Introduction

"The culture of the past is not only the memory of mankind, but our own buried life, and study of it leads to a recognition scene, a discovery in which we see, not our past

lives, but the cultural form of our present life”

Northrop Frye (1957)

It is a fact that the traditional cities in these regions have their own particularity after the emergence of Islam (Bianca 2000, p. 23; Ettinghausen and Grabar 1994, p. 17).

However, there is no doubt that the emergence of Islam in Arab and non-Arab lands led to a sequence of developments rooted in previous civilisations, especially those of Mesopotamia, the Nile, and the Roman Empire (Bianca 2000, pp. 22-23; Gosling and Maitland 1984, p. 26). In this study, titles like ‘Islamic Cities’¹³, ‘Middle Eastern

13The controversy surrounding use of the term ‘Islamic city’ will not be discussed in detailed, as the concern of this study is change and persistence in the city urban core of Erbil. Different scholars have different opinions and concerns regarding the use of the term Islamic cities. Before starting with their arguments it is worth mentioning that in terms of this terminology, Bandyopadhyay (1998, p.123) sheds light on a vital discussion on the so-called ‘Islamic cities’. He states, “Although studying Arab and Middle Eastern settlements in the light of Islam is no doubt necessary and useful, the over-idealised paradigm of "Islamic" cities has done more damage than anything else in the understanding of the phenomenon of human settlements within the geo-graphical region dominated by Islam. This problem has become immensely exacerbated, in recent years, by the publication of a plethora of literature, on

cities’, and ‘Arab cities’ will not be used, because these cities were inhabited by people of different religions and ethnicities and by terming them Arab or Islamic cities the identities of other inhabitants could be undermined. Hence, the acronym ‘SWANAAP’

that comes from South West Asia, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula is coined

the physical and architectural nature of such "Islamic" cities. On the one hand, certain genuinely penetrating and revealing studies of settlements could make the new researcher, working within the same geographical region and sub-culture, susceptible to drawing quick conclusions, and thereby pose a hindrance towards understanding the peculiarity of the settlement under consideration”.

Some argue such cities are no different from other medieval cities in terms of structure and needs, and Muslims did not bring any genuinely new types to the cities that they conquered; what they did is use and adapt some urban elements of the cities that they conquered. For example, the sociologist Janet Abu-Lughod, in her study ‘The Islamic City-Historic Myth, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance’,1987, criticised Marçais who introduced some physical characteristics of the traditional Islamic cities in the SWANNAP region, such as the civic complex that includes the Grand mosque, bazar and the public bath. Abu-Lughod’s point was that “…medieval European cities were also defined by the presence of the cathedral and the marketplace in front of it”. The key problem with her explanation is that this statement is very general due to the fact that the difference is in the spirit of these cities; also these markets and religious buildings were adjacent to each other. The characteristics and the types of their architectural components were different from the European cities. For example, the bazar of the SWANNAP cities is well known by the types of its markets, qaisaria construction, roofed paths, and spatial organization. As Wirth (see Yildiz 2011, p. 200) believed that the permanent markets, suq/bazar and its qaisaria were one of the main characteristic of the SWANNAP cities. In addition, some markets and public baths in the SWANAAP cities used to work as waqif/endowments to maintain the mosque. Another limitation with Abu-Lughod’s argument is the focus on the cities of North Africa, while neglecting those of south west Asia. However, when she came to describe the social aspects that impact spatial form she took examples from Asia, such as India, and this shows imbalance in her arguments. Also, she compared old cities that have merged with modern aspects and lost part of their traditional spirit, i.e. cities in 20^th century with cities that emerged between the 6^th to 18^th centuries. In her conclusion she reduced the traditional aspects that described the characteristics of the so-called

‘Islamic cities’ to some aspects that have nothing to do with contemporary character, as she claimed that she went beyond the physical aspects of Islamic cities and focused on its spirit. It can be said that her claim was over ambitious and the result of her study was disappointing as she separates intangible from tangible aspects and this separation was probably due to her background as a sociologist rather than as an architect. Other scholars, such as Ettinghausen and Grabar (1994, p. 17) believe that “[t]he word ‘Islamic’ as applied to art, refers to those people who have grown and lived under rulers who professes the faith of Islam or in cultures and societies which have been strongly influenced by the modes of life and thought characteristic of Islam”. They state that:

“… ‘Islamic’, unlike ‘Christian’, refers not only to a faith but also to a whole culture, since- at least in theory – the separation of the realm of Caesar from that of God is not applicable to Islam. Also unlike Christianity, Islam did not develop first as the faith of a few, increasing the numbers of its adherents under the shadow of a huge state alien to it, slowly developing the intellectual and artistic features which were going to characterize it, and, after several centuries, blossoming into an empire and giving birth to an art as well as philosophy and a social doctrine” (Ettinghausen and Grabar 1994, p. 17).

Therefore, there is some differences; in addition, Bianca (2000, pp. 22-23) argues that Muslims adapted the aspects that matched their principles of requirements for privacy, e.g. the inward-looking courtyard, tortuous paths, roads and their width, while features like the city hall and an open theatre were shunned.

Furthermore, the religion of Islam and its distinctive character dominated the lifestyle and social structure which were shared and accepted by the whole community. This appeared clearly in the themes of art, architecture and the layout of urban space, which gave the inner structure of the architecture of the built environments its particularity. Bianca also highlights that the mosque embraced religious, social, and political activities and that led to dispensing with the need for other buildings or urban elements, such as a municipality, a city hall and a public theatre (Bianca 2000, pp. 9-30).

by the author of this study to reflect the geographical location, rather than using terms that reflect a specific religion, ethnicity or culture.

In terms of the designation of the name/term ‘Traditional Middle East Cities’ this study stands on the side of the thinker and prominent writer Dr Nawal El Saadawi (Al-Saadawi) who, in her lectures and interviews relating to this subject, raises the question

“Middle East to whom?”. She is against the terminologies of ‘Middle East’, ‘Far-East’

or ‘third world’¹⁴, that were introduced by colonial powers, conquerors of these regions whose naming referenced the location of their states. Furthermore, Al-Saadawi believes that we all live in one world; there are no first, second and third worlds (El Saadwai 2015, El Saadwai 2014 El Saadwai 2012). Hence, the title ‘Traditional Cities of South West Asia and North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula’ (i.e. Traditional Cities of the SWANAAP region) is used. Before identifying the knowledge gap of the city of Erbil, it is important to understand the concept of the city and its urban elements (tangible and intangible aspects). Following this, studies that have tackled the subject of change and persistence will be introduced. This will help to elaborate a detailed conceptual framework that supports an understanding of the changes in Erbil’s urban core, which is the main concern of this study.

“Cities are all the same, cities are all different”

Graham Vickers (2009)

The literature differs in the approaches used in defining the city ¹⁵ and its characteristics, with each definition having its own speciality. They agree, however, that the city¹⁶ is a combination of neutral urban elements, the difference being in the

14 “The original Worlds' partition was not based on economic criteria, but on a political one. The First World was composed by the NATO’s countries, the democratic and capitalistic ones; the Second World identified countries that have joined the Warsaw Pact, the communist and socialist block led by Soviet Union. The Third World included all the other countries that remained un–aligned with the two poles.

It consisted of the majority of the Southern Hemisphere, including the developing countries usually with a colonial past. Besides the obvious problems of a strict categorization of the World's nations, the principles of this system were no longer effective after the Soviet Union's falls. Then the approach was modified from an economic point of view and a Fourth World was added in order to describe countries which had not yet started their development” (Burrasca 2016).

15 Thomlinson (1969, p. 43) states that the first planned cities were initiated by the diffusion of inventions in Mesopotamia (Modern Iraq) about 2000 BCE. Other cities, such as those that emerged in the Nile Valley in Egypt, the Indus valley in West Pakistan, Huang in China, and Mexico, appeared later.

16 Initial definitions of cities are “human settlement[s] in which strangers are likely to meet” (Sennett, Richard, 1974, p. 39) and “...amalgams of buildings and people” (Kostaf 2009, p. 16).

hidden patterns which are represented by the social structures, plus other, prominent, factors that play a significant role in shaping cities and creating their variations.

Ibrahim (1982, p. 16), for instance, states that although all cities have the same original cells (form and space), their urban environments are different, as they depend on two main parts: cultural environment, which changes over time, and natural environment, which is permanent and remains almost exactly the same other than in times of natural catastrophes or events, such as war. Therefore, the urban fabric of cities grows and evolves between these two major aspects, the one forcing change, and the other almost stable. Hillier (1996, p. 42) defines the city as a large collection of structures connected by spaces. These structures form centres of social life where economic and cultural activities take place. Generally, the city consists of several urban environmental systems reflecting the way of life of a specific group of people that own their mental schemes and symbolic codes (Marshall 2009, p. 6; Bianca 2000, p. 12; Cohen 1999, p. 157; Al-Belouri 1997, p. 22; Rapaport 1984, p. 55). Any city¹⁷, therefore, establishes individuality through intangible attributes and the factors that helped to initiate them:

economic, socio-cultural, religious, environmental and political factors among others (Marshall 2009, p. 6; Cohen 1999, p. 157).

It can be said that a city is an urban phenomena associated with particularities of cultures, beliefs and events. It has certain unique tangible and intangible aspects which configure the form and space of the city and reflect its particularity. Consequently, various urban settings were produced and recognized as spatial arrangements reflecting the particular way of life in the city with its attached social, economic, religious, and technological aspects.

Mark Jefferson defines the city according to the density of population. He points out that 10.000 people per square mile indicates a city (Thomlinson 1969, p. 37). Weber (1974, p. 81) introduced characteristics and attributes that have become major criteria nowadays i.e. availability of peace, stability and dominance of political authority along with the presence of a law court and a stronghold. Weber adds two more key factors: the presence of one or more markets and a union or body of syndicated cooperation. Lang (2008, p. xix) defines the city as a mixture of form and space which evolves over time; its main characteristics are a combination of its beautiful and useful buildings, the nature of the landscape, and the pattern of its land usage.

17 The city is more than a mere physical structure. It is a living creature and contains human activities, meanings and values at both individual and collective levels (Al-Belouri 1997, p. 22).

Kinds of Cities in the SWANAAP Region

There are two types of cities in this region; ancient cities, and cities that were initiated after the coming of Islam¹⁸. The ancient cities, including some whose precise date of origin is unknown, faced many changes in their buildings¹⁹ and urban structures to suit the Islamic urban philosophy. There are two kinds of these ancient cities: the first kind is the Tell cities, such as Erbil, and Kirkuk which are divided into two parts: an upper city with a mound that has a citadel and a lower city with a lowland. The second kind is ancient cities with the flatland, such as Damascus. These Tell/tell cities have a long history and have similar characteristics; Erbil, Kirkuk and Aleppo, are considered to be among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and their foundation dates are probably close to each other. In particular, the citadel of Kirkuk and Erbil continued to embrace social, commercial, religious, and residential activities until the end of the 20^th century²⁰. Erbil’s citadel was only vacated when a conservation process began, consequent to the city being listed under the Iraqi tentative application as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While, the citadels of Aleppo²¹, Homs/Hims and Hama functioned as rulers’ residences and military garrisons. Despite the difference in the citadels’ function, Aleppo does have similar characteristics to the lower city, or rabidh, of Erbil; what gives Erbil citadel and its city specificity is that it is considered the oldest place in the world to have been both continuously inhabited and to have carried a similar name²² throughout history. Other kinds of cities are the ones that were initiated by the rulers’ order, working first as administrative bases or camps for their

18 Bianca (2000, pp. 9-10) highlights that the development of the sophisticated civilisation started with the Prophet Muhammad’s message and was obvious in the following two centuries. After that stage this culture continued to retain its shape from generation to generation, without any remarkable changes in lifestyle, until the 19th century; this perhaps caused the stagnation of the urban fabric. Later on, the industrial revolution, the colonial period and World War I, triggered major changes and developments in these cities, as they brought the modern life (Bianca 2000, pp. 9-10). In the modern period some of the traditional features of these ancient cities started to disappear and were replaced by a model that interacted with the evolution and inspired by the technology and lifestyle of a western environment.

