The Model of ‘Islamic City’

Abstract

Interest in the concept of the ‘Islamic city’ first emerged in the early decades of the 20th century among European scholars. Scholarship on the ‘Islamic City’ at this time was based mainly on two approaches: the first attributed the structure of ‘Islamic City’ to social and religious factors and the second attempted to describe it through a perspective that was mainly based on the analysis of the urban structure and its physical features. The first approach derives from English and German Orientalist studies, while the second comes from Orientalist studies of French derivation, based on a body of knowledge regarding the ‘Islamic city’ was born from actual conquest over the Mediterranean area (Neglia, 2008).