segregation of the sexes which gave rise to a particular solution to the question of spatial organization And a legal system which, rather than imposing general regulations over land uses of various types in various places, left to the litigation of neighbours the detailed adjudication of mutual rights over space and use.

From which she infers that any urban planners wanting to replicate the Islamic model would need to impose these restrictions and thus it would be difficult to reproduce a purely Islamic city as modern society does not subscribe to the above principles per se.

Evaluation
Relevance: The concern is relevant in terms of any urban planners looking to replicate the Islamic City as the

information they base their designs on was, up until when this article was published, wrong.
Utility: The answer given that shows that previous research in this field is illegitimate is useful in dealing with the

authors concern about urban planners looking to model a city/place on an Islamic model as their model would be wrong because the previous research was wrong.
Evaluation: The logic used to validate the authors conclusion seems to me to be relatively thorough however the

author fails to take into account the principles technology and the terrain/climate by her own admission. Furthermore the author criticizes a previous researcher for only looking at one particular Islamic denomination however her research does not make any mention of how many denominations were analysed to provide her with her conclusion.

Yusuf Parak

31/03/14