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).