- Email: [email protected]
The changing Middle Eastern city
222
REVIEWS
author was not writing in his mother tongue. The title is somewhat misleading, for it suggests a discussion of Christaller-like concepts and models; what is in fact given is a conventional narrative of the development of urban geography in general in Germany before 1933. I am moved to observe that this heritage is not “forgotten” at ali; I am aware of more than one graduate seminar in which these early developments are regularly discussed in some detail. It is precisely this awareness, in fact, that makes it possible for me to describe Miiller-Wille’s treatment as “conventional”. Indeed, he has little to say that was not stated with far greater clarity by Dickinson in 1948. None the less, deeply embedded in the pervasive verbosity, there is one valuable passage in which MiillerWille makes it clear that Gradmann not only recognized the importance of the distinction between local and long distance trade but also held that, for European cities at least, local trade took historical precedence (pp. 56-7). Gradmann would thus have stood in opposition to Pirenne and (without tracing all the connections) to Vance, though I personally do not doubt that the Pirenne-Vance principIe of the priority of long distance trade is appropriate for the New World. Miiller-Wille is quite silent with regard to these interesting implications for the comparative analysis of the evolution of urban systems. The paper by Thomas Tocalis on ‘Changing theoretical foundations of the gravity concept of human interaction’ takes up forty-one per cent of the length of the book. It is an exhaustive chronological review of literature on the gravity model, useful as a source of references but totally uncritical in its handling of the material. P&is after prtcis is presented with enervating monotony. There is not a sentence of critical evaluation in the entire fifty-eight pages. The final essay, by Donald Jones, explores the relevance of selected concepts from anthropology for the study of traditional (non-industrial) societies. More specifically, it is an attack on Karl Polanyi’s classification of markets into the three categories of reciprocity, redistribution and exchange. It is a successful attack, at times laboured but generally well written and cogently argued. What is odd is the fact that Polanyi’s classification is manifestly simplistic, so that one has some difficulty in swallowing Jones’s undocumented assertion that Polanyi’s scheme “has been accepted nearly as gospel by a large number of scholars” (p. 143). Perhaps anthropologists have been no less nai’ve than the geographers one meets when reading Mikesell’s account of sequent occupance. Taken as a whole, this volume cannot be regarded as a significant contribution to the literature. Remove Mikesell’s chapter (previously published elsewhere) and one is left with four essays of indifferent literary merit and negligible originality. York University, Toronto
JOHN U. MARSHALL
H. BLAKE and R. I. LAWLESS(Eds), The Chunging Middle Eastern City (London: Croom Helm, 1980. Pp. 273. g14.95)
G.
In recent years a number of works have appeared on city development within the context of a political, historical or area1 system. This volume on the Middle Eastern city may be added to the growing list. It appears at an opportune time when attention is focused on this part of the world; moreover, as the introduction states, “scholarly research in Middle East urban affairs has lagged behind both the growth of urban studies for other regions of the world and interest in other aspects of Middle East society”. Much of the book is concerned with the contemporary or future scene. Of the twelve chapters, nine are largely concerned with the urban situation over the last decade, in which analysis achieves an interesting juxtaposition between social, spatial and temporal themes: contemporary urban growth (J. I. Clarke), migration in space (A. M. Findlay), urban employment (J. S. Birks and C. A. Sinclair), socio-economic problems (D. W. Drakakis-Smith), ethnicity (T. H. Greenshields), urban planning perspectives (B. D. Clark), the small town (G. H. Blake), water problems (P. Beaumont) and the urban future (G. H. Blake and R. I. Lawless) are all examined in detail.
