Situational analysis as a method in in research on characteristics and components of Islamic city

Despite its simple appearance, the Islamic city is one of the most challenging concepts studied in scientific disciplines including architecture, urbanism and the history of art. Besides theories approving or rejecting this concept, much research has been devoted to the study of the nature of the Islamic city and similar concepts. The importance of this concept is due to the fact that the viewpoints presented about it have had a considerable role in any attempt for designing, planning, and organizing of cities based on Islamic culture in the contemporary period and the Islamic city has been considered as the key to the explanation of Islamic urbanism. Despite the consensus about the importance and urgency of planning and design coordinated with inhabitants principles, values and cultures, coherent methodologies missed. In this regard using qualitative methods combined with critical thoughts about their facilities and capabilities can provide activist methodological tools to expose and reenvision the characteristics of Islamic city and Islamic urbanism. Over past twenty years situational analysis had used in a range of fields including art and humanities. In this article, we describe possibilities for using situational analysis in Islamic urbanism and provide examples of situational mapping from a study focusing on characteristics and components of Islamic city. In this regard we used pertinent texts from Persian literature about Islamic city as data and mapped individual and collective elements/ actors, nonhuman actors and discursive constructions. Situational maps, social worlds/ arenas maps and positional maps illustrated. The results of the study have two main aspects. On one hand the results is about Islamic city. In this case, this study concludes that Islamic city concept in its current place as described and introduced mostly by western researchers cannot be useful for explaining the relationship between city and culture and Islamic values and consequently for the manifestation of Islamic urbanism in contemporary cities. On the other hand the results is about using situational analysis in Islamic urbanism. Because of its capabilities and features, situational analysis can shed some light in research about Islamic city and Islamic urbanism.