The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

city

The original model for the Islamic city is Medina, Madīnat al-Nabī (the City of the Prophet) or simply al-madīnah (the city), the name by which the city of Yathrib became known after the Prophet Muhammad and his followers settled there in 622, having fled Mecca, their hometown, in the hijra (emigration). At that point, the movement based on the Prophet’s mission also acquired a political character. The term madīna implies a change in the sociopolitical structure of tribal society and the establishment of a multireligious and multiethnic society (umma) defined through a written legal document that has been called the Constitution of Medina. This document, drafted as a result of negotiations between the involved parties, was binding on all affected groups, thus ensuring political unity and social stability. Moreover, it defined the borderlines for the city, which it termed a ḥaram (inviolate precinct), ensuring the territorial integrity of the sociopolitical union. Thus the hijra and establishment of the umma marked a new phase in the sociopolitical life of Muslims and initiated a social project based on religious, cultural, and legal autonomy.

As the Islamic state expanded into an empire, it came to incorporate many major preexisting cities, but at the same time the garrison towns (amṣār), established in the wake of conquests, including Kufa and Basra in Iraq and Fustat in Egypt, provided another model for Islamic cities, which were developed after the urban model of the Arabian Peninsula. In general, these settlements were founded on the outskirts of major cities or settled areas and at the edge of the desert, where Arab armies had a decided advantage. They were organized on a grid, with specific quarters or neighborhoods assigned to military units based on tribe or clan. However, the amṣār rapidly transformed into principal cities of the main empire, which shows that establishing urban foundations was a state policy in the earliest phases of the conquests. Analytical studies of Islamic cities show that there are three Islamic factors that motivate processes that yield an “Islamic” city. First is a distinction between members of the umma and outsiders. Second, this distinction is reflected through the spatial organization of distinctive neighborhoods. The third factor, a result of the first two, is a legal system that does not enforce common regulations on the different neighborhoods. Rather, it is a flexible system in which legal decrees are a product of negotiations about the mutual rights of the involved parties. These characteristics actually reflect the organization of Medina, described earlier.

Perhaps the most salient distinctive feature of Islamic cities was the close connection between the commercial bourgeoisie (merchants, craftsmen, and landowners) and the ‘ulama’ (religious scholars), which in turn affected the relationship between the central government and settled urban society. The bourgeoisie and the ‘ulama’ provided an urban leadership that shared an interest in a peaceful, stable, and prosperous urban life. Their relationship to the central government or ruler is not clearly defined because of the absence of formal political institutions; the city was not a legal entity, as it often was in medieval Europe. However, urban leaders could exercise independent power by mobilizing urban forces to put pressure on the ruler. Sometimes, a strong government would rule in close affiliation with the urban leadership, while other times, urban leaders and notables would protest or even rebel against a government that did not share their interests. In terms of spatial organization, a typical Islamic city was divided into roughly four parts. First was the citadel, often located on some natural defense work, such as the city of Aleppo, which has a natural tell, or archeological mound, dominating the countryside around it. Second was the royal city or quarter, usually in the form of a compound including the royal palace, administrative offices, and barracks for guard personnel. The royal quarter was established either by being implanted in an already existing urban gathering or by being founded on new soil around which an urban conglomeration later grows. In times of political instability, the compound was sometimes placed in the citadel itself for the sake of defense. Third was a “central urban complex,” which included mosques; the central markets, the organization of which reflected strict professional specialization; and caravansaries, combinations of inns and warehouses that played a central role in international trade in the Islamic world. Another important feature of the urban complex was the educational institutions that started to flourish in the ninth century by the establishment of the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) in Baghdad. The center was originally established by the caliph al-Ma’mun to translate awā’il sciences (pre-Islamic sciences such as Greek, Indian, and Persian sciences) into Arabic. With the flourishing of Islamic civilization, the center turned into a scientific academy that housed scholars and scientists from different parts of the globe. Later, other scientific academies were established in other cities such as Dar al-‘Ilm in Cairo. The institutions of higher learning developed most in the second half of the 11th century with the establishment of a chain of colleges (madrasas), which integrated the study of natural, philosophic, and religious sciences, in Baghdad, Naishapur, and other cities. Rulers established and supported educational institutions as well as hospitals, which spread throughout different cities. Both education and hospitalization were funded by Muslim waqf (pious endowment) and thus they offered free services for the public, which transformed Islamic cities into a cosmopolitan haven. Islamic institutions acquired prestige and strength, which endowed urban life with a stable framework. Rulers’ acts could be legitimated by the ‘ulama’, and communal action would take place through religious institutions. The royal foundation and patronage of such prominent urban institutions through the legal instrument of pious endowment thus played a central role in political propaganda and the establishment of legitimate rule. The proximity between religious and commercial buildings reflected the alliance between the ‘ulama’ and bourgeoisie and directly affected the urban life of the Islamic city. The last and fourth part of the Islamic city was a center of residential quarters, which comprised autonomous quarters of different ethnic and religious groups. Quarters were represented by local chiefs who acted as leaders when the government was weak and as subordinates under strong governments.

Muslim philosophers, inspired by Greek political philosophy and Islamic ethics, addressed the city in theoretical terms. Drawing on Plato’s Republic, the tenth-century thinker Farabi (d. 950) described the city as a union of different communities whose various functions are integrated to fulfill the purpose of their union. The concept of the city is predominant in Farabi’s political theory, for he considered it to represent the smallest form of a complete association and the basic unit of a perfect society. By “complete” association, Farabi meant one that was self-contained, unlike a household or a village, which is too small to fulfill that purpose. The perfect city is one whose people cooperate for the things by which true felicity can be attained. The structure of the perfect city is like that of the sound, healthy body whose different limbs and organs cooperate to make its life perfect and preserve it in that state. Through this analogy, Farabi implies that a single person cannot reach perfection and attain happiness without mutual cooperation within an organized community. Similar to the moral life of individuals, the fashioning of the city-state is not involuntary but dependent on whether will and choice are directed toward the true good.

In the modern period, the fates of traditional Islamic cities have varied. The French colonial practice of building their administrative center, termed ville nouvelle, outside the major cities and physically separated from them has led to the preservation of the old city, termed madīna, on the one hand and to a sharp social and economic division between the two on the other. In Fez, Morocco, for example, the walls surrounding the old city remain intact, along with the original gates, streets, and alleyways, and it is a car-free urban area within the city walls. This may be contrasted with Cairo, where in the late 19th century the old walls were torn down in many places, broad thoroughfares were run through entire old quarters, and little separation was maintained between the old and the new, after the fashion of Baron Haussmann’s renovation of Paris. Especially in the 20th century, the Islamic world witnessed tremendous urban growth; immigration from rural areas rose sharply, while birth rates remained very high in most areas of the Islamic world and have only begun to decline in recent decades. The result has been sprawling, overcrowded metropolises such as Cairo and Tehran, in which both the infrastructure and the local economy have been severely strained. In many of the oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the tremendous returns on oil from World War II until the present have financed the construction of modern cities, either entirely dwarfing earlier settlements or building where nothing existed before, with limited roots in Islamic tradition. Capital cities remain primary sites of political propaganda in the Islamic world, often expressed in the construction of both secular monuments, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Cairo Tower, and religious monuments, such as the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca. In the year 2011, the capital cities were transformed into major sites of people’s protests against oppressive regimes.