REVIEWS
223
The other three chapters deserve further consideration by historical geographers. J. M. Wagstaff explores the origin and evolution of towns from 4000 B.C. to A.D. 1900. Towns from the third millennium B.C. onwards are described with the aid of a model based on research in Mesopotamia and the principal characteristics of Early, Hellenistic, Late Antique and Islamic towns are discussed. Greek settlements with their polis, ugora and acropolis gradually invaded the Middle East from the tenth to eighth centuries B.C. and were later used by Roman emperors for controlling their various provinces. Common morphological features of an Hellenistic town model are outlined and certain later modifications noted. Islamic towns are analysed in two parts, before and after A.D. 1500. Religious and military reasons are forwarded for urban living by Muslims, typical early settlements are discussed and an idealized spatial model presented. Comments on development after A.D. 1500 are based on case examples from Anatolia, Iran, Egypt and Iraq. A discussion of the advent of planned nineteenth-century suburbs in larger Middle Eastern towns concludes the chapter. A chapter on the evolution of retailing patterns, by V. F. Costello, is in part of interest to historical geographers, for the author looks at the traditional pattern of retailing in the Middle Eastern city and its transition to the contemporary urban milieu. Commercial and political influences on urban life are traced, together with the rise of such historic cities as Fes, Cairo, Damascus and Mashhad. There is a discussion of the traditional position of bazaars in town life and of the importance of guilds and small artisan workshops, the latter suffering greatly from European imports of factory goods after the eighteenth century. A case for conservation or redevelopment of historic cities is argued in a chapter by R. I. Lawless. The author discusses the profound influence of industrialization on the historic city in the Middle East, and the dramatic economic and social changes which this brought about to the traditional urban fabric of society. The growth of separate commercial centres outside the historic core, as well as modern factories and foreign manufactured goods, have taken their toll on many small artisan workshops surrounding the bazaars, and overall production patterns have changed. Possibilities for conservation and “urban retrieval” are outlined and greater planning of historic environments seems to be urgently needed. Case studies are made of Tunis, Jerusalem and Isfahan in an attempt to illustrate problems associated with planning the past. In conclusion, it appears that there is great demand for a new and positive approach to conservation planning for the historic Middle Eastern city, where new buildings must be designed to merge more comfortably into existing historic structures. The book is admirably illustrated throughout with maps, tables and photographs, although some of the maps have lost their sharpness of definition in the reduction process. This volume should provide a valuable reference work for Middle East specialists, while certain chapters give deeper insights for urban historical geographers who wish to extend their comparative knowledge of another region. University College and School of SIavonic and East European Studies, London University
FRANK CARTER
W. C. BRICE (Ed.), The Environmental History of the Near and Middle East Since the Last Ice Age (London: Academic Press, 1978. Pp. xx + 384. g25.00) This volume covers the general realm of Late Pleistocene environmental changes in a region extending from Arabia in the south to the central U.S.S.R. in the north, and from Greece in the west to Pakistan in the east. Throughout, the emphasis is on evidence provided by the natural sciences, and the editor eschews any attempt to integrate the findings with the discoveries and interpretations of classical archaeology. The work is divided into four main parts. Following a general introduction, these consist of studies in
REVIEWS
author was not writing in his mother tongue. The title is somewhat misleading, for it suggests a discussion of Christaller-like concepts and models; what is in fact given is a conventional narrative of the development of urban geography in general in Germany before 1933. I am moved to observe that this heritage is not “forgotten” at ali; I am aware of more than one graduate seminar in which these early developments are regularly discussed in some detail. It is precisely this awareness, in fact, that makes it possible for me to describe Miiller-Wille’s treatment as “conventional”. Indeed, he has little to say that was not stated with far greater clarity by Dickinson in 1948. None the less, deeply embedded in the pervasive verbosity, there is one valuable passage in which MiillerWille makes it clear that Gradmann not only recognized the importance of the distinction between local and long distance trade but also held that, for European cities at least, local trade took historical precedence (pp. 56-7). Gradmann would thus have stood in opposition to Pirenne and (without tracing all the connections) to Vance, though I personally do not doubt that the Pirenne-Vance principIe of the priority of long distance trade is appropriate for the New World. Miiller-Wille is quite silent with regard to these interesting implications for the comparative analysis of the evolution of urban systems. The paper by Thomas Tocalis on ‘Changing theoretical foundations of the gravity concept of human interaction’ takes up forty-one per cent of the length of the book. It is an exhaustive chronological review of literature on the gravity model, useful as a source of references but totally uncritical in its handling of the material. P&is after prtcis is presented with enervating monotony. There is not a sentence of critical evaluation in the entire fifty-eight pages. The final essay, by Donald Jones, explores the relevance of selected concepts from anthropology for the study of traditional (non-industrial) societies. More specifically, it is an attack on Karl Polanyi’s classification of markets into the three categories of reciprocity, redistribution and exchange. It is a successful attack, at times laboured but generally well written and cogently argued. What is odd is the fact that Polanyi’s classification is manifestly simplistic, so that one has some difficulty in swallowing Jones’s undocumented assertion that Polanyi’s scheme “has been accepted nearly as gospel by a large number of scholars” (p. 143). Perhaps anthropologists have been no less nai’ve than the geographers one meets when reading Mikesell’s account of sequent occupance. Taken as a whole, this volume cannot be regarded as a significant contribution to the literature. Remove Mikesell’s chapter (previously published elsewhere) and one is left with four essays of indifferent literary merit and negligible originality. York University, Toronto
JOHN U. MARSHALL
H. BLAKE and R. I. LAWLESS(Eds), The Chunging Middle Eastern City (London: Croom Helm, 1980. Pp. 273. g14.95)
G.