19 These changes include the adding of mosques and other facilities or modifying churches into mosques.

20 In 1990 or 1991 the President of Iraq at that time, Saddam Hussain, ordered the demolition of the Kirkuk citadel as a way of punishing restive Kurds. However, some of the buildings survived when Abdul Raqib Yousef, a noted Kurdish historian and archaeologist, sent a direct message to Saddam Hussain explaining the historic importance of the Kirkuk citadel; a copy of this letter can be found in the appendix.

21In the case of Aleppo, and following the arrival of Islam, the citadel also housed a mosque, baths, shrines and palaces, although its citizens lived on the flat lands below it.

22 Aleppo has also carried a similar name throughout its history but Erbil is probably older than Aleppo.

armies. These cities were constructed according to existing design concepts²³; Gosling and Maitland (1984, p. 26) called them cities with ‘self-conscious design’, an example of this being Baghdad city in Iraq, which was founded by the Al-Mansur Caliphate from a sketch map that he drew. In general, decisions that related to the major aspects of the city, such as location, the Grand Mosque, and Dar Al-Imara (ruler’s palace), were in the hands of the ruler; Caliph, Emir, or Leader. The decisions determined the main paths of the city, which originated from the city centre towards its main gates.

These designed cities later became commercial and agricultural areas, growing naturally and extending beyond the city walls that previously confined them (figure 1.1). There are, however, other cities, such as Basra and Kufa in Iraq, that have an overlapping, regular and organic urban fabric and derived from the needs and desires of their inhabitants.

Figure 1.1: The Round City of Baghdad, Madinat Al-Salam (City of Peace)

The left: is the city between 767 CE and 912 CE as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, the round city with the canal system that surrounded the city and the Tigers River. The right: is the historical and modern Baghdad (till the end of Abbasid Empire where the settlements expansioned to outside the city wall, 1258 CE)

Source: Left: (wikiwand.com) credit to William Muir dates to 1883; right: map taken from Encyclopedia of Islam article ‘Baghdad’ by A.A. Duri (see: personal.umich.edu)

As the main concern of this study is Erbil city, which is an ancient tell city, the other historic tell cities²⁴ in the SWANAAP region that continue to be inhabited, such as Kirkuk, Mosul in Iraq and Homs/Hims, Hama, and Aleppo in Syria will be used in the upcoming chapters as evidence to shed the light on some aspects that support the

23 Nowadays most cities have two types, the old, which had natural growth, and the new (Gosling and Maitland 1984, p.26).

24 Mosul is one of the Tell cities as well its tells are almost demolished.

argument of the outline of Erbil in general and the city urban core in particular. A brief history of each of these tell cities is available in the Appendix -1.

The Essence of the City

“In every city there are individual personalities; every city possesses a personal soul formed of old traditions and living feelings as well as unresolved aspirations”

Aldo Rossi (1982)

From a generic perspective, Kubler (1970, p. vii) argues that no meaning can be carried without a form as every meaning needs a support, holder or vehicle. For example, speech is manifested in different metaphors, such as writing, while music is represented by notes and intervals. For architecture and sculpture the holders are solids and voids; specifically, in architecture, form and space are the channels that reflect the pattern of events that occur in the place where its particularity is shaped. Therefore, the essence of any place represents the relationship between two issues:

tangible/physical aspects and intangible/hidden aspects (Rifaiogl and Güçhan 2008, p.

1). These aspects give the city its own essence and make it different from other cities.

ICOMOS²⁵ defines the essence or the spirit of the place as the tangible aspects, i.e.

buildings, sites, landscape, routes and objects, and intangible aspects which include memories, narratives, written documents, values, festivals, and rituals.

Both the tangible and intangible aspects depend on each other, as some of the intangible aspects must rely on the tangible features to be visualised (Alkymakchy et al. 2012, p. 356). The relationship²⁶ among these aspects provides a settlement with its spatial individuality. The built environment is a mirror of its culture. Therefore, in two

Both the tangible and intangible aspects depend on each other, as some of the intangible aspects must rely on the tangible features to be visualised (Alkymakchy et al. 2012, p. 356). The relationship²⁶ among these aspects provides a settlement with its spatial individuality. The built environment is a mirror of its culture. Therefore, in two