Islamic Architecture and Urbanism: Middle Eastern PerspectivesAuthor(s): NEZAR ALSAYYADSource: Built Environment (1978-), Vol. 22, No. 2, Islamic Architecture and Urbanism (1996),pp. 88-90Published by: Alexandrine PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23288982 .

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BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 22 NO 2

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ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM: MIDDLE EASTERN PERSPECTIVES

Islamic Architecture and Urbanism: Middle Eastern Perspectives

NEZAR ALSAYYAD

The subject of Islamic architecture and urbanism has long fascinated Westerners. Travellers' accounts, some dating back to

the twelfth century, illustrate how a series of Western observers through the ages have viewed the cities of the Muslim Middle East, constructed their social reality, and often

misinterpreted their urban meanings. The work of many European painters who roamed the Middle East and North Africa in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has also often contributed to the creation of a

distorted image of urban Islam. But it was

principally the writings of several distin

guished European scholars who controlled the production of knowledge on the Islamic

city during the early and middle parts of the twentieth century that created the singular and often stereotypical image of Muslim urbanism. This image eventually came to underline much research in this area. It has

only been in the last fifteen years, since the

publication in 1978 of Edward Said's seminal book Orientalism, that research by scholars in all fields has challenged this view.

This issue of Built Environment is an

attempt to contribute a slightly different

perspective on a variety of issues in Islamic architecture and urbanism. Although it does not challenge the dominant paradigms, it tries to uncover various relations between

the culture of Islam and its urban form and architecture. The contributors, using different historical frameworks which extend from the eighth to the twentieth centuries, con centrate on issues primarily within the context of the central Middle East. The

contributors are all Middle Easterners who have been educated or settled in the West, and who are accordingly familiar with the Orientalist canon and are sensitive to its flaws. Their papers represent the wide

variety of research approaches and ide

ologies present in scholarship about Islamic urbanism today.

The first paper presents a review of Orientalist scholarship as it relates to Muslim urbanism. It closes by noting how Orientalist stereotypes have ironically been

adopted and accepted recently by the scholars of certain native traditions in their

present attempts to define their own reality. The second paper demonstrates how,

faced with the need to build an image for the new religion, the Muslim Arabs in the

early days of Islam were influenced in the

making of an architectural agenda by their encounters with Westerners.

The third paper is a case study of one

particular urban element - the maidan or urban square

- and its transformation

throughout the history of Cairo. The fourth paper is a study of the process

of initiation of one capital city - Ankara -

following the waning years of the Islamic Ottoman empire and the rise of the repub lican state when the joint forces of modernity and nationalism had become the prime shapers of urban form.

The last paper represents the attempts of some Middle Eastern scholars and archi tects to understand the essence of Islamic

architecture and revive it in contemporary

practice.

BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 22 NO 2 89

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ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM: MIDDLE EASTERN PERSPECTIVES

Taken together, the papers should not be

interpreted as presenting a single theme; their authors do not even subscribe to similar scholarly practices or political ideologies. Nevertheless, the papers do at a basic level reflect the range of concerns in

the field today.

REFERENCE

Said, Edward (1979) Pantheon Books.

Orientalism. New York:

90 BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 22 NO 2

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