East Africa

Here we are considering Eritrea, Ethiopia to an extent, Somalia, Tanzania (including Zanjibar), Djibouti, islands of the Indian Ocean and Kenya.

As Sudanese development has more to do which Egyptian development, I discuss it along with Egypt’s (or at least separately from East Africa).

The Arabic name Zanj refers to the Negroid peoples of Tanzania and Kenya. The more northerly Hamitic peoples, although also black-skinned, were called Barbara (very like both Berber and Barbarian in origin). The Romans also made this distinction which may be a little too stark, however, to be useful to science. Within this area, Ethiopia remains a little unique having remained mainly Christian culturally (having also been the Christian kingdom that gave refuge to some of the earliest Muslims). It is clear that both trade and cultural contacts between coastal regions and islands across the very narrow Red Sea pre-date Islam.

We have five sources for our Arab history of East Africa: al-Mas’udi of Baghdad in the 10^th Century visited pre-Islamic Zanjibar (Zanzibar); al-Bakri the 11^th Century Andalusian and Moroccan; al-Idrisi in the 12^th Century; Ibn Sa’id in the 13^th Century; and Ibn Battuta who also visited Zanjibar (and also the Maldives) in the 14^th Century.

All the sources noted the poverty of all but the ruling classes in the region. The Arab trade in African slaves which occurred and was noted in these sources remains an issue today for some African nationalists.

This post is a little brief so I hope to expand it. If anybody wants to add information via the comments, please do so.

West Africa

Muslim traders from Mauritania and Morocco soon reached the Western Sahara and penetrated further south to places like Ghana, Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast collectively referred to in Arabic as Sudan (black) regions. Note that Sudan as used here also includes modern day Sudan and really the whole belt of settlement to the south of the Sahara that abutted the Arab/Berber Islamic world of the time. Trade between North and West Africa in fact predates the advent of Islam in Africa. Gold, salt, slaves and ivory were among the traded items.

The ivory trade was formally disapproved of in Islam but as an extravagance rather than out of animal welfare considerations. The renowned Saharan Tuareg with the traditional headgear were associated especially with the salt trade.

The part of the basin of the Niger River bordering the southern Sahara (and known in Arabic as the Sahal (beach/coast)) was influenced by Muslims from at least the 10^th Century. Bakri from 11^th Century Spain was an Arab historian of this area as was the 12^th Century Tunisian (and Norman Italian) Arab, Idrisi (a descendent of the founder of the Idrisid dynasty). From them we know that Muslim merchants were allowed by the local king of what is now (roughly) Ghana to build and worship at a mosque there. We also learn from them that a pattern of conversion of first elites, who learned Islam from learned merchants and sometimes Sufi mystics, and then their subordinates developed in the local West African societies.

The Almoravids were especially evangelical in both North and West Africa in the 11^th and 12^th Centuries. Both Berbers and Arabs were involved. There arose (as a result of the pattern of conversion) two types of Islam that the West Africans learned, the sophisticated version taught by the merchants and the simple version taught by the Sufis. The zeal was apparently infectious and attempts were made by West African rulers to convert other West Africans and their rulers to Islam often by force. This was occasionally a mere pretext for conquest, however, notably the late 13^th Century ‘jihads’ of the rulers of Mali.

As with the Maghreb, the hajj was enthusiastically attended and participation conferred great prestige on the hajji when back home in West Africa.

Mutual visits also forged significant links between West Africa and the rest of the Islamic world. Nevertheless, Ibn Battuta noted in the 14^th Century that Islam was still predominantly practiced then by the elites.

We know from the work of a Muslim historian in Niger that the locals preferred to add Islam to local customs rather than replace the old customs completely. He notes the absence of the early influence of the Muslim jurisprudents as a problem for the 'proper' local development of Islam (as he saw it) and sees that as having produced the reformist (and jihadist) movements of the 19^th Century, which sought to introduce the stricter form of Islam lacking in West Africa. Another view is that early West African Islam benefited from lacking the strictures of the legalism which developed elsewhere.

