From Polis to Madina: Urban Change in Late Antique and Early Islamic Syria
Hugh Kennedy
Past and Present, No. 106. (Feb., 1985), pp. 3-27.
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FROM POLIS TO MADINA: 

URBAN CHANGE IN LATE ANTIQUE 

AND EARLY ISLAMIC SYRIA*-

The civilization of classical antiquity was essentially urban, in the
sense that the government was carried on from the cities, the upper
classes lived in them and, after the fourth century, the ecclesiastical
hierarchy was based in them too. The political and social importance
of cities was reflected in the care which was lavished on their design.
* This paper was first presented at the Spring Symposium at the Centre for Byzantine
Studies, University of Birmingham, and I am most grateful to Professor A. A. M.
Bryer for the opportunity to give it. I would also like to record my gratitude to Dr.
Adnan al-Bakhit of the University of Jordan for enabling me to attend the 1983
conference on the history of Bilad al-Sham. I am also pleased to acknowledge assistance
from the Small Humanities Research Fund of the British Academy for a grant enabling
me to travel to Syria in 1982. In addition to the printed sources cited in the notes, I have
benefited greatly from discussions with Dr. F. Ziyadine of the Jordanian Department of
Antiquities, Dr. ,M. Gawlikowski of the Polish Archaeological Mission to Jerash and
Dr. G. Tate of the Institut Francais d'Archeologie de Beyrouth. I am especially grateful
to Dr. J. Bowsher of the British Archaeological Mission to Jerash for showing me
recent work on the site and to Dr. P. Magdalino of the University of St. Andrews for
introducing me to the world of Byzantine hagiography.
The literature on the towns of late antiquity in the Near East is vast and cannot be
summarized here. For a general discussion of change and continuity during this
period, see A. Kazhdan and A. Cutler, "Continuity and Discontinuity in Byzantine
History", Byzantion, lii (1982), pp. 429-78. For Byzantine architecture in general,
C. Mango, Byzantine Architecture (New York, 1979). On towns, D. Claude, Die
byzantrnische Stadt im 6 . Jahrhundert (Munich, 1969); C. Foss, "The Persians in Asia
Minor and the End of Antiquity", Eng. Hist. Rm., xc (1975), pp. 721-47; C. Foss,
Byzantine and Turkish Sardis (Cambridge, Mass., 1976); C. Foss, Ephesus after
Antiquity (Cambridge, 1979). On late antique Antioch, G. Downey, Antroch in Syria
(Princeton, 1961);F'.Liebeschuetz, Antioch (Oxford, 1972). For the fate of baths and
theatres in Constantinople, C. Mango, "Daily Life in Byzantium", Jahrbuch fur
osterreichischenBvzantinistik (1981), pp. 337-53. For post-classical Byzantine towns,
C. Bouras, "City and Village: Urban Design and Architecture", Jahrbuch fur
osterreichischenBj~zantinistik(1981), pp. 611-53.
Discussion of the early Islamic city is less full and it is important to guard against
using later evidence about the "traditional" hluslim city uncritically for the early
period. A good introduction with full bibliography is E. Vi'irth, "Die orientalische
Stadt", Saeculum, xxvi (1975), pp. 43-94. The best general account of the architecture
remains K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslin Architecture, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1932-40),
while important new evidence from written sources is provided in S. D. Goitein, A
Medrterranean Socrety, 4 vols. (Berkeley, 1967-83), iv, pp. 1-105. The best discussions
of individual towns are J. Sauvaget, "Le plan de Laodicee-sur-Mer", Bulletin d'itudes
orientales, iv (1934), pp. 81-116;J. Sauvaget,Alep (Paris, 1941);J. Sauvaget, "Le plan
antique de Damas", Syna, xxvi (1949), pp. 314-58.
4 PAST AND PRESENT NU.\IBER 106
From the classical Greek period onwards, standards of town design
were developed which have been an inspiration to urban planners
ever since.' The key features of this urban vision were the orderly
planning of broad, paved streets, often edged with stately colonnades
(stoas) and porticoes, the rectangular open spaces of the forums and
agoras, and the monumental public buildings, the theatres, the baths,
the basilicas and, later, the churches. With the political difficulties
of the western empire from the third century onwards, the cities of
the western part of the Roman world, apart from some areas of Italy,
began to lose their classical aspect. Some seem to have become entirely
deserted, many more retreated into a narrow fortified area where the
inhabitants could provide defence which the state was no longer able
to do. This change in design was reflected in the loss of social and
political status; power and wealth shifted first to the rural estate and
villa, then to the monastery, the manor and the castle. Political chaos
and economic decline effectively destroyed the classical cities of
western Europe.
In the eastern half of the empire the fate of cities was in striking
contrast to that in the west. Here the tradition of urban life continued
uninterrupted and the very centuries, fourth and fifth, which saw the
decline of the urban economies of the west saw something of a boom
in the east, especially in Syria, where the archaeological remains
clearly point to expanding urban settlement in some areas. Nor did
the coming of Islam from 632 onwards break this continuity. Certain
cities declined, others became more important, but the traditions of
urban life maintained themselves, it was still in the towns that the
upper classes lived and it was from the towns that they exercised
political power. Paradoxically, however, this continuity of social and
political function did not result in a continuity of architectural design
and urban planning, even in cities like Damascus, Jerusalem and
Aleppo where urban life and economic activity continued on the same
sites. The broad, colonnaded streets were invaded and divided up by
instrusive structures, both houses and shops, and became more like
On classical town planning, J. B. Ward-Perkins, Cities ofAncient Greece and Italy
(New York, 1974); A. N. Barghouti, "Urbanization of Palestine and Jordan in
Hellenistic and Roman Times", in A. Hadidi (ed.), Studies in the History and Archaeology
ofJordan (Amman, 1982).
For the Islamic cities of Syria, in addition to the works of Sauvaget cited above,
N. Elisseeff, "Damas a la lumiere des theories de Jean Sauvaget", in .4. Hourani and
S. M. Stern (eds.), The Islamic City (Oxford, 1970), pp. 157-77; N. Elisseeff, "Hims"
and "al-Ladhikiyya", and 0 . Grabar, "al-Kuds", in EncyclopaediaofIslam, 2nd edn.
(Leiden, 1954- ).
5FROM POLIS TO ,ZIADI.VA
narrow winding lanes than the majestic thoroughfares of classical
antiquity; and the extensive, open agora, scene for markets and
meetings, was gone. The other main features of the ancient city, the
monumental buildings, disappeared almost entirely, to be replaced
by the mosque and the small urban hammam or bath-house. Despite
the continuity of urban life, the built environment went through a
profound and lasting transformation.
The purpose of this article is to examine two interrelated aspects
of this process. The first is the examination of the chronology of the
changes, in particular to discover how far they antedated the Muslim
conquest of the 630s and how far they occurred after that time. The
second is to suggest some of the possible reasons for these changes.
The most important issue here is how far the changes can be ascribed
to the replacement of Christianity by Islam as the religion of the
dominant social groups or, in other words, is the traditional Middle
Eastern city, the madina, the result of the Islamization of society?
Can we in fact call it the "Islamic city" or is it rather the product of
longer-term social and economic changes of which the coming of the
new religion was only one aspect?
These processes will be investigated in one area of the Byzantine
empire, the provinces at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. In the
sixth century these were known as Syria I and 11, Phoenicia I and 11,
Palestine I, I1 and 111and Arabia, but for simplicity the whole area
will be referred to as Syria. It is an area for which the sources, literary
and archaeological, are full enough to give us some idea of the nature
of the changes, although some material from outside, notably from
the great Asia Minor cities of Ephesus and Sardis will be included.
It is also an area where, in contrast to Asia Minor, urban continuity
was marked throughout the early middle ages, providing evidence of
long-term trends.
In the mid-sixth century the classical vision of the city and of urban
order was still very much alive. In the Buildings Procopius describes
the reconstruction of Antioch by Justinian in the years after the
Persian conquest of 540: "he laid it out with stoas and agoras, dividing
all the blocks of houses by means of streets and making waterchannels,
fountains and sewers, all of which the city now boasts. He
built theatres and baths for it, ornamenting it with all the other
buildings by which the prosperity of a city is wont be shownH.3
We should not take Procopius' description as an entirely accurate
Procopius, Buildings, ed. and trans. H. Dewing (London, 1940), pp. 170-1
6 PAST .4ND PRESENT NUMBER 106
picture of the Syrian city of the second half of the sixth century. In
many ways the rebuilding of Antioch was something of a rearguard
action and mav not have been as successful as the author would have
us believe. We know from archaeological evidence that the main
colonnaded street was rebuilt, if on a smaller scale, but excavations
have not shown that the theatres and baths were effectively re~tored.~
Not surprisingly, in view of the circumstances, city walls were given
priority and it is debatable how far urban life of the traditional pattern
ever returned to the city. In other areas of Syria, even by Procopius'
account, Justinian seems to have made little attempt to maintain the
amenities ofpolis life. At the distant frontier fortress of Circesium on
the Euphrates he is said to have rebuilt the baths, while at the
pilgrimage town of Sergiopolis (Rusafa) he built stoas and houses as
well as walls. Elsewhere his works were confined to religious building
and fortifications, and even in cities like Cyrrhus and Palmyra, which
he is said to have restored after they fell into ruin, the work did not
consist of more than building defences and, in the case of Cyrrhus
an improved water supply in case the city was be~ieged.~There is no
evidence that Justinian's reign saw a general revival of classical urban
life in Syria.
If new constructions were very rare, it is difficult to tell how far
existing classical public buildings were maintained and used during
the sixth century.6The fate of classical theatres illustrates the nature
of the problem. All classical cities of any consequence in Syria had
at least one theatre,7and many like Philadelphia (Amman)and Gerasa
(Jerash) had two, the smaller of which may have been used for council
meetings.8 The last theatre known to have been constructed in Syria
was the one built by the emperor Philip the Arab in the mid-third
century to adorn his birthplace at Philippopolis in the Hawran, and
4 R. Stillwell, Antioch-on-the-Orontes (Princeton, 1934-52); J. Lassus (ed.), Les
portiques d'Antioche (Princeton, 1977).
Procopius, Butldings, pp. 156-9, 174-7.
6 Continuity through the sixth century has been accepted by C. Foss and, to a lesser
extent, by D. Claude, but there is little positive evidence and our knowledge of urban
life in the second half of the sixth century is very scanty. Doaney suggests a sharp
decline in urban activity at Antioch after 540 (Antioch inSyria, pp. 557-9), and on this
see H. Kennedy, "The Arab Conquest of Syria and Arabia", in J. Koumoulides and
J. Haldon (eds.), Byzantine Perspectlz'es (forthcoming), where it is argued that the
second half of the sixth century sees fundamental changes in the economy and society
of Byzantine Syria.
7 For the theatres of Syria, see E. Frezouls, "Recherches sur les theitres de I'orient
syrien", S p a , xxxvi (1959), pp. 202-8, and xxxviii (1961), pp. 54-86.
Zbzd., p p 85-6.
by Justinian's reign it was already three hundred years old. Despite
Procopius' claims, there is no archaeological evidence for large-scale
restorations of theatres in sixth-century Syria. We know that some
were abandoned. The one at Pella of the Decapolis was invaded by
small-scale structures during the Byzantine p e r i ~ d , ~while at Caesarea
in Palestine the theatre was incorporated into a new system of defences,
probably late in the Byzantine period.1° Some literary evidence
points in the same direction. In 502 the emperor Anastasius
abolished the spring celebrations in the theatre at Edessa, probably
in response to the opinion of local ecclesiastics like Jacob of Sarug,
who denounced the performances as "dancing, sport and music, the
miming of lying tales, teaching which destroys the mind, poems
which are not true, troublesome and confused sounds, melodies to
attract children, ordered and captivating songs, skilful chants, lying
canticles composed according to the folly invented by the Greeks"."
In the face of public opinion of this sort, it is unlikely that the theatre
at Edessa survived the abolition of the spring festival. The life of St.
Simeon Stylites the Younger, who lived near Antioch in the late sixth
century, tells us a good deal about various aspects of city life, but
there is no mention of the theatre or theatrical performances.12
However, there were exceptions to this general picture. In the life of
St. Simeon the Fool by Leontios of Neapolis we are given a vivid
impression of urban life in Emesa (Hims) at the end of the sixth
century.13 It shows continued urban vitality in many spheres markets,
baths, prostitution, taverns and the theatre. Not only does
the theatre continue to be used for perfomances, clearly of a sort no
Christian moralist could approve of, but there were still active theatre
factions, although their function and importance is not clear from the
text.14 The Persian invasions of the early seventh century probably
put an end to any surviving performances in the theatres. Their taste
was probably more for equine sports, as is suggested by the polo goal
posts discovered in the hippodrome at Gerasa. The tradition of horseR.
H. Smith, A. McNicoll and J. B. Hennessy, "The 1980 Season at Pella of the
Decapolis", Bull. Amer. Schools of Oriental Research, ccxliv (19811, pp. 17-21.
'0 R. C. Wiemken and K. G. Holurn, "The Joint Expedition to Caesarea Maritima,
8th Season, 1979", Bull. Amer. Schools of Oriental Research, ccxliv (19811, p. 29;
W.E. Kaegi, "Some Seventh-Centunr Sources on Caesarea", Israel Ex~loration71..
xxviii (1976, pp. 177-81.
"Quoted in J. B. Segal, Edessa. the Blessed City (Oxford, 1979), pp. 163-5.
l2 La vie ancienne de s. Sqmion Styhte lejeune, 521-592, ed. P. van den Ven, 2 vols.
(Subsidia hagiographia, xxxii, Brussels, 1962-703.
l 3 La vie de Symion le fou, ed. A. J. Festugiere (Paris, 1974)
l4 Ibid., caps. xvi, xxii, xxxv.
8 PAST AND PRESENT NU,IIBER 106
racing continued into Islamic times and some early Islamic cities had
race tracks, but there is no evidence that other sorts of public
performance survived the end of antiquity.l5 After the Muslim conquest,
theatres were abandoned, demolished (the fate, presumably,
of the one St. Simeon the Fool performed in at Emesa since there is
no trace of it today), converted into fortresses (Bostra) or adapted for
industrialuse (Gerasa, where an interesting series of Umayyad pottery
kilns has recently been discovered in the North Theatre).16 The
Islamic conquest certainly meant the end of the classical theatre but
the evidence suggests that the decline had set in well before."
The baths were another important amenity of the classical city, as
Procopius makes plain. The history of public baths has not perhaps
received the attention due to it, since these structures were an essential
part of the urban society of both classical antiquity and the Muslim
world. It has recently been suggested that the ancient tradition of
public bathing almost died out in Constantinople in the seventh and
eighth centuries.ls In the Middle East, however, the tradition of
public baths seems to have lasted without interruption from antiquity
to the present day. If you could not get a bath in the imperial city,
you could certainly get one in Emesa (Hims) in the late sixth century,
where the life of St. Simeon the Fool speaks of baths for both men
and women (the saint, of course, choosing to enter the women's one).
The public baths of Hims survived the Muslim conquest; in 724 St.
