PAUL WHEATLEY, The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands Seventh through the Tenth Centuries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Pp. 572.

Extract

The Places Where Men Pray Together is a monumental work of scholarship. This is the most complete study ever done of the urban-settlement pattern of North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Inner Asