Knowledge and the City: Redefining Islamic Urbanism, 762–1067

Abstract

This study demonstrates that the rapid urbanization of the Islamic world in its first five centuries can be attributed in part to the development of an independent class of city administrators who ensured that urban life thrived even in the most tumultuous of political times. This dissertation subverts existing historical models of urbanism, which were developed for medieval Europe, by excavating a theorization of the city from the political writings of the philosopher al-Farabi (d. 950), who argues that cities require the administrative wisdom of learned men trained in law. To historically corroborate al-Farabi’s theory, which has been cast as utopian, I identify these learned men in the historical record as the ʿulamaʾ. I demonstrate that early Islamic learning was a complex but ordered system—even before its institutionalization—first by articulating its delineations via a praxis of personally conferring and acquiring ʿilm (knowledge). This praxis was, I demonstrate, informed by a widely held view that ʿilm was metaphysically substantiated. The ʿulamaʾ—those marked by ʿilm—inherited their legal authority from the Prophet via the transmission of hadith and thus did not rely entirely on the political vesting of the caliph or amir to carry out Islamic law on the level of the city. I demonstrate that the ʿulamaʾ, with their independent legal authority, served as city administrators via two primary positions—the qadi (judge) and the muḥtasib (officer of public order)—and various other positions delegated by these two offices. Just as the system of early Islamic learning was regularized across the Islamic world, so too was the administration of cities by the ʿulamaʾ. Through city administration, the ʿulamaʾcultivated favorable living conditions in cities. Their relative independence from the state allowed for a continuity in city administration—and thus a continuity in urbanism—that survived the many political upheavals that came to define the Islamic world in the tenth and eleventh centuries.