Space and Muslim Urban Life: at the Limits of the Labyrinth Of
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SPACE AND MUSLIM URBAN LIFE This book develops academic understanding of Muslim urban space by pursuing the structural logic of the premodern Arab-Muslim city, or medina. With particular reference to The Book of Walls, an historical discourse of Islamic law whose primary subject is the wall, the book determines the mean- ing of a wall and then uses it to analyze the labyrinthine space of Fez. One of a growing number of studies to address space as a category of critical analysis, the book makes the following contributions to scholarship. Methodologically, it breaks with the tradition of viewing Islamic architec- ture as a well-defined object observed by a specialist at an aesthetically directed distance; rather, it inhabits the logic of this architecture by rethink- ing it discursively from within the culture that produced it. Hermeneutically, it sheds new light on one of North Africa’s oldest medinas, and thereby illuminates a type of environment still common to much of the Arab-Muslim world. Empirically, it brings to the attention of mainstream scholarship a legal discourse and aesthetic that contributed to the form and longevity of this type of environment; and it exposes a preoccupation with walls and other limits in premodern urban Arab-Muslim culture, and a mythic para- digm informing the foundation narratives of a number of historic medinas. Presenting a fresh perspective for the understanding of Muslim urban society and thought, this innovative study will be of interest to students and researchers of Islamic studies, architecture, and sociology. Simon O’Meara is Assistant Professor of History of Art at the American University of Kuwait. He researches the sociological dimensions of Islamic art and architecture, with a regional focus on the art and architecture of North Africa. CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST Series Editor Ian R. Netton University of Leeds This series studies the Middle East through the twin foci of its diverse cultures and civilisations. Comprising original monographs as well as scholarly surveys, it covers topics in the fields of Middle Eastern literature, archaeology, law, history, philosophy, science, folklore, art, archi- tecture and language. While there is a plurality of views, the series presents serious scholarship in a lucid and stimulating fashion. 1. Arabic Literature – An Overview Pierre Cachia 2. Modern Arab Historiography Historical Discourse and the Nation-State Youssef Choueiri 3. The Philosophical Poetics of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes The Aristotelian Reception Salim Kemal 4. The Epistemology of Ibn Khaldun Zaid Ahmad 5. The Hanbali School of Law and Ibn Taymiyyah Conflict or Concilation Abdul Hakim I Al-Matroudi 6. Arabic Rhetoric A Pragmatic Analysis Hussein Abdul-Raof 7. Arab Representations of the Occident East-West Encounters in Arabic Fiction Rasheed El-Enany 8. God and Humans in Islamic thought Abd al-Jabbar, Ibn Scna and al-Ghazalc Maha Elkaisy-Friemuth 9. Original Islam Malik and the madhhab of Madina Yasin Dutton 10. Al-Ghaz1l2 and the Qur9an One Book, Many Meanings Martin Whittingham 11. The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam Marion Holmes Katz 12. Space and Muslim Urban Life At the Limits of the Labyrinth of Fez Simon O’Meara SPACE AND MUSLIM URBAN LIFE At the Limits of the Labyrinth of Fez Simon O’Meara First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2007 Simon O’Meara All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data O’Meara, Simon. Space and Muslim urban life : at the limits of the labyrinth of Fez / Simon O’Meara. p. cm. — (Culture and civilization in the Middle East ; 12) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Walls—Morocco—Fès. 2. Space (Architecture)—Morocco—Fès. 3. Islamic cities and towns—Morocco. 4. Building laws (Islamic law) I. Title. NA9053.W3O44 2007 721′.2096434—dc22 2006039503 ISBN 0–203–94707–X Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-38612-8 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-94707-X (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-38612-8 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-94707-4 (ebk) A World it is to see, how large, how populous, how well-fortified and walled this citie is. Leo Africanus, “Of Fez the Principall Citie of all Barbarie” CONTENTS List of Illustrations viii Preface & Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1 Premodern Fez 6 2 Social and Religious Dimensions of Walls 19 3 Legal Dimensions of Walls: The Book of Walls 29 4 The Juridic Basis of The Book of Walls 39 5 Shame and the Significance of Walls 49 6 Zef/Fez 57 Conclusion 68 Appendix: A Representative Sample of Cases and Case Titles from The Book of Walls 72 Glossary 80 Notes 82 Bibliography 123 Index 