The Maghreb

The next few posts are some regional political histories of the pre-modern Islamic period and include some of the regions that, at first, were of little interest to the then insular and weak West. But first, I come back to the southern (and to a significant extent the northern) shores of what the Romans called mare nostrum (our sea), the Mediterranean Sea.

The Maghreb is that first region of interest. It is the west of the Arab Islamic world (as the name suggests) and included al-Andalus when it was in Muslim hands. Here we will consider the remainder of the Maghreb which is effectively Muslim North Africa excluding Egypt. The West in our Western sense is called the Gharab. Incidentally, the east of the Arab Islamic world is usually referred to as the Mashriq. Usually Maghreb refers today to Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco (which is also called the Maghreb by itself), Mauritania and sometimes Libya. Morocco and Mauritania are also sometimes called the far Maghreb since the French defined those countries as such in the 19^th Century.

Both Ifriqiyya (from which we get Africa) and Mauritania (land of the ‘Maurs’ (‘blacks’)) are originally Roman words that described parts of North Africa before the Arab Islamic period. At times, Arabs used to refer to Ifriqiyya (centred on Tunis) and Maghreb (around Morocco) as two separate regions and Spain as a third. This region is central to the Arab world in many ways as it faces Europe and Africa as well as the eastern Arab world.

The Arabs had conquered the entire region by 700 CE mostly under Muawiya I and II after beginning in the period of ‘Uthman’s rule and thus both ruled the Berbers and supplanted Byzantine and Latin/Vandal rule and civilisation. Berber-Carthaginian civilisation was too indigenous and successful in North Africa to be as easily done away with. The Carthaginians (in modern day Tunisia), we remember, threatened the Roman Republic in Europe and may have directly brought about the Roman Empire by encouraging Roman militarism.

In the 11^th Century under the Fatimids (discussed in other posts) a further migration of Arabs from Egypt to the Maghreb (known in Arab folklore as the taghrib, meaning both going west and being exiled and possibly being actually both) produced a notable degree of discord between Berbers and Arabs for some time. Writing much later, Ibn Khaldoun discusses the havoc wreaked.

The Berber (locally Amazigh) language, however, did not resist the relative supremacy of Arabic especially well, not being a major language of literature (although today's Algerian Arabic especially owes a lot to its influence). The Berber and Arab culture always had a number of similarities that smoothed any problems of integration between them including desert living, a penchant for genealogy and the use of the camel. Indeed it is likely that the two groups are ethnically related as was always suggested by those who supported the cause of this integration.

The first governorate capital of the Arab-ruled region was at Qairowan in Tunisia, built by the Arabs in the 7^th Century. In the ‘Abbasid period, Haroun ar-Rashid (famous from the Arabian Nights) permitted further division of the region along with the rest of his Caliphate (with local dynastic rule in order to alleviate succession issues that would otherwise have ensued). In this early period, the two major dynasties which developed were the Idrisids (named for the first dynast, a great grandson of the Prophet, who, in the end, the Caliph wanted dead) roughly in Morocco (Maghreb) and the more approved Aghlabids in Tunisia (roughly Ifriqiyya). A Khawarij dynasty, the Rustamids, also ruled in the interior of Algeria for some time and they were also relatively unacceptable to the Caliphs. The Fatimids, who later ruled in Egypt and there asserted their own claim to a Shi’a Caliphate, also arose in the Maghreb (where they supplanted the Aghlabids). As the Fatimids came to rule from Cairo they, in turn, permitted lesser, often Berber, dynasties to rule locally further West such as the Zirids centred on Qairowan. Qairowan continued to be a major centre of Islamic (especially Maliki (I will discuss the different schools of Islamic jurisprudence including the Maliki School in a later post)) and other learning in the Arab Islamic world.

From the late 11^th to the early 13^th Centuries, the two major dynasties in the region (including in Islamic Spain) were the Almoravids (or al-Murabitun) and then the Almohads (or al-Muwahhidun).

The expansions of these last two dynasties especially permitted continuing cross-cultural pollination that promoted secular learning. Averroes, for example, was born in Cordoba and died in Marrakesh having thus been able to span the Mediterranean in the course of his academic learning. The Maghreb also rightly lays claim to the greats of Arabic/Berber learning, Ibn Khaldoun and Ibn Battuta, whom I will discuss further in later posts.

Nevertheless, a sort of ‘cultural cringe’ persisted in deference to the more religion-bound Mashriqi culture. Ironically, and perhaps for that reason, the Mauritanian culture of the far Maghreb continues to have more affinity with Mashriqi culture than the Libyan culture which is obviously much closer to the Mashriq. The hajj pilgrimage has probably contributed significantly to the continued influence of the Mashriq upon the Maghreb.

Since the 17^th Century, Morocco has had four imperial capitals that as a result have many buildings of interest. The capitals have been, in order, Fes (Fez), Meknes, Marrakesh and Rabat-Salé, the current capital. Notably, the name Rabat means something like Sufi outpost centre at a port or border area in the local Arabic and the name Salé is derived from a Berber name for the city which predates the Arab conquests. Today Casablanca (actually ad-Dar al-Bayda’ in Arabic) is Morocco’s largest city and port and contains the modern Hasan II Mosque (there was Australian involvement in its construction). The Qayrawiyyin (or Qarawiyyin) Mosque at Fes is notably named for the early visitors from the first important Arab city of the area, Qairowan. Many of the major buildings of the old cities are mosques and madrasas and some are also built in a style that appears to have originated in al-Andalus and Syria but with local North African variations in style and materials and products. The Kutubiyya Mosque in Marrakesh is another notable mosque. Zarhoun near Meknes and Sousah near Rabat are also important historical sites.

From a religious point of view the Roman and Byzantine Christian projects in their African provinces were relatively unsuccessful among the Berbers when compared with the success of the spread of Islam in the population. There were also Jewish communities that predated ‘Uthman’s invasion (and continue today). Sufism was influential in this culture of the Maghreb. The great Ibn ‘Arabi was from Almohad Spain, for example, and epitomised the philosophical and inventive bent of the Maghrebi culture generally. The many varieties of the Sufis of the Maghreb were largely responsible for the spread of Islam to West Africa which I will consider in the next post.

Cultural Relations with the West more generally in this Period

Europe is named for Europa, perhaps ironically given the oppositional conflict I've been discussing, a Phoenician princess in Greek mythology and the Phoenicians are closely related to the Arabs. The idea of Europe is relatively recent but may be seen as opposed to what is not European as all identities conflict with their opposites in the sense that they are defined as not something. A politically united Europe was first attempted under the Carolingian dynasty of Charlemagne in the latter part of the 8^th Century and the ideal was later expanded to include what had been Moorish al-Andalus. The concept of Christendom developed in opposition to ‘Moors’ in the south and east from the 10^th Century before the idea of Europe, however.

On the Arab side, we know that al-Mas’udi wrote in detail in 10^th Century Egypt about some of the dynasties of the Franks (Ifranj). We also know that Toledo in central Spain was the major centre of cultural contact between the ‘Moors’ and ‘Christendom’ both before and after its reconquest. Seville in Spain and Palermo in Sicily were also witness to cultural cooperation between ‘Moors’ and ‘Christians’ both before and after their Christian reconquests.

Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126 – 1198) was highly regarded and his work was employed by such preeminent Christian scholars as Aquinas. Chess and lute playing were also shared by the two groups. Dante seems to have also had a slight interest in the literary works and history of the East and may have borrowed from the literature to an extent for his Inferno.

Moving to the Ottoman period and to the rise of cities such as Venice and Genoa, we can see a continuation of mutual interest between the two ‘sides’. The Europeans meanwhile continued to harbour admiration for the Arabs and their Arabesque designs and lives. The first colonial endeavours of Napoleon in Egypt were accompanied by continued mutual interest. The interest on the Arab side especially led to a third major wave of translations in our history this time instigated by Muhammad 'Ali, the ruler of Egypt (following the major efforts in Baghdad in the earliest Islamic period and in Toledo in the early modern period of Europe). The back and forth flow of ideas has thus occurred continuously but also has been particularly focused in those three distinct waves.

"The Crusades"

In beginning to examine the Crusades, we must first bear in mind that the Arabs and others in the East that witnessed the Crusades were mostly Christians albeit that some of the sects were probably regarded as heretical in both Rome and Constantinople (as Rome and Constantinople also regarded each other to an extent). In the East, the Crusades were thus, in this light, regarded as a mere land-grab by the Franks (the Arab name then for all of the Western Europeans including the English) and not a religiously motivated drive. They can also be seen as a political drive that is also part of the larger expansion of the 'Christian' realm into former 'Muslim' zones such as in Iberia and Sicily.

The official first Crusade in the East began in 1096 and resulted in a major colonising period beginning from 1099. The area was finally reconquered for the Muslims with the fall of Acre (Acco in Israel today) in 1292. As the Crusades continued, so did the European reconquests of Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula as noted by Ibn al-Athir, who lived in Mosul in Iraq from 1160 to 1233. The Normans who performed the pope’s bidding in Sicily were also expanding into England (in 1066) thus indicating a desire for expansion of territory that thus may not be seen as purely religiously motivated. At the same time, the Turkic, and incidentally Muslim, Seljuks were expanding into territory thus threatening Byzantium politically. Those two groups were also far from the only peoples actively interested in geo-politics in this period. Thus, the motivation for the Crusades may have been to protect Europe from 'Muslim' political expansion and even to promote a form of political expansion of its own rather than the ostensible protection of Christians who travelled to the “Holy Land” pilgrimage sites on routes until then largely formally in 'Muslim' hands and under weak 'Muslim' control. The Emperor at Byzantium and not the Patriarch brought on the first Crusade by asking for an intervention although he did ask the Pope (who he clearly saw as the supreme political player in Western Europe at the time, however).

The Europeans thus established four major 'Crusader States' in the Eastern Mediterranean: the Kingdom of Jerusalem (which lasted from 1099 to 1187), the Principality of Antioch (from 1098 to 1189), the County of Tripoli, or Tarablus in Arabic (from 1098 to 1189) and the County of Edessa (from 1097 to 1144).

Attempts were made to also conquer the more economically rich land of Egypt. The formation into separate states rather than a unified one is itself an indication of the fulfilment of the desire for political gain of several of the Crusader parties.

In the so-called "Second Crusade", the famous Saladin was successful. Saladin (Salah ad-Din), a Kurd, first worked for and then supplanted the Shi’a Fatimid dynasty of Egypt and also ruled in Syria. His armies did most to restore the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean that had been turned into 'Crusader States' to Muslim control in the late 12^th Century.

In the Third Crusade, the major protagonist was the English king, Richard I (Coeur de Leon), after all of the original Crusader States had been lost (the Kingdom of Jerusalem was now centred upon Acre after Acre itself had been lost (and then finally regained by Richard)). The Christian Kingdom of Cyprus was set up in this effort.

In the Fourth Crusade, the Franks conquered and ignominiously sacked Christian Constantinople while attempting to regain all of the lost Crusader States. Instead, Franks briefly ruled some of the eastern lands of their co-religionists.

The official Crusader era (nine Crusades are usually recognised) ended with the fall of Acre in 1292. Unofficially, the Christian West continued to believe in reconquest of the “Holy Land” for some time and perhaps some Christians (and Western ‘adventurers’) still do. Notably, various victorious 19th and 20th Century Western military figures have been reputed to have made the comment at Saladin's tomb (presumably directed at the ghost of Saladin): "we're back".

The Christians considered alliances with the non-Christian Mongols in this Crusader period for their political advantage.

Finally, on both sides, the armies of the Crusader period were ethnically and religiously diverse and not all equally pious. The accounts of Christians of the East tend to show a preference for Muslim over Western Christian manners and science in this period and the Jews were treated better under Muslim than Christian rule of the period.

The Crusades were probably a success in one respect only, and that was politically. Eastern Mediterranean trade routes became more open to the West. This was clearly not the result of Arab fear of the Franks, however, but a gesture of generosity. Nevertheless, while the mercantile city-states of Venice and Genoa probably benefited the most, all of Western Europe now had better access to exotic spices and textiles. This in turn may have led to the idea of circumventing the Arabs gaining currency and the resulting 'discovery' of the New World. By the 17^th Century, the European addiction to coffee (and a colonial project) was well advanced.

Culturally, the effects of the Crusades were minimal, however, when compared with the major peaceful cultural exchange which occurred for centuries in al-Andalus and in Sicily. Nevertheless, some exchanges occurred. The major lasting cultural impact in the East may have been to discredit Western Christianity.

The 'Moors' in Iberia and Sicily

Moor, of course, is a Spanish name for the Islamic invaders and refers to the darker colour of the skin of the invaders from the South and East. The Arab and Berber Islamic conquest of most of the Iberian Peninsula began in 711 or 712 and continued under Umayyad rule with the capital of Cordova after the ‘Abbasids took over the caliphate in the East of the Islamic world. Around the time the Fatimids declared their realm to be a Caliphate and made its capital Cairo, the Umayyads followed suit at Cordova, which had become a major centre of learning. In the period from 1008 to 1031, the Cordovan Caliphate began to disintegrate and from around 1085, the Christian rulers in the north began the so-called “reconquista” of the Iberian Peninsula. This “reconquest” had papal support as did the roughly contemporaneous “Crusades” in the East. The reconquest was completed with the fall of Granada in 1492 as the Ottomans were expanding into Eastern Europe. Large numbers of Muslims and Jews were expelled (mainly to North Africa). Throughout the nearly 800 years of Arab Islamic rule, al-Andalus (the Arabic name for Islamic Iberia) generally traded freely with ‘Christian’ Europe as well as the other regions of the Islamic world.

The main languages spoken by all the people of Arab and Berber Spain, Muslim, Christian and Jew, to some extent were Classical Arabic and an Andalusian dialect of it. Indigenous languages were, of course, continued, especially among the less educated and less ambitious.

Probably until the 10^th Century the majority would have been Christian; that was before the influence of the lure of the status of Islam took firm hold. The Christian liturgy and advanced formal education of Christians was conducted in Latin but by the 9^th Century most Christians were probably more fluent in Arabic than Latin as suggested by the complaints of one contemporary bishop. Hebrew was also spoken by most Jews and Arabic has been found written in Hebrew characters there.

The elites were the original Arab and Berber Umayyad settlers from both North Africa and Syria/Lebanon and their families. Other Arabs and Berbers who settled from time to time (to ensure the continuation of Islamic rule among other reasons) held a similar status. Some senior Jews and Christians, especially those who took part in Islamic government, were also in this elite class.

A second class (mualladun) came from a group of families who converted to Islam relatively early as a result of mixed marriages between mainly Muslim males and Christian women.

Finally the lowly class of mozarabes (probably from the Arabic musta’rib meaning Arabicised) completed the social class picture.

As the reconquest occurred, the process of conversions and language usage naturally also reversed. The classes were now mudejars (usually early, and usually voluntary, Christian converts up to around the conquest of Toledo) and the Moriscos who were usually forced converts to Christianity and usually after 1492 when ‘Christian’ control was fully restored to the Peninsula. In the process, a new language, aljamiada, developed which mixed languages and scripts.

Among the families forced to return to North Africa there continued to be a sense of a golden age and also of loss for many generations (it continues to an extent even today). Many crops including eggplant and citrus fruits and agricultural and irrigation methods had found their way to Europe via Spain in this period.

Arabic “loan words” continued in the Spanish language and also later found their way to other languages of Europe. Many North and West Europeans learned Arabic in the Middle Ages in order to discover the secrets of the learning of the Arabs in al-Andalus and eventually translated Greek works that many centuries before had been translated into Arabic in Baghdad (when the Arabs were themselves the students of a valued civilisation). Words like canal, arsenal and admiral all derive from Arabic roots and words for cloths like muslin and damask indicate their origin in the Arab Islamic world (in Mosul and Damascus (Dimashq)).

The lute (al ‘ud) which became the staple of the courtly troubadours in Europe was originally an Arabic instrument and the ideals and poetry of courtly love and chivalry may well owe something to Arabic influence. The al-Hambra palace and the Cordova Mosque (now a cathedral) also remain monuments to the brilliant architecture and aesthetic influence on Spain of the doomed Islamic project in al-Andalus.

Similar Arab Islamic influences could be found in formerly Islamic Sicily that continued for some time even after it came under Norman rule.

My next post will be a brief examination of those events in the East of the Islamic world that are usually known as "the Crusades" in our standard Western history.

More on How Islamic Cities Worked and Work

Here, as promised, are some brief Islamic city profiles:

Baghdad and Iraq

Baghdad, of course, as the main ‘Abbasid capital, became the epitome of the cultured Arab Islamic city for the early centuries of Islam in the central lands. A history of the city survives from the 11^th Century. It was the first imperial Arab Islamic city planned and built more or less from scratch. It was built on the left bank of the Tigris near the existing al-Karkh marketplace, which was between two canals that each connected the Tigris and the Euphrates just to the north of a hairpin bend in the Tigris. The Caliph called it City of Peace but the name Baghdad, which preceded it, probably means Dad’s Orchard, Dad being someone’s name, not necessarily a father. It was also called the Round City (for its original shape) and the City of Mansour (for its founding Caliph). It was Islam’s first round walled city designed at first to be a court to the Caliph including markets towards the outside and the imperial court (including a large military guard element) and mosque in the centre.

It had replaced the nearby Persian capital of Ctesiphon (called "the cities" in Arabic presumably because of its great size).

Cities in Iraq and elsewhere often achieved prominence from their location near older sites like this. Najaf near Kufa is prominent in Iraq today because of its sitting at ‘Ali’s place of martyrdom. Kerbala (in Iraq) and Meshhad (the site of the holiest shrine in Iran) are also prominent due to being the site of major shrines. The ostentatious and golden (it virtually goes without saying, being a Shi’a shrine site) ‘Ali Mosque is therefore in the centre of Najaf (Kufa). It is also a tradition among many Iranian Shi’a Muslims (always prominent among the visitors to this Iraqi shrine) that Noah’s Ark set off from Kufa. The cities of Iraq were major centres of opposition and independent political and other thinking.

Basra and Kufa had been unwalled and relatively unplanned but were later walled and moated, as invading Arabs had experienced the benefits of these devices (from the other side of the fence, as it were). Kufa was briefly ‘Ali’s capital.

Within a generation, Baghdad had extended within and beyond the walls and even Caliphs had felt too confined by the walls and built a palace (called al-Khuld) on the outside for added security. As the city extended beyond the walls on all sides and to the right bank, the main neighbourhoods on each bank came to be called al-Karkh (on the left) and ar-Rasafa (on the right). The US’s “Green Zone” was set up in al-Karkh, and ar-Rasafa was walled off under US auspices and called a Sunni enclave. Two other neighbourhoods today are al-A’zamiyyah (named for the local shrine of al-A’zam, aka Abu Hanifa) and al-Kazimiyyah (named for the 7^th Imam).

Finally and in short order ‘Abbasid Caliphs (albeit haltingly) moved their capitals several times, partly for security reasons (first moving to nearby Samarra and then back) leaving a large potent city of their creation in which they had inspired the flourishing of Islamic culture to develop under relatively indirect rule before the Caliphs finally lost actual political control of even the seat of the empire. There is evidence at Samarra of great building works, especially the great al-‘Askari Mosque with its monumental spiral minaret that inspired many western minarets, for the next city of the ‘Abbasids.

Cairo

The other major city built by early Muslims was Cairo. For the French and British it was later especially strategically important for its proximity to the recently constructed Suez Canal but for the Arab world it has been a major city for centuries with other canals that suited its purposes. The neighbourhood south of the Fatimid city now called the ‘Old City’ actually existed before the Fatimids built their capital, Cairo. Nearby Alexandria had already for many centuries been a major world centre of learning and the land of Egypt produced one of the oldest great civilisations and several great cities.

Cairo began on the east bank of the Nile. This made it opposite and to the east and north east of the great pyramids at nearby Giza on the west bank before Cairo extended itself to the west bank also. Its natural eastern extremity is brought about by Mount Maqattam.

