The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh Through the Tenth CenturiesWhat makes a city an economic, political, and cultural center? In The Places Where Men Pray Together, Paul Wheatley draws on two decades of astonishingly wide-ranging research to demonstrate that Islamic cities are defined by function rather than form—by what they do rather than what they are. Focusing on the roles of cities during the first four centuries of Islamic expansion, Wheatley explores interconnected cultural, historical, economic, political, and religious factors to provide the clearest and most extensively documented portrait of early Islamic urban centers available to date. Building on the tenth-century geographer al-Maqdisi's writings on urban centers of the Islamic world, buttressed by extensive comparative material from roadbooks, topographies, histories, adab literatures, and gazetteers of the time, Wheatley identifies the main functions of different Islamic urban centers. Chapters on each of the thirteen centers that al-Maqdisi identified, ranging from the Atlantic to the Indus and from the Caspian to the Sudan, form the heart of this book. In each case Wheatley shows how specific agglomeration and accessibility factors combined to make every city functionally distinct as a creator of effective space. He also demonstrates that, far from revolutionizing every aspect of life in these cities, the adoption of Islam often affected the development of these cities less than previously existing local traditions. The Places Where Men Pray Together is a monumental work that will speak to scholars and readers across a broad variety of disciplines, from historians, anthropologists, and sociologists to religious historians, archaeologists, and geographers. |
Contents
Urban Systems in the Islamic World Seventh through the Tenth Centuries | 85 |
The Places where Men Pray Together | 225 |
Epilogue | 327 |
The Principal Islamic Dynasties ad 632circa 1000 | 339 |
Modern and Variant PlaceNames | 343 |
Notes | 347 |
Glossary | 507 |
| 517 | |
| 553 | |
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The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh Through ... Paul Wheatley No preview available - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
Abba¯sid According administrative Ahsan al-Maqdisı al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik already appears Arab Arabia became built caliph called capital central chapter Christian cited close cloth conquest described district early east eastern economic Egypt especially established evidence example fact first four functions Gate groups half hierarchy houses Hudud Ibn Hawqal important Islamic known land later least less Makkah Maqdisi mentioned Middle Minorsky mosque Muhyammad Muslim ninth originally palace Paris period Persian political population port principal probably province quarter reason references region River settled settlement situated sources structure Studies su¯qs subsequently tenth century term territories textile thousand tion topographers town trade tradition translation tribal tribes Umayyad urban wall western whole writing
Popular passages
Page 529 - Syriac Sources for Seventh-Century History,' Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 2 (1976): 34; idem, 'Syriac Views of Emergent Islam,
Page 527 - Brian JL Berry and William L. Garrison, Recent Developments of Central Place Theory, Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Science Association, Vol.