In recent years a number of works have appeared on city development within the context of a political, historical or area1 system. This volume on the Middle Eastern city may be added to the growing list. It appears at an opportune time when attention is focused on this part of the world; moreover, as the introduction states, “scholarly research in Middle East urban affairs has lagged behind both the growth of urban studies for other regions of the world and interest in other aspects of Middle East society”. Much of the book is concerned with the contemporary or future scene. Of the twelve chapters, nine are largely concerned with the urban situation over the last decade, in which analysis achieves an interesting juxtaposition between social, spatial and temporal themes: contemporary urban growth (J. I. Clarke), migration in space (A. M. Findlay), urban employment (J. S. Birks and C. A. Sinclair), socio-economic problems (D. W. Drakakis-Smith), ethnicity (T. H. Greenshields), urban planning perspectives (B. D. Clark), the small town (G. H. Blake), water problems (P. Beaumont) and the urban future (G. H. Blake and R. I. Lawless) are all examined in detail.
REVIEWS
223
The other three chapters deserve further consideration by historical geographers. J. M. Wagstaff explores the origin and evolution of towns from 4000 B.C. to A.D. 1900. Towns from the third millennium B.C. onwards are described with the aid of a model based on research in Mesopotamia and the principal characteristics of Early, Hellenistic, Late Antique and Islamic towns are discussed. Greek settlements with their polis, ugora and acropolis gradually invaded the Middle East from the tenth to eighth centuries B.C. and were later used by Roman emperors for controlling their various provinces. Common morphological features of an Hellenistic town model are outlined and certain later modifications noted. Islamic towns are analysed in two parts, before and after A.D. 1500. Religious and military reasons are forwarded for urban living by Muslims, typical early settlements are discussed and an idealized spatial model presented. Comments on development after A.D. 1500 are based on case examples from Anatolia, Iran, Egypt and Iraq. A discussion of the advent of planned nineteenth-century suburbs in larger Middle Eastern towns concludes the chapter. A chapter on the evolution of retailing patterns, by V. F. Costello, is in part of interest to historical geographers, for the author looks at the traditional pattern of retailing in the Middle Eastern city and its transition to the contemporary urban milieu. Commercial and political influences on urban life are traced, together with the rise of such historic cities as Fes, Cairo, Damascus and Mashhad. There is a discussion of the traditional position of bazaars in town life and of the importance of guilds and small artisan workshops, the latter suffering greatly from European imports of factory goods after the eighteenth century. A case for conservation or redevelopment of historic cities is argued in a chapter by R. I. Lawless. The author discusses the profound influence of industrialization on the historic city in the Middle East, and the dramatic economic and social changes which this brought about to the traditional urban fabric of society. The growth of separate commercial centres outside the historic core, as well as modern factories and foreign manufactured goods, have taken their toll on many small artisan workshops surrounding the bazaars, and overall production patterns have changed. Possibilities for conservation and “urban retrieval” are outlined and greater planning of historic environments seems to be urgently needed. Case studies are made of Tunis, Jerusalem and Isfahan in an attempt to illustrate problems associated with planning the past. In conclusion, it appears that there is great demand for a new and positive approach to conservation planning for the historic Middle Eastern city, where new buildings must be designed to merge more comfortably into existing historic structures. The book is admirably illustrated throughout with maps, tables and photographs, although some of the maps have lost their sharpness of definition in the reduction process. This volume should provide a valuable reference work for Middle East specialists, while certain chapters give deeper insights for urban historical geographers who wish to extend their comparative knowledge of another region. University College and School of SIavonic and East European Studies, London University
FRANK CARTER
W. C. BRICE (Ed.), The Environmental History of the Near and Middle East Since the Last Ice Age (London: Academic Press, 1978. Pp. xx + 384. g25.00) This volume covers the general realm of Late Pleistocene environmental changes in a region extending from Arabia in the south to the central U.S.S.R. in the north, and from Greece in the west to Pakistan in the east. Throughout, the emphasis is on evidence provided by the natural sciences, and the editor eschews any attempt to integrate the findings with the discoveries and interpretations of classical archaeology. The work is divided into four main parts. Following a general introduction, these consist of studies in