Willibald and his fellow Christians were able to take advantage of
one.l9
C. H. Kraeling, Gerasa. City of the Decapolis (New Haven, 1938), pp. 86, 97.
For horse-racing in the early Islamic period, see the literary references in M.M.
Ahsan, Social Life under Abbasids (London, 1979), pp. 243-9.
I6 I am grateful to Dr. J. Bowsher of the British Archaeological Mission to Jerash
for pointing these out to me.
I7 Further evidence from other parts of the Byzantine empire is given by Claude,
Byzantinische Stadt in 6. Jahrhundert, pp. 74-6.
1s Mango, "Daily Life in Byzantium", pp. 338-41. The literary evidence for baths
in the Byzantine period has been collected by A. Lumpe, "Zur Kulturgeschichte des
Bades in der byzantinischen Ara", Bvzantinische Forschungen, vi (1979), pp. 151-66.
Lumpe has found virtually no textual evidence for public baths after the end of the
seventh century.
19 Vie de S p e o n le fou, ed. Festugiere, cap. xiv; J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgn'ms
before the Crusades(Warminster, 1977). For baths in the Muslim world, seeJ. SourdelThomime,
"Hammim", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn.; H. Grotzfeld, Das Bad
im arabisch-zslamischen Mittelalter: eine kulturgeschtlzche Studie (Wiesbaden, 1970);
Ahsan, Social Life under Abbasids, pp. 196-201,which suffers from the attempt to give
classical names to the chambers of a Muslim bath. For the contemporary organization
of baths, R. B. Serjeant and R. Lewcock, Sana': An Arabian Islamic Ci~v(London,
1983), pp. 501-25.
While the practice of bathing continued, the design and scale of
bath-houses changed very considerably. The great baths of the early
imperial period had been at the centre of leisure complexes which
included gymnasia and sometimes libraries. The gymnasia had disappeared
by the end of the fourth century, but in some places, like
Ephesus for example, the great bath-houses were still in use and were
restored during the fourth and fifth centuries. An inscription from
Antioch tells of the restoration of baths by the comes orientis Flavius
in 537-8, just before the catastrophe which obliged Justinian to
rebuild the city.20It is not clear that any of the old style bath-houses
were still in use by the late sixth century, and in Syria, at least, a
new style of bath-house was developed. The most important changes
were the greatly reduced scale of the new ones and the suppression
of thefrigidarium which had been the largest chamber in most classical
baths and the centre of social activity. Instead the new baths tended
to have a number of small chambers of roughly similar size, the hot
chamber gradually becoming more important at the expense of the
intermediate ones in later centuries. Sometimes these baths were
complemented by an enlarged version of the classical apodyterium, or
changing room, which in some early Islamic princely baths became
a large and sumptuous reception hall. The late antique type can be
observed in the few baths found in the small towns of the limestone
massif of northern Syria. The best example is that of Serjilla, given
to the community by a local notable and dated by inscription to 473.21
The proportions of the rooms and their reduced dimensions are in
striking contrast to earlier buildings.
Clear evidence for the changing nature of urban baths comes from
Gerasa (Jerash). In the Roman period the city had boasted two
massive bath-houses, one on each side of the river. There is no
indication when these vast structures ceased to be used but in the
mid-fifth century a new set of baths was built in the centre of the
urban nucleus, near the cathedral, by Bishop Placcus (built 454-5,
restored in 584).22These were clearly public baths, since they open
onto the street and there would have been no purpose in building
20 FOSS,Ephesus after Annquity, pp. 54, 60, 70; Lassus, Porttques d'Antioche, p.
135.
21 G. Tchalenko, Villages anttques dr la Sjwe du nord, 3 vols. (Paris, 1953-8), i, pp.
25-8; H. C. Butler, Publicattons of the Princeton Cntaerstty Archarologtcal Expedtttons
to Syria tn 1904-5 and 1909, 9 vols. (Leiden, 1907-49), division 11, section B, pt. 3,
pp. 118-23. For general comments on the changing architecture of baths in late
antiquity, Grotzfeld, Bad im arabisch-islamischen Mittelalter, pp. 28-9.
2 2 Kraeling, Gerasa, pp. 265-9.
10 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 106
them had the earlier baths still been functioning. The reduced scale
of the baths of Placcus is striking, the entire complex could have been
accommodated in the frigidarium of the old west baths, but with its
small chambers and intimate proportions it looks forward to the bath
houses of the Islamic city. The examples at Serjilla and Gerasa give
support to the argument that the architectual origins of the Muslim
bath should be sought in the baths of the Syrian towns of late
antiquity.23
These changes in architecture also point to changes in use. In the
late antique and Islamic periods it would seem that citizens visited
the baths to get clean, rather than to conduct the business of the day
and improve their minds and bodies.
We have very little archaeological evidence about early Islamic
urban bath-houses, although we know from abundant literary evidence
that they existed. The series of medieval baths from Damascus
and Cairo, which have been fully studied, go back no earlier than
the twelfth century.24The most famous surviving Umayyad baths,
at Qusayr Amra and Khirbat Mafjar, belong to princely residences
rather than to urban communities and are as much reception halls as
baths (a pattern which seems to go back to antiquity; for example,
the baths and audience hall of the late antique palace of the proconsul
of Asia at E p h e s ~ s ) . ~ ~The only surviving urban bath-houses seem
to be those at the agricultural and commercial settlement of Qasr alHayr
al-Sharqi in the Syrian desert.26Here there is one small bath
within the walls which conforms to the pattern of Serjilla and the
baths of Placcus. There is also a larger complex outside the fortifications
which resembles the princely type and has a large changing
room preceding the warm and hot rooms. In one respect, however,
the early Islamic bath had more in common with the classical one
than with the later Islamic. Late antique and Umayyad bath builders
continued to use the hypocaust, though on a reduced scale, for
z3 For this argument, see 0. Grabar, CiQ in the Desert (Cambridge, ,\lass., 1Y78),
pp. 94-7. For an interesting transformation of a Roman bath to the early Islamic style,
Y. Hirschfeld and G. Solar, "The Roman Thermae at Hammat Gadar", Israel
Exploration Jl., xxxi (1981), pp. 179-219.
24 *\I.Ecochard, Les bains de Dams (Beirut, 1943); E. Pauty, Les hammams du
Caire (Cairo, 1933).
25 M. Almagro et al., Qusayr Amra (Madrid, 1975); R. W. Hamilton, Khirbet alMajar
(Oxford, 1959). For the palace at Ephesus, Foss, Ephesus after Antiquirj~,pp.
50-1.
26 Grabar, City in the Desert, pp. 54-6, 90-7.
11FROM POLIS T O ,ZIADI,VA
heating the hot chamber, whereas later Muslim baths used a simpler
system of underfloor pipes from the furnace
The most complex and far reaching of the changes in urban design
in late antiquity and the early Islamic period was the changing
street layout. From Hellenistic times the cities of Syria had been
distinguished by wide, straight streets crossing at right angles and by
open public squares and markets, usually, but not always, rectangular
in shape. Between the laying out of the Hellenistic street plan and
the end of the Byzantine empire the typical main street had seen
some changes. Originally some important individual buildings had
porticoes looking onto the thoroughfare, but beginning with Herod
the Great's development in Antioch in about 6 B.C. these were often
incorporated in continous colonnades along the whole length of the
main street, and the important side ones as well. Libanius, writing
in fourth-century Antioch, considered that the colonnaded street was
one of the most important amenities the city had to 0ffer.~8Such
colonnades survive in Gerasa, Palmyra and (reconstructed) Apamea
to give us a clear picture of these structures. Such streets continued
to be used in late antiquity, and excavations at both Sardis and
Ephesus show that they were still being constructed in Asia Minor
in the fourth and fifth centuries. The colonnaded streets of Jerusalem,
which figure so prominently on the Madaba mosaic map, are thought
to date from the Byzantine period, and we have already seen that
Justinian took pains to rebuild the great street at Antioch in the 540s.
