Rejecting the Theory of Islamic City as a Form

Numerous, various, and sometimes conflicting definitions of Islamic city by Iranian and non-Iranian researchers have resulted in confusion about its concept as far as physical views are concerned. The challenge arises from the combination of two complex and wide-ranging categories: ‘city’ and ‘Islam.’  It is not easy to establish a connection between these two broad multi-layered (from surface to internal layers) concepts since it requires a deep theoretical and practical foundation.

This paper aims to examine the concept of city in authentic religious texts. The best source which helps to understand the truth of the Islamic city and its meaning is the Quran.

This research draws on an exegetical-analytic method. About the Quran as the main source of the research, it deploys an exegetical-interpretive method, and for this purpose, we have relied on the well-known Quranic exegesis, al-Mīzān. Moreover, to compare the Islamic theory of city and that of Orientalists about an Islamic city, the advantage is taken of the analytic-comparative method.

Given the results of this Quranic research, we conclude that the concept of an Islamic city goes beyond forms and physical bodies, amounting to a cultural (doctrinal-behavioral) aspect. The theory of Quranic city highlights three main ingredients of the conceptual structure of a city—that is, people, law, and urban government—and stands against the predominant physical approach in mainstream research. The Quranic utopia is an axiological-normative concept constituted by human relations. In this Islamic-Quranic utopia, a city consists of a combination of one’s relation with God, oneself, others, and nature in terms of different political, economic, cultural, and physical systems.