Islamic urban studies

The history of urban studies concerning the Islamic world in terms of theme, motif and methodology is the subject of this innovative work. While previous studies have tended to link the cities of the Islamic world with Islam as a religion and culture in an attempt to understand them as a whole in a unified and uniform way, there have been very few attempts to examine and compare the cities in their diversity of climate, landscape, population and historical background, which is the approach taken here. The study has two foci. First, it coordinates the main research that has been done since the 19th century in regard to the cities of five regions that came under the sway of Islam comparatively early: the Maghrib (the Western Arab lands), the Mashriq (the Eastern Arab lands), Turkey, Iran and Central Asia. Second, through comparing the history of scholarship regarding the cities of these five regions, it throws light on the issues that have exercised academic concern in urban studies of the Islamic world as a whole to the present, and suggests new perspectives for future work. Such a survey of the history of scholarship covering the vast area of the Middle East has not been undertaken