...first states, "One would be liar if one spoke all that one has heard." This statement reflects the capacious breadth of the late Professor Paul Wheatley's book, published posthumously, and points to the author's critical and judicious analysis of the evidence on Islamic cities of the first/seventh through fourth/tenth centuries. The study of the Islamic city has, of course, long been a subject of interest to scholars working in the field of medieval Islam. Wheatley has addressed a long-standing need in Islamic studies for an accomplished geographer and urbanist to subject the rich geographical and historical data of the Islamic past to critical analysis. Wheatley, who passed away before he could complete his editing of the book's seventeenth and last chapter, had the linguistic skills as well as the theoretical expertise to achieve the task at hand with skill and precision, just as he displayed these remarkable talents in his studies of urbanism elsewhere in Asia.

The book has three main goals. First, it stands as a critical study of the urban systems presented by the tenth-century geographer Shams al-Din Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad al-Maqdisi [al-Muqaddasi] (fl. 10th c.), a "pioneering urbanist" in Wheatley's view, whose classic work, Ahsan al-Taqdsim...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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