Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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autonomy to the residents, underlined the traditional urban processes. They comprise the
right of way, a neighbor's right to buy the adjoining homes, shufa'ah (preemption) and a
guarded neighbors' rights, including privacy. Once settlements were established, concepts
and beliefs based on Islam governed incremental changes. Muslim law was set and
expanded by jurists to guide individual cases of acquisition and expansion of new property.
This process has been commended by some to be the major reason behind the striking
similarity between Muslim settlements' forms.
Third, economic factors also played an important role. Islam limits the state power of
extracting income through taxes by limiting the zakah, alms, which amounts to 2.5% of
invested capital. Islam also dictates the aspects on which such sums can be allocated. In
many other civilizations and non-Islamic states, rulers enjoyed unlimited rights to enforce
taxes at the cost of burdening their subjects. In return, these fortunes were squandered on
the embellishment of their palaces and capitols. Under Islam, waqf, a private institution
devoted for charity, was encouraged. It helped sustain charitable functions and services for
the public.
Finally, the city under the Islamic system mirrored its culture. The dense form of the
city evolved under Muslim rule consistent with its ecology. Throughout there was a
practical reckoning with available materials and climate through the adaptation of its form,
structure and components in tune with topography, climate and the prevailing technology.
The town's center comprised a compressed spinal-cord quality of the bazaar, the centrality
of the Friday mosque (jami) and the educational institutions and hospices clustered about it.
This core was interwoven with a web of public, semi-private and private spaces moving
from the core of the bustling and noisy suq to the quarter, to the neighborhood (inhabited
by extended family and those affiliated with it) to the compound to the home. An outward
homogeneity resulted from pro-contextual organization of space and form that rendered
modesty of residential architecture due to the use of local material in harmony with the
natural setting, all surrounded by the wall, defining its limits. As Abdullah Schleifer
succintly wrote: "...the uses of space become more ingenious and more organically (rather
than abstractly) creative- on site design by rule of eye rather than off-site scale." 74
Islam retained prevailing social and cultural norms which did not contradict its
teachings yet influenced the internal organization of urban forms. Since its inception, the
social life in the traditional Islamic cities was organized primarily around the family, tribe,