The origin of cities: Analysis of words in the meaning of settlement in the Qur'an

Abstract

In the Qur'an the most significant words used to indicate settlement are diyar, qarya, madina, misr and balad. Among these, qarya and madina are the most important ones. While Qarya means, county, city, urban, land and settlement, madina means town. Misr is used for a city as well as for a specific name of a country. Diyar indicates a geographic border and the places of a settlement, and balad infers a political unity of a number of settlements. Due to this use in 'Arabic, the word balad is used as a country and a state at the same time. Recently, there are some studies focusing on examining the terms of qarya and madina. Hovewer, we cannot encompass the semantic area of these words only by looking up their dictionary mean-ing and how they were used in the Qur'an. Therefore, in this study the old cities are examined as they exist in their places. In this study, we have utilised from the modern and contempo-rary scientific findings which were made for urbanization and its history. For a better under-standing of the concept of urbanization, some prophets' stories have been revised. In Qur'an the words indicating urbanization are related to society, nature, place, human, art, economy, politics and reconstruction. Therefore, the concepts of the diyar, qarya, madina, misr and balad used to describe the settlements point to the relationship of society with different ele-ments and activities.