Such was its Mediaeval ‘world’ renown, we still have European drawings of the city layout from the 15^th and 16^th Centuries. Further drawing continued in the 18^th and later centuries for clearly more strategic purposes as first the French and then the English sought to dominate the land by controlling this city. The local Ottoman ruler, khedive Ismael Pasha, in whose reign the Suez Canal was completed, also began to take an interest in the planning of Cairo for similar reasons. The Napoleonic French wrote Description d’Egypte also for that reason.

The Cairo Trilogy of Naguib Mahfouz describes a relatively modern Cairo life in the mid 20^th Century before veiling returned to fashion.

Isfahan and Kashan

Isfahan expanded in the 16^th and early 17^th Centuries, along with many other flourishing Islamic trading cities in that era in competition, to be the largest. Venice was known to possess the great St Mark’s Square and Isfahan produced a larger one second only in the world today to Tiananmen. Having undergone several name changes it is now known to locals as Khomeini Square. Kashan is another great city of the region.

Istanbul

Istanbul straddles the south side of the Bosporus Strait (see the picture above) and thereby Europe and Asia. Much of the great Islamic building work that occurred there took place in the vicinity of the Hagia Sophia originally built for the Emperor Justinian on the south of the European side, which became a mosque but is now a museum. Ironically perhaps, it remained the Ottoman and then Turkish capital until the westernising Atatürk moved his capital East (to Asian central Anatolia).

Damascus

The old city of Damascus is now dwarfed in size by the modern Syrian capital, Damascus, which surrounds it. It is not dwarfed in beauty, however. The old city contains, for example, the Great Umayyad Mosque built in the early 8^th Century on the site earlier used for the St John the Baptist Church and probably earlier Greek and other temples. It also contains a great covered bazaar leading to and facing the Great Mosque as great covered souks (markets) often do in Islamic cities.

Amman

Amman, now the capital of Jordan (formerly called Philadelphia) and consequently a reasonable sized city, was a small town as ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif was growing up there in the 1940s from the age of 6 to 16. His autobiography and 'biography' of Amman describes how the city in a sense grew up with him. He also wrote critical novels of the 'lives' of thinly disguised Saudi Arabian cities and Beirut (and perhaps other Arab Islamic cities).

Beirut

Beirut has had special prominence in modern times first as a major centre of Arab publishing and also nationalist thought and more recently as the capital of an ailing and fractured anachronistically ethnic-based state structure. For a citizen, as with any great city, it tends to claim a piece of their heart wherever they may be forced because of the political situation. Qabbani, a noted lover of women, wrote that he would love Beirut eternally more than he could love any woman. Hanan ash-Shaikh also wrote Beirut Blues about life in Beirut and Edward Said wrote about 'her' in his autobiography, Out of Place. He also describes 'his' other cities there including Cairo, New York and Jerusalem among others. Hisham Sharabi wrote in a similar vein about Beirut and other cities in his autobiography written just before his death in 2005. Munif also wrote about Beirut in at least one novel.

Riyadh

The capital of Saudi Arabia has only recently become a prominent Arab city (since the exploitation of Saudi Arabia’s petroleum reserves from the 1960s). Very conservative standards apply there morally when compared with most other cities in Saudi Arabia. Correct behaviour is required in public which is not necessarily carried into the private behaviour of even its rulers. For example, alcohol is prohibited officially but in fact fairly freely available in Riyadh. Today residents have free access to satellite television channels from throughout the region and the internet. It appears from studying the internet contributions some women from Riyadh have made that women are more liberated there than one might imagine. Though the city is sex-segregated to the point of having separate university campuses for women, illicit liaisons apparently occur there (aided at times by the proximity of less segregated areas of Saudi Arabia to which to resort as required). Although Riyadh officially has no cinemas, there are ‘unofficial’ ones.

That hopefully gives a flavour of some of the cities and some of their histories. Please feel free to write about what interests you about your city (especially if you live in the central lands of the Arab-Islamic world). My next post will be a brief one about the 'Moors' in most of Spain and Portugal (called by them Al-Andalus).