Cities, Ribāṭs and Other Settlement Types in Palestine from the Seventh to the Early Thirteenth Century: An Exercise in Terminology. Issue 3 (1st September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Nol, Hagit
• Is Part Of: Al-Masāq. Volume 32:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 243
• Page End: 274
• Publication Date: 2020-09-01
• Subjects: Medieval terminology -- madīna -- Early Islamic Palestine -- Big Data -- Emic approach; Civilization, Islamic -- Periodicals; Islamic Empire -- Periodicals; Mediterranean Region -- Civilization -- Periodicals; Electronic journals; 909.04927
• DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2019.1692555
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-3110

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Different societies have various definitions and names for their units of residence, such as "cities" or "villages". This article examines the categories people had for settlements in Palestine from the seventh to the thirteenth century. A rich corpus of textual sources is used, comprising chronicles, geographies, letters and epigraphy, in Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. The article presents a coherent set of five contemporary terms up to the eleventh century, including city (madīna ), town ( qarya ), village ( kafr or ḍayʿa ), fortress ( ḥiṣn ) and monastery ( dayr ), and introduces the changes in that terminology that occurred in the twelfth–thirteenth centuries. The results of this analysis help to reconstruct – through texts alone – the relations between neighbouring places and changes in these regional systems over time. The article discusses the meaning of these terms, as well as ribāṭ and metropolis (e.g. qaṣaba ), and calls for a more refined interpretation of these terms in modern research.