Private Life and Public Face: Cultural Continuities in the Domestic Architecture of Isfahan

Abstract

Modern Middle Eastern cities, from Afghanistan to Morocco, have, in addition to an almost limitless variety of detail, some general characteristics in common. These common features include among many other things, the narrow, twisting, often dead-end alleys on which the houses in the older quarters are typically located. These houses are inward-oriented to a degree that contrasts markedly and in many ways with “western” urban dwellings. These alleys and houses are an integral part of a complex whole that also includes mosques, shrines, madrasahs, bathhouses and bazaars.Other general characteristics of modern Middle Eastern cities are the new wide streets for automotive traffic that form networks around the old quarters and often are cut through them as well. Visually, these new streets and the new buildings that accompany them often contrast so sharply with the old that many people are tempted to assume the existence of radically different cultural patterns among their respective inhabitants, radical differences that are isomorphic with the differences in street patterns and architecture.

Urban Studies in The Middle East

“…Reasons for migration have been the emphasis of several studies in Turkey (Suzuki, 1964;Sewell, 1966;Tavakalian, 1974). The maintenance of village habits and ties by migrants has been emphasized in the latter work as well as by Gulick (1969). In Tavakalian's study the significant finding was that the economically and psychologically best adjusted migrants are those who retain the greatest degree of rural and cultural attributes.…”

“…Also Karpat has a forthcoming book specifically on the gecekondu (1976) and there is a dissertation by Sewell (1964). Information on the bidonvilles of Baghdad has been provided in articles by Phillips (1959) and Gulick (1967a); Harrison (1967) has analyzed the distribution of bidonvilles in Tripoli, Libya; and the spontaneous hilal of Saudia Arabia are included in a dissertation by Shamekh (1975). Reasons for migration have been the emphasis of several studies in Turkey (Suzuki, 1964;Sewell, 1966;Tavakalian, 1974).…”

“…Considering the importance of kinship and family in the field of anthropology and sociology it is rather distressing to see the lack of such studies on urbanareas in the Middle East (although such material is included in many of the monographs and dissertations mentioned below). Gulick and Gulick (1974) have analyzed household compositions in Isfahan, Altorki (1973) has written on the elite families in urban Saudi Arabia, and Cronin (1975Cronin ( , 1976 is researching relations and family systems among urban elites in Qajar Iran. The recent excellent monograph by Prothro and Diab (1974) does include extensive analyses and comparisons from interviews in Amman, Damascus, Tripoli, and Beirut (besides two villages).…”

“…Very few monographs with a socio-political emphasis have been published on larger Middle Eastern cities -in fact, most of the examples that I place in this classification are on Lebanese cities (although aspects of other works, such as Abu-Lughod, 1971, could certainly be considered here). Gulick (1967b) conducted research in Tripoli in the early 1960's and he provides a statistical enumeration and overview of the city's ethnic and religious groups, governmental bodies, commercial enterprises, social and residential characteristics, and physical topography. A socio-economic survey of Beirut by Churchill (1954) results in statistical tables of household characteristics from approximately 2,000 interviews by the Economic Research Institute of AUB, but no interpretation or comments are included in the work.…”