Planners seem to have worked to a consistent scale for street widths
in multiples of 18podes (5.5 metres) with widths of up to 22 metres
for the widest streets at Gerasa and Palmyra.29The colonnaded street
was elegant but functional, it allowed the separation ofwheeled traffic
and pedestrians, the provision of covered sidewalks which enabled
public life to be continued regardless of bad weather and position for
spacious shops and houses. The comments of Libanius suggest that
the columns might not always have been as unencumbered as the
ruins and modern reconstruction suggest, but the overall impression
was clearly one of spaciousness and order. Similarly the agoras were
27 Grotzfeld, Bad tm arabisch-islam~schenMtttelalter, pp. 56-9, discusses the later
history of the hypocaust.
28 Libanius, Antzochikos, trans. A. J . Festugiere, in dnt~ochepaienne et chretienne
(Paris, 1959), pp. 26-7.
29 M. Broshi, "Standards of Street Widths in the Roman-Byzantine Period",
Isruel Exploration Jl., xxvii (1977), pp. 232-6. For another early sixth-century street
development, Wiemken and Holum, "Joint Expedition to Caesarea Maritima", p. 31.
12 PAST AKD PRESEKT &UMBER 106
surrounded by colonnades and showed the same regular appearance
as the street.
The situation in the traditional Islamic city was very different.
The spacious open street was frequently built over while the much
narrower road (path might be a better description) often occupied
the classical sidewalk, the road itself being built over and covered
with shops or houses. In some cities like Aleppo and Jerusalem
several narrow suqs were built parallel on the site of the single
colonnaded street. The nature of this change was brilliantly illuminated
fifty years ago by Sauvaget in a model which shows how the
classical pattern was slowly altered and its character changed.30The
evidence suggests that the process was one of continued development,
rather than desertion and resettlement and that the area of the modern
suqs of Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem and, probably, Hims have been
market areas without interruption since classical times. Sauvaget
suggested that the change occurred during a period of anarchy and
weak government during the tenth century but it is now clear that
the process began very much earlier. In Gerasa, for example, we find
streets being built over and in some cases blocked during the late
Byzantine period, and in Apamea the classical street plan was disrupted
at the same time.31The most recent commentator on the urban
history of Damascus suggests that the process had begun there well
before the Islamic conquest. Although the excavators assigned the
building-over of the great street at Antioch to the early Islamic period,
there is no firm evidence for this and the structures, built directly
onto the pavement of Justinian's thoroughfare, may well date from
the last years of Byzantine rule.32Evidence has recently emerged in
Palmyra showing the use of the colonnaded street as a site for a
narrow suq in Umawad times, very much as Sauvaget suggested.33
In many residential areas through roads were converted into narrow,
private culs-de-sac, simply giving access to the houses on each side.
When Muqaddasi visited Damascus in the later tenth century all the
30 First published in Sauvaget, "Plan de Laodicee-sur-Mer", and more recently in
Hourani and Stern (eds.),Islamic Ctty, p. 171. On the subject of markets, ancient and
modern, E. Wirth, "Zum Problem des Bazaars", Der Islam, li (1974), pp. 203-60,
and lii (1975), pp. 6-46.
31 Kraeling, Gerasa, pp. 115, 227, 294; J. and J-C. Balty, Actes du ColloqueL4pamie
en Syne (Brussels, 1969), pp. 17, 41-3, 77, 114. For other examples, see Claude,
Byzantinische Stadt im 6 . Jahrhundert, pp. 44-5, 57-8.
32 Lassus, Porttques d'Antioche, pp. 149-50.
33 Unpublished excavations by the Syrian Department of Anriquities. I am indebted
to Dr. M. Gawlikowski for this information.
markets were roofed over except one, the "Street Called Straight",
and the same was true of Aleppo and Jerusalem by the twelfth century
if not before. Early Muslim legists discussing the required width for
a public street suggested a mere seven cubits (slightly over three
The design of commercial areas changed in another important
respect. The suqs of the Islamic town were basically linear, essentially
narrow streets bordered by small shops, and the open spaces of forum
or agora ceased to function as a commercial centre. In Aleppo the
agora was incorporated into the court of the great mosque in Umayyad
times (early eighth century), while in Damascus it seems to have been
built over and formed a residential Smaller rectangular
market areas did still exist, in the form of the covered qaysarzyya,
which Sauvaget saw as a direct descendant of the classical basilica,
and the open courtyard of the khan (inn), but neither of these played
the central role in urban life that the agora had done and neither was
developed before the twelfth century. Where large open markets did
exist, they were to be found outside the gates and catered for livestock
and food brought from the surrounding country by peasants or
bedouin. The high-status trades, fine textiles, jewelry, books, spices
and the like were to be found in the suqs around the mosque, not in
the open markets. There is some evidence of the infilling of urban
open spaces in late antiquity (at Gerasa and Ephesus, for example)
and that the change from open to linear markets was already underway
in the fifth century;36as in other areas, it seems that the early Islamic
period saw the continuation and full development of trends which
had already existed before.
While the urban pattern of antiquity was disturbed in the sites we
have been looking at so far, it is instructive to examine the townscape
of newly emergent urban communities of the fifth and sixth centuries
in Syria, cities where there was no classical town plan to affect
later growth. In the area of the limestone massif of northern Syria,
described by Tchalenko, there were at least two communities which
could reasonably be described as urban in character. The first of
34 G. Le Strange, Palesttne under the Moslems (London, 1890; repr. Beirut, 1965),
pp. 225, 363; R. Brunschvig, "Urbanisme medieval et droit musulman", Revue des
e'tudes ~slamiques,xvi (1947), p. 132. For the architectural development of the market
of Fustat in this period, Goitein, Meditewanean Society, iv, pp. 26-31.
35 Sauvaget, Alep, p. 76; Sauvaget, "Plan antique de Damas", pp. 339-47.
36 Kraeling, Gerasa, pp. 115, 157-8; Foss, Ephesus afier Antiqulry, p. 82; Foss,
Byzantine and Turkish Sardls, pp. 42-3.
13 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 106
these was Kaprobarada (Brad),37north of Qal' at Simcan.This was
an ancient community which expanded considerably during the fifth
and sixth centuries. By the second half of the sixth, the settlement
had a decidedly urban aspect and seems to have been an administrative
centre for the surrounding countryside. The late antique city boasted
a number of churches, including one which Butler described as the
"cathedral" on account of its size and congregational nature,38and
an official residence for the local administrator. There was also a
building which may have been an andron, or community meetingplace.
Kaprobarada was clearly an artisanal and agricultural centre
of some importance, probably performing the same economic
functions as many classical cities, yet there is a total absence of formal
town planning or public urban buildings other than churches. The
"streets" were narrow winding paths, there was no agora, no colonnades,
no theatre and the one bath was a small structure dating
from an earlier period of development and quite inadequate for a
community of that size. Another example can be found further south
at Kapropera (Al-Bara).39This town seems to have developed from
the end of the fourth century onwards. Again, the urban nature of
the community is apparent and in the late sixth century it occupied
an area of about 2x 3 kilometres (although not all of this was built
up). The size and elegance of the churches testify to its prosperity,
yet once again there is no sign of classical planning and, apart from
ecclesiastical structures, no public buildings. A pattern of narrow,
winding, uneven streets formed the means of communication.
The examples of Kaprobarada and Kapropera can be paralleled
elsewhere in the provinces of Syria and Arabia, in the recently
investigated settlement at Umm al-Jimal,40 for example. Nowhere
from the entire area is there evidence of town planning on the
classical model during the fifth and sixth centuries. Perhaps we should
remember Butler's description of another expanding settlement of
the period, Tarutia (Kerratin) in central Syria: "Tarutia was very
much of a city. The houses, though large, were crowded together,
the streets were narrow and the open squares few and small. The
street entrances to the houses were pretentious . . . but the outer
3' Tchalenko, Villages anttques de la Syie du nord, ii, plate 43; Butler, Publtcattons
ofthe Pnncecon CTniversicyArchaeological Expeditions to Syria, 11, B, 6, pp. 229-315.
Ibtd., 11, B , 6, pp. 305-6.
39 Tchalenko, Villages anctques de la Syrie du nord, ii, plates 137-9.
40 B. de Vries, "The Umm al-Jimal Project, 1972-7" Bull. Amer. Schools of Onental
Research, ccxliv (198I), pp. 53-72.
walls must have presented a grim appearance even though they were
plastered over and may have been coloured, for the outer windows
were few and narrow".41 Such then was the aspect of the late antique
city.
The coming of Islam made one important contribution to the built
environment of the town. A new sort of public building appeared,
the mosque. In its most obvious aspect the mosque replaced the
church as the place of worship for the political and social elite of the
city: in Damascus in the early eighth century the church was taken
over and demolished, in Aleppo cathedral and mosque coexisted on
opposite sides of a narrow street until the twelfth century, while in
Emesa (Hims) mosque and church were simply two halves of the
same building throughout the early middle ages. But the mosque also
replaced the agora as the main outdoor meeting-place in the city. In
Damascus, the great court of the Umayyad mosque forms the only
open space of any size within the walls of the old city while in Aleppo
the mosque was actually built on the old agora, its wide court
occupying the area of the classical open space. The mosque also
replaced the agora and the theatre in a functional sense. Plays and
mimes formed no part of the life of the madzna, but the theatre had
also had a political function as the scene of public meetings and
formal political c e r e m ~ n i e s , ~ ~and it was these functions which were
inherited by the mosque. It was here that the oath of allegiance, the
bay'a, was taken to new rulers and the khutba, the weekly sermon in
which the ruler's name was acknowledged, took place. It was here,
too, that governors and caliphs could address the Muslims on matters
of public importance. When Ziyad b. Abihi was appointed governor
of Basra in 665 he assembled the people of the town in the mosque and
warned them in no uncertain terms to behave themselves. Similarly in
the confusion which followed the death of the young caliph Mu'awiya
I1 in 684 the various contenders for power met in the mosque
in Damascus. Later in the Umawad period Yazid 111, who had
assassinated his predecessor Walid I1 in 744, addressed the people in
the mosque at Damascus, laying before them his plans for reform
and soliciting their support.43 The public and political functions
41 Butler, Publications of the Princeton VniversityArchaeologtcal Expeditions to Syna,
11, B, 22, p. 72.
42 Liebeschuetz, Anttoch, pp. 208-16.
43 Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, Ta'rikh al-Rusul wa'l-Muluk, ed. M.de Goeje et
al., 3 vols. (Leiden, 1879-1901), ii, pp. 73-6,368-72, 1834-6. For the many functions
of the mosque in the early Islamic city, Goitein, Mediterranean Society, iv, pp. 31-3.
16 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 106
which would have taken place in theatre, agora or hippodrome in
Byzantine times now happened in the mosque. There is an interesting
contrast here with medieval Italy where urban continuity was also
strong. The cathedral of an Italian town did not provide a public
open space in the way the courtyard of a Syrian mosque did. When
the citizens of early medieval Pavia wished to gather to make their
views heard, they did so in the square (platea) by the cathedral.44
This may have been one of the reasons why open squares survived
in the cities of Italy and not in those of Syria.
The mosque also took over the functions of other public buildings.
It was usually in the mosque that the Muslim judge (qadi) held court,
although there are records of early qadis using their own houses for
this purpose. Until the appearance of the madrasa (theological college)
in the eleventh century, the mosque also served as the centre for
education in the religious and legal sciences, once again taking over
the function of other forms of public architecture. The transformation
of the monumental city of antiquity cannot be understood without
appreciating the many different activities which took place in the
mosque.
Early Muslim society did not deliberately choose to develop towns
with narrow winding streets out of any conscious aesthetic or cultural
preference, and the idea that there is something in the spirit of Islam
which leads to the enclosed, private and secret world of the "Islamic
city" should not be entertained by serious urban historians. The most
important evidence for this comes from early Islamic planned towns.
When Muslim rulers laid out new cities, they adopted orthogonal
plans, dividing blocks of housing by straight and sometimes wide
streets. The clearest example of this comes from the early eighthcentury
settlement at Anjar, in the Biqacvalley just south of Heliopolis
(Baalbak). Here the early Islamic city has four wide streets which
meet at a central tetrapylon and the entire plan is ordered and regular.
The same features are apparent in the contemporary settlement at
Qasr al-Hayr East in the Syrian desert, where the small, planned
madzna has at its centre an open rectangular square surrounded by
arcades. On a larger scale, the vast development of the ninth-century
'Abbasid capital at Samarra in Iraq shows a similar concern for order.
Aerial photographs show clearly the very wide main street (much
wider in fact than the main street, cardo maxzmus, of any Roman town
44 D. A. Bullough, "Urban Change in Early Mediaeval Italy", Pupers of the Bnttsh
School at Rome, xxxiv (1966), pp. 82-130.
FROM POLIS T O 'Z/iL4DI.VA 17
in Syria) and the narrower streets which lead off it at right angles and
divide the city into rectangular blocks for houses and gardens.45
These examples suggest that where cities were planned, early Islamic
surveyors (the muhandisun) had very similar ideas to those of their
classical predecessors and these early Islamic settlements show much
more concern for orderly urban development than the small towns
of Byzantine Syria like Kaprobarada and Kapropera described above.
Planned and unplanned cities always existed in Syria. The contrast
is that in classical antiquity most cities including the largest and
wealthiest were planned and ordered, in Islamic society they were
not.
The picture which emerges from this study suggests that urban
change in the Middle East took place over a number of centuries and
that the development from thepolzs of antiquity to the Islamic madzna
was a long drawn out process of evolution. Many of the features
which are often associated with the coming of Islam, the decay of the
monumental buildings and the changes in the classical street plan,
are in evidence long before the Muslim conquests. In other ways the
evolution of the traditional Islamic town was not completed until
much later; regular street plans were still laid out, if only occasionally
(and it should be noted, we have no idea of the street plan of the
greatest early Islamic new towns at Kufa and Basra in Iraq). The
khans, caravansarais, qaysanyjlas and madrasas of the traditional city
seem to be developments of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We
should perhaps think in terms of a half millennium of transition.
Before considering the causes of these changes it is perhaps important
to make two gerieral points. The first is that we should avoid
making inappropriate value judgements. The development of the
Islamic city is often seen as a process of decay, the abandonment of
the high Hippodamian ideals of classical antiquity and the descent
into urban squalor. On the contrary, the changes in city planning
may, in some cases, have been the result of increased urban and
commercial vitality, as in early Islamic Damascus and Aleppo for
example. It was rather that the built environment was adapted for
different purposes, life-styles and legal customs. The changing aspect
of the city was determined by long-term social, economic and cultural
forces, not by administrative incompetence or aesthetic insensitivity.
45 On Anjar, J. Sourdel-Thomime and B. Spuler, Die Kunst des Islam (Propylaen
Kunstgeschichte, iv, Berlin, 1973), pp. 163-6. On Qasr al-Hayr, 0 . Grabar, City in
the Desert. On Samarra, Creswell, Ear& AVfuslimArchitecture, ii; J . M . Rogers,
"Samarra: h Study in hledieval Town Planning", in Hourani and Stern (eds.), Islam~c
Ctty, pp. 119-55.
18 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 106
The second consideration is that public, open spaces, be they
narrow sugs or wide colonnaded streets, will always be under pressure.
They will only survive if they fulfil a perceived and generally acknowledged
purpose and are protected by an active and vigilant civic
authority. If the usefulness of such spaces is not accepted, then
inevitably they will be encroached on and built over. As far as the
planning of public open spaces is concerned, the historian must
seek the reasons why the constraints which had prevented such
encroachment in classical times were no longer operative in late
antique and early Islamic cities.
What then were the factors which led to these urban changes? The
first cause to be considered is demographic decline, caused by plague,
invasion or both. Evidence suggests serious and sustained falls in
population throughout the eastern Mediterranean in the aftermath of
the bubonic plague of 540 and its successors. Many poleis never survived
to become early Islamic mada'in, and the period of transition
marks the end of their urban history: Chalcis (Qinnasrin) and Gerasa
(Jerash) were virtually uninhabited by the tenth century. There is a
second category, like Apamea, where the polis becomes an early
Islamic village, its urban aspect and plan largely lost. There were
also cities which were destroyed by earthquake, a factor which seems
to have been especially important in the case of Beirut where the
classical street plan and buildings were entirely obliterated by the
tremor of 550 and the Islamic town developed on quite a different
pattern.46 But for other cities in the area there is no evidence of
serious demographic problems; Damascus, Hims and Aleppo probably
increased their populations between 500 and 750. Yet the changing
nature of the built environment was as evident in towns which
survived as in those which did not, and demographic decline alone
cannot account for all the changes.
The differing role ofgovernment is important. In the early imperial
period the patronage for public building came mostly from rich
local citizens who provided funds for the construction of massive
monumental complexes. With the decline of civic self-government in
late antiquity this patronage passed to the emperor and his local
46 On plague and plague mortality in this period, see the important work of L.
Conrad, "Plague in the Early Medieval Near East" (Princeton Univ. Ph.D. thesis,
1981). Earthquake damage is described in John Malalas, Chromgraphia, ed. J.-P.
Migne (Patrologia Graeca, xcvii, Paris, 1865), p. 704. The damage caused by the
earthquake is attested by the Piacenza Pilgrim: V'ilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgn'm before
the Crusades, p. 79. For the plan of pre-modern Beirut, Comte du Mesnil du Buisson,
"Les anciens defenses de Beyrouth", Syria, ii (1921), pp. 238-57, 317-27.
representatives, a process which reached its logical conclusion in the
first half of the sixth century when the remaining functions of city
councils were abolished and their treasuries c~nfiscated.~'After the
mid-sixth century, however, even central government patronage, as
recorded in inscriptions, virtually dried up except in areas like the
Euphrates valley which lay on the direct route of Persian invasions.
By the sixth century, too, such imperial patronage as there was had
shifted towards religious buildings rather than secular monuments,
sometimes in rural rather than urban settings; in Ephesus, for example,
the only major work of the sixth century was the construction
by Justinian of the church of St. John outside the city. In some cases
the bishop seems to have taken over from the council or the imperial
government, and provided amenities for the city. In Gerasa the bishop
funded the building of baths, and it is interesting to note that the
church also provided bathing facilities in eighth-century Rome. John
of Ephesus describes how the patriarch of Antioch secured funding
from the emperor Maurice (582-602) for the building of both a
hippodrome and a theatre (described as a "church of Satan") at
Antioch, but the story may be no more than an attempt by the
staunchly monophysite John to discredit the Chalcedonian patriarch.48
There is little evidence that episcopal patronage of civic
building compensated for the drying up of other sources of revenue.
Apart from the rebuilding of Antioch, previously discussed, there is
virtually no evidence of imperial patronage of secular building in
sixth-century Syria. The government took over the finance of building
and maintenance of public monuments from the cities and their
councils and was then unwilling or unable to sustain its commitments.
The confiscation of town revenues also put an end to many of the
activities which had taken place in the monumental buildings. In
classical antiquity, both the public baths and the theatrical performances
had been financed by subsidies from the town revenues, rather
than being run on an economic basis. Whether such subsidies continued
into the fifth century is not clear. Baths were certainly built under
47 For the patronage of building in late antiquity, Foss, Ephesus after Antiqu~ty,pp.
21-9; Liebeschuetz, Antzoch, pp. 132-6. For the decline of city councils, A. H. M.
Jones, "Cities of the Roman Empire: Political, Administrative and Judicial Institutions",
Recueils du Soctiti Jean Bodin, vi (1954), pp. 135-73; Liebeschuetz, Antloch,
pp. 167-86.
48 FOSS,Ephesus after Antiqutty, p. 25; R. Krautheimer, Rome: Profile of a Ctty
(Princeton, 1980'r, p. 111; Iohannis Ephesini, Histonae ecclesiast1caepars tertia, trans.
E. \X'. Brooks (Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium, cvi, Louvain, 1964),
pp. 202-3.
20 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 106
private patronage at this time and the examples at Serjilla and Gerasa
have already been cited, but it is not clear whether these were
endowed with funds for their operation or whether they demanded
payment from those who used them; the small scale of the latter
construction and the fact that it had only one entrance may suggest
the latter.49There is no tradition of subsidized bathing in the Islamic
period; customers paid, as they still do today, for the services provided,
and it is possible that this reflects late antique practice and
accounts in some measure for the development of the new style of
bath architecture during this period.
The pattern of government patronage in the early Islamic period
was very different from the classical model. In many ways the early
Islamic state was a minimalist state which saw no reason to interfere
in the activities of its subjects except when disturbances might result.
It provided physical security for the Muslims in the shape of city
walls, mosques for them to worship in and, usually, a supply of
running water. Muslim authorities considered the supply of water by
canals or aqueducts as an essential service, partly for ritual reasons
since ablution was essential before worship. The pattern visible in
Italy, where the aqueducts of the classical period are frequently
replaced by wells in the early middle ages, is not usually found in
the Islamic world. The Umayyads certainly spent money on building,
too much their critics alleged, but their projects, apart from the great
mosques, were palaces in both town and country, and agricultural
developments with their related settlements, of which Qasr al-Hayr
East is an excellent example. They did not spend money on beautifying
the streets of Damascus or on putting on public entertainments.
It seems probable too that the government in Umayyad times was
comparatively poor. In most areas of the Caliphate the taxes collected
were distributed to the Muslims in the provinces concerned; that is,
most of the revenues collected in Iraq were spent in Iraq and only a
very small surplus, if any, was forwarded to the g o ~ e r n m e n t . ~ ~In
modern economic terms, the government controlled a much smaller
proportion of the gross imperial product than under the Roman
49 For evidence of payment for baths in, late antiquity, Lumpe, "Zur Kulturgeschichte
des Bades in der byzantinischen Ara", pp. 156-7.
The problem of finance of government in the early Islamic state has received very
little attention; for the Umayyad period there are some very interesting points in
D. C. Dennett, "Manvan I1 and the Passing of the Umayyad Caliphate" (Haward
Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1939). Under the 'Abbasids after 750, revenue collecting became
more centralized and the government did embark on large-scale urban developments
like those at Baghdad and Samarra.
FROM POLIS TO ,ZIADISA 2 1
empire. Consequently both the need and the resources for government
patronage of urban building were greatly reduced, and government
patronage of monumental secular building, which had become
increasingly erratic during the last century of Byzantine rule, ceased
altogether in the early Islamic period.
The changing legal system may have been a factor in urban development.
Roman law made a sharp distinction between state and private
property and it was the function of government to prevent private
building on the public domain. It did not matter whether such
trespassing caused problems or not, it was still illegal and the local
governor was enjoined to stop it. Clearly there were many cities where
such laws were not fully enforced in the sixth century but the legal
provision did exist and could be called on if necessary. Roman law
also concerned itself with the aesthetic aspects of the townscape,
forbidding structures which degraded its appearance.S1 Here again
such laws could only be effective if the resources and will to enforce
them existed but they did show that the appearance of the city was a
feature with which rulers should concern themselves.
Islamic law on property starts from a quite different basis.52For
Muslim jurists the important unit was the family and its house.
Broadly speaking, it was held that they should be allowed to do
anything they chose as long as it did not harm their neighbours.
Furthermore, the house was held to have some rights over the
adjoining public space. This legal framework could have important
repercussions for urban planning. At its most simple it meant that a
man could extend his house into the street or build an overhanging
balcony without needing to seek permission from anyone. If his
neighbours felt that the new construction was harming them, by
preventing access to their own property for example, it was up to
them to take the case to the qadi who could, if he felt that it was
necessary, order that the new structure should be demolished. But
the enforcement was the result of private prosecution by those who
were harmed rather than by the state authorities. Equally the muhtasib
(market inspector) would only take action against obstructions if they
caused a nuisance. When in 918 Rotgerius of Pavia, an Italian city
where the old Roman concept of public streets was still very much
alive, wished to build a balcony from his house over the street,
he was obliged to get a licence, presumably at some expense and
Claude, Byzantznische Stadt zm 6. Jahrhundert, pp. 53-5. 

52 Brunschvig, ''Urbanisme medieval et droit musulman". 

22 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 106
inconvenience, from the king;s3 if he had lived in a Muslim city, no
such permission would have been necessary and he and people like
him would have been much more tempted to enlarge their properties
at the expense of the public street. The jurists also held that if a man
owned property on both sides of a street, he could lawfully cover it
over with an arch and build rooms on it, thus converting the street
into a tunnel. In the case of a small cul-de-sac, the owners of the
properties could, if they all agreed, place a gate across the entrance,
thus converting a previously public road into a semi-private court, a
feature typical of the medieval Islamic townscape. When it came to
individual constructions, the law was equally easygoing. Aesthetic
considerations played no part whatever; the fact that a building was
an unsightly ruin did not mean that the owner could be compelled
to tidy it up and only if it was actually dangerous could those
threatened take action. While the law took no account of appearance,
it was deeply concerned with privacy. If one man built his house so
that it overlooked another's then the offended neighbour could go to
law, since he had been harmed.
These legal changes obviously affected urban development, but
too much importance should not be attached to them. Archaeological
evidence shows clearly that the strict injunctions against trespassing
on the public domain were unable to save the classical city layout
when other social and economic factors proved too strong. Similarly,
Muslim law did allow remedies for gross interference in urban
functions. If someone blocked up a major traffic artery, for example,
the quadz would decide against him and the structure concerned
would have to be removed. If the Muslim community had perceived
that wide colonnaded streets and spacious agoras were vital to their
well-being, then they could have proceeded to law to protect them.
It is clear, however, that they did not consider this to be the case,
and while Muslim legists agreed that important streets must remain
open, they only needed to be wide enough to allow two loaded pack
animals to pass each other.
Another contributory element in the transformation of the urban
pattern was the changing social structure of the cities.s4 In general,
classical cities do not seem to have been the centre of great industrial
or commercial activity. Obviously there were exceptions; we have
53 Bullough, "Urban Change in Early Medieval Italy", p. 108.
54 For the economic and soc~alstructure of the cities, Jones, "C~tiesof the Roman
Empire"; A. H. M. Jones, "The Economic L~feof the Towns of the Roman Empire",
Recueils du Soc~eteJean Bodin, vii (1955), pp. 161-92.
FROM POLIS TO ,21.4DIAY.4 23
ample evidence of the trade of Tyre and Palmyra in the classical
period and there was certainly some commercial activity in Tyre and
Caesarea in Palestine up to the late sixth and early seventh ~ e n t u r i e s . ~ ~
In the main, however, commerce and manufacture do not seem to
have been the most important factor in the prosperity of towns. This
impression is strengthened by the Arab historian Baladhuri's account
of the early Islamic conquest of the area. Only in the case of Caesarea
does he mention any markets, although he does quote a treaty
which makes provision for the merchants of Heliopolis (Baalbak).56
Elsewhere the impression is given of an overwhelmingly rural economy.
The classical city seems to have depended for its existence on
the fact that neighbouring landowners lived in it to take part in social
and political activities; in the words of A. H . M. Jones, "The city
was a social phenomenon, the result of the predeliction of the wealthier
classes for the amenities of urban life".57 This seems to have
remained true in the Byzantine period, when the city also became
the centre of the ecclesiastical administration as well, and as late as
570 the Piacenza pilgrim comments that Apamea was the place of
residence for all the nobility of the area.58This city elite was also
dependent on the government in the sense that much of their wealth
derived from their role as tax-collectors and administrators in the
surrounding rural areas,59and when the tax ceased to be collected
the cities suffered greatly. Although we know that some Byzantine
financial administrators retained their positions up to and beyond the
Islamic conquest,60 the wars of the Persian occupation must have
meant a serious interruption of the tax-collecting machinery and
consequently in wealth and importance of the urban aristocracy. In
addition, many of the Greek-speaking upper classes fled Syria at the
5 5 For Tyre, Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgnms before the Crusades, p. 79; for Caesarea,
Ahmad b.Jabir al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan,ed. S. Munajjid (Ca~ro,1957), pp. 166-
7, trans. P. K. Hitti, The Ongins of the Islamic State (New York, 1916), p. 217.
56 The Baalbak treaty is given in al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan,p. 154(trans. Hitti,
pp. 198-9).
5 7 Jones, "Cities of the Roman Empire", p. 170.
58 Wilkinson, Jerusalem Ptlgnms before the Crusades, p. 89.
59 For the role of government and taxation in sustaining the late antique social
order, see C. J. Wickham, "The Other Transition: From the Ancient World to
Feudalism", Past and Present, no. 103(May 1984), pp. 3-36. Townspeople also acted
as moneylenders to the villagers, and in some areas of the eastern empire there seems
to have been a real problem of peasant indebtedness. See John of Ephesus, "Life of
Habib", in Ltves of the Eastern Saints, ed. and trans. E. W. Brooks (Patrologia
orientalis, xvi~,Paris, 1923), pp. 5-18.
60 The family of St. John of Damascus, for example.
24 PAST AND PRESENT NUAIBER 106
time of the Arab conquests and it may well be that the old style
political elite had almost vanished by the late seventh century.
Neither bureaucrats nor landowners, who were often the same
people, paid much attention to the needs of commerce, and merchants
had a low social status. It was not that there were no merchants in
the towns, but rather that they did not form the dominant, decisionmaking
elite. This cultural prejudice was reinforced by Christian
suspicions of money-making activities. Nor did the government patronize
urban markets to any great extent; indeed it operated outside
the monetary economy, obtaining the goods and services it needed
by payments in kind and requisition.
This is not to say that commerce was stagnant in the late sixth and
early seventh centuries. Archaeological evidence make it clear that
trade in north African pottery remained common in the eastern
Mediterranean right into the seventh century.61 But this trade was
not necessarily based in towns. In the fourth century Libanius explained
how the villagers in the hinterland of Antioch exchanged
goods at local fairs rather than coming to the great city to do business.
This impression of rural self-sufficiency is confirmed by the life of
St. Simeon Stylites the Younger whose monastery, although only a
few miles from Antioch, seems to have been economically selfcontained
rather than relying on the city and its services. In the sixth
century there is evidence of the growing importance of Christian
shrines in the life of the community and it is possible that the
pilgrimage centre and its attendant fair was a more important focus
for commercial activity than the urban market. Great shrines like
those of St. Thecla at Seleucia in Cilicia, St. Sergius at Resafa and
St. Leontios at Tripoli clearly attracted vast numbers of devotees and
must have become natural centres of exchange.'j2 Archaeological
evidence reveals the existence of numerous shops and what can
usefully be described as a suq at Dayr Sim'an, just below the great
shrine of St. Simeon Stylites the Elder. Building of monasteries and
hostels at Dayr Sim'an continued right through the sixth century,
testifying to the continued popularity and prosperity of the pilgrim-
61 H. Blake, "Medieval Pottery: Technical Innovation or Economic Change?",
in H. Blake et al. (eds.), Papers tn Italian Archaeolog~ (Brit. Archaeol. Repts.,
Supplementary Ser., xli pt. 2, Oxford, 1978), pp. 435-72.
62 For pilgrimage centres, Claude, Byzantlnische Stadt tm 6. Jahrhundert. For the
shrine of St. Thecla, G. Dagron, Vie et m~raclesde ste Thecle (Subsidia hagiographia,
Ixii, Brussels, 1978), miracles 26, 29, 41. For Leontios of Tripoli, J. M. Fiey, "Le
martyrion de st Leonce a Tripoli", Le museon, xcv (1982), pp. 77-98.
FROM POLIS T O ,MADI,YA 25
age.63 The most successful market in the Middle East at this time
was the pilgrimage centre at Mecca in western Arabia where, in the
late sixth century, the ancient haram (holy place) had become the
centre of a flourishing trade which attracted merchants from all over
Arabia. Despite the Meccan origins of many of the leading figures in
early Islamic Syria, the Muslim conquest seems to have put an end
to any pilgrimage fairs in Syria. In other Muslim countries, Morocco
for example, pilgrimage fairs became and remained an important part
of the local economy. The early Arab geographers mention no such
gatherings in Syria. Muslim rule in fact brought the focus of commercial
activity firmly within the city walls.
The Islamic city was very different. Muhammad himself was a
merchant from a merchant city, and many famous early Muslims had
engaged in trade, including the first caliph, Abu Bakr. Early hadiths,
the traditions of the Prophet, emerge to the effect that honest commerce
was more meritorious than government service, and the prosperous
trader was regarded as a pillar of society. When Muslim
geographers describe a city, they mention the mosque and the markets,
their extent, prosperity and the different sorts of goods for sale.
For them it is the commerce of the city rather than its monumental
buildings which are the chief source of interest. It was from the
merchant class too that the much respected jurists and qadis were
drawn, not from the ranks of government servants or of the military.64
It was natural then that the design of the city reflected the needs of
this class and that the Muslim city allowed the commercial considerations
to outweigh the dictates of formal planning. This is most obvious
in the case of the market areas. The main consequence of the change
from the open colonnaded street to the crowded suq was to increase
the number of retail shops in the city centre as the old shops were
subdivided and new structures were erected in the old roadway.
Urban design now responded directly to commercial pressures and
63 Butler, Publications of the Princeton L'n~verstryArchaeological Expedittons to S p a ,
11, B, 6, pp. 265-80; Tchalenko, Villages antques de la S p e du nord, i, pp. 201-22.
64 Islamic attitudes to merchants are investigated by S. D. Goitein, "The Rise of
the Near Eastern Bourgeoisie", Cah~ersd'histoire rnondlale, iii (1956-7), pp. 583-604.
See also H. Cohen, "The Economic Background and Secular Occupations of Muslim
Jurisprudents and Traditionalists in the Classical Period of Islam", 31. Econ. and
Social H~st.of the Onent, xiii (1970), pp. 16-61. Particularly important in this context
is the commercial background of many of the qadis or judges, since it was they who
would take decisions about the legality or otherwise of building operations. Examples
from Egypt are cited in Goitein, Mediterranean Soclery, ii, pp. 365-7, and from Iran
in R. Bulliet, Patrictans of h'tshapur (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 20-7.
26 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 106
no government action was taken to counter such pressures in the
name of the inviolability of public lands or of aesthetic considerations.
Another cause of change was a fundamental shift in the means of
transporting goods. It has recently been argued that wheeled transport
effectively disappeared in the Middle East between the fourth and
eighth centuries.65There are no references to chariots or carts in the
early Islamic sources, and the Arabic vocabulary for describing such
vehicles is very rudimentary. The late seventh-century pilgrim Arculf
commented on the absence of carts in Syria and Palestine.'j6 The
reasons for this were essentially economic; improved techniques of
camel domestication meant that pack animals were more efficient at
transporting goods. This had the consequence of reducing the very
high cost of overland transport which had inhibited trade in antiquity.
Wheeled transport, as we know from contemporary experience, has
a profound effect on urban planning. Wide streets, kept clear of
obstructions, were vital for the free movement of goods, and the
wheel marks often found indented in the stone paving of classical
streets are testimony to the volume of this traffic. As late as the fifth
century the top end of the Embolos at Ephesus was blocked to
prevent wheeled traffic using the commercial street from entering the
pedestrian area of the agora. Pack animals on the other hand, require
no such extravagant provision; a simple winding path between shops
and houses, up and down steps if necessary, is all that is needed and,
as mentioned above, the jurists only required that two loaded pack
animals be able to pass in the public street. Hence the broad colonnaded
street ceased to fulfil an essential function in the urban environment.
It might have been aesthetically desirable, but in functional
terms it was simply redundant and pressure to keep it open was
relaxed. The invasion of this valuable town centre space by stalls and
shops soon followed naturally. The disappearance of wheeled traffic
in late antiquity and the early Islamic period must have had a profound
effect on urban planning.
The transformation of the classical polis into the Islamic madina
must be seen as the product of long-term social and economic changes.
Furthermore it was a complex process, different forces being at work
at different times. Levels of population, means of transporting goods
and a changing social structure all played their part, and the coming
of Islam was simply one stage in the long transformation which began
65 For the argument and the details, R. Bulliet, The Cameland the Wheel(Cambr~dge,
Mass., 1975).
66 Wilkinson, Jerusalem Ptlgnms before the Crusades, p. 106.
FROM POLIS TO ,21.4DIAY.4 27
in the sixth century or earlier and was probably not complete until
the tenth or eleventh. To the slowly evolving city, Islam contributed
a new type of public building and a new attitude to public law and
administration.
It should not be imagined that the process of the decay of the
classical street plan and monumental buildings necessarily meant that
the city was less vital or thriving. In some cases it clearly did; the
huts on the disused forum at Luni (Italy) indicated a serious decline
in prosperity and population, and the same can probably be argued
for Antioch or Gerasa in Syria. Paradoxically, however, the intrusion
of new building into the open spaces of antiquity after the Islamic
conquest may actually indicate increased urban commercial activity
and pressure on land in the city centre.
The history of the cities of Syria in late antiquity was similar to
that in other areas of the Mediterranean. The general picture of urban
decline in late sixth-century Italy can be paralleled by that in late
sixth-century Syria, and the Persian invasions from 540onwards were
as destructive in their way as the Lombard invasions of Italy. What
distinguishes Syria from the areas of Christian Europe, however, is
the success of some towns, mostly inland ones, from the Islamic
conquest onwards. City-based government and increased commercial
activity resulting from the opening up of land-routes in the Middle
East saw the emergence of a new type of city whose design derived
not from the ordered urban environment of classical antiquity but
rather from the chaotic plan of the sixth-century town out of which
it grew.
C'niversityof St. Andrews Hugh Kennedy