The Islamic Urban Form: Alleyways & Walkability
“Sana'a, Yemen”. Courtesy of Rod Waddington, flickr.com
Architecture is the haven where man’s spirit, soul, and body find refuge and shelter, this quote from the Andalusian judge, Ibn Abdun, perfectly illustrates the way in which architecture and our urban form is a natural expression of our spiritual values and beliefs. Islam and the urban form presents an incredibly interesting relationship to explore because Islam is not only a religion but a phenomenon that influenced every field. The arts, literature, science, maths, and most notably architecture saw massive advances during the height of the Islamic empire. Islam is an innately urban religion, its spiritual experience is integrally linked to the urban form. The religion has its roots in urban environments and during the Islamic expansion, it birthed and altered cities forever. It provided a comprehensive and integrated cultural system that embeds religious practice into daily life, therefore becoming not only a spiritual experience but a social one as well. The behavioral matrix Islam instructs necessitated architectural structures that allow for these social and religious practices. The pedestrian experience in Islamic cities, characterized by narrow alleyways and insular residential clusters, presents a fascinating insight into the ways in which culture and faith can shape and mold urban forms.
The Arab-Islamic city is entirely unique from other urban forms. Traditional and historic Islamic cities often lack monuments such as freestanding religious or public institutions accompanied by large open squares and plazas. The urban form and the architectural fabric is long, uninterrupted, and continuous. Islamic cities from afar tend to look uniform and homogenous but on the pedestrian level, traditional Islamic structures and buildings are highly differentiated. Islamic cities lacked formal institutions, which meant that there was a clear absence in outstanding government buildings. Any and all institutional functions were fulfilled by a Jami’, Friday Mosque.
The mosque acted as the prime public building, it not only functioned as a place of worship but provided social and political functions. Mosques were embedded in central markets and were typically modest (unless sponsored and commissioned by royalty). This only further pushed the mosque towards the public realm, along with the markets where all commercial activities occurred. Islamic cities compartmentalize their different spaces between the public and private spheres allow for a clear differentiation between the two. Surrounding the markets are a series and system of sprawling dead-end alleyways that would connect a cluster of courtyard houses. Islam qualifies the private sphere of the family as sacred, and therefore forbidden to strangers. This meant that residences had to be completely insular. These residential units are protected from public life and function as inward-oriented autonomous units. Within these courtyards were a series of houses or structures housing multiple nuclear families to compose the tribe or clan, which would open up into a courtyard or garden where members of the family could gather. The large urban plaza was effectively replaced by the private Islamic courtyard in this environment. This contradicts our conceptions of what creates a walkable environment: travel journals on the Middle East and North Africa painted a vivid image of the loud bustling bazaars, filled with the chatter of passersby and the haggling of shopkeepers. The streets of the Arabic-Islamic city were very much alive and walkable while going against the conventions of walkability.
Diagram of a typical Arab-Islamic city. Courtesy of Stefano Bianca, Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present.
Moreover, the alleyways and courthouses are sacred and protected as needed while the public spaces allowed for a high degree of social interactions (commercial at the market and social, religious, and political at the mosque). The alleyways of Islamic cities illustrate the public-private spectrum and its unique brand of communitarian privacy. These residential clusters were highly autonomous, allowing these clusters to become self-sufficient. Public open space was limited and reduced to an inward-looking corridor system. Beyond religious beliefs, the harsh climate and environments of the Islamic world necessitated these narrow alleyways. A key mark of Islamic architecture is the ways in which it interacts with sunlight, this is reflected in Islamic urban forms as well. Cities are oriented around the sun, and alleyways are often oriented in such a way that it would provide shade for passersby.
“Dans le souk des dinandiers, médina de Fès el Bali, Fès, Maroc”. Courtesy of Bernard Blanc, flickr.com
Storefronts are also a key component of what makes the Arab-Islamic city walkable. As was mentioned earlier, the marketplace (Suq or Bazaar) often acts as the center and heart of Islamic cities, and will often be the area with most pedestrian activity. Thoroughfares within the Arab-Islamic city are often tight and narrow, storefronts usually offer some type of shade for pedestrians, or, the city will be built in such a fashion that shade would be readily available in these spots. Repetitive brick domes are deployed in the ceilings of markets in Isfahan, while in Arab cities such as Fez, a system of bamboos supported on wooden beams is deployed. These can also be found across North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
A Bazaar in Isfahan. Courtesy of David Holt, flickr.com
I write this in the light that we could understand walkability under a more flexible definition. Jeff Speck, the leading scholar on walkability in the United States, has written extensively what makes a city walkable and how we make cities walkable. Jeff Speck boils down the walkable urban fabric into three main components: the variety of buildings, frontages, and open spaces. While there is certainly no denying that these components certainly do make for a walkable city, they neglect the traditional Arab-Islamic form from their definition. Large open spaces and plazas simply do not work given the climate and cultural conditions that these places require. This is troubling in a planning and architecture context, as there is a long and dark history of architects and planners forcing their visions and ideas onto places that simply cannot accommodate them, or do not fit the practices of that place. As planners, we should not think as visionaries: believing that we always know what is best, but to facilitate and allow communities to take charge and build their neighborhoods.
Additional Reading:
Bianca, Stefano. Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present. London ; New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
Hakim, Besim Selim. Arabic Islamic Cities Rev: Building and Planning Principles. 1 edition. London, UNITED KINGDOM: Routledge, 1986.