146 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Plates 1. Aerial view of Fez medina: neighborhoods Oued Chorfa to Moulay Idris. (Courtesy Hachette Photos Presse, Paris © Georg Gerster / Rapho) 2. Fez medina: neighborhood Zerbatana 3. Fez medina: neighborhood Douh 4. Fez medina: neighborhood Oued Sowafine 5. Fez medina: neighborhood Ain Azliten 6. Fez medina: neighborhood Rahbat Zebib 7. Fez medina: neighborhood Oued Rachacha 8. Fez medina: neighborhood Qalqaline 9. Fez medina: neighborhood Gezira 10. Fez medina: neighborhood Guerniz 11. Fez medina: neighborhood Sidi Al-Aouad 12. Fez medina: neighborhood Keddan 13. Fez medina: neighborhood Zekak Arouman 14. Fez medina: neighborhood Laayoun 15. Fez medina: neighborhood Qouas 16. Fez medina: neighborhood Qantrat Bourous 17. Fez medina: neighborhood Lemtiyine 18. Fez medina: neighborhood Ain Azliten 19. Fez medina: interior of the Al-Qarawiyycn mosque Figures 1. Map of Marinid Fez. (After Roger Le Tourneau, Fez in the Age of the Marinides, trans. Besse Alberta Clement [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961] © 1961 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Publishing Division of the University) 6 2. Map of Idrisid Fez. (After Evariste Lévi-Provençal, La fondation de Fès [Paris: Larose, 1939]) 8 viii PREFACE & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “Space reaches from us and construes the world,” wrote the poet Rilke. This book develops understanding of the complexity and varieties of space by analyzing the construction of one distinctive type of world, the premodern Arab-Muslim city, or medina, specifically, Fez, Morocco. Focusing on the structural element that defines so much of a medina for this period, namely, the wall, or limit, the book uses religious, legal, and literary sources to interpret this element and investigate the architectural space of Morocco’s all but inscrutable city. Revealed in the analysis are policies and ideologies that underpinned the longevity and relative ubiquity of this type of urban environment, and the extent to which a protective concept of shame informed its space. In addition to forming part of a small but growing number of North African and Middle Eastern studies that address space as a category of critical analysis, the book’s original contribution to scholarship is threefold. Methodologically, it breaks with the tradition of viewing Islamic architec- ture as a static, clearly defined object observed by a specialist at an aesth- etically directed distance; instead, it inhabits the logic of this architecture by rethinking it discursively from within the culture that produced it. Hermeneutically, it sheds new light on one of North Africa’s oldest medinas, thereby illuminating a type of environment still common to much of the Arab-Muslim world. Empirically, it brings to the attention of mainstream scholarship a legal discourse and aesthetic that contributed to the form and longevity of this type of environment; it identifies a preoccupation with walls and their like in medieval and premodern urban Arab-Muslim culture; and it exposes a mythic paradigm informing the foundation narratives of a number of historic medinas. In writing the book, my aim was not just to help render a particular type of space increasingly accountable to academic thought and to try to reveal something fundamental about the medina environment as a whole, as a world, but also to provoke the following realization. That the walls which still today define so many historic Arab-Muslim medinas are more than just background bricks and mortar, but once signified a protective notion of ix PREFACE & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS shame and commonly symbolized a politically, juridically, and religiously desired form of gendered urban society; a society which walls helped coerce into existence.1 The book began life as a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Professor Ian Netton at the University of Leeds, funded by an A.H.R.B. studentship. In that form, it also benefited from the input of a number of additional people, most notably Dr. Alex Metcalfe and Professors Dale Eickelman and Kevin Reinhart. To them I extend once more my heartfelt thanks. As a manuscript revised for publication, the book has been much improved by the suggestions and corrections of Mr. Daoud Casewit and Professor Lynn Higgins. To both readers I am profoundly grateful; that I have not always followed their counsel reflects only upon me, and any errors are my own. Other people who have contributed to the completion of the book are too many to list, sufficiently long has the project been from its inception, but the following individuals and institutions must be singled out for mention, so important has their input been: my current employers, the American University of Kuwait, who awarded a grant to cover the copy- right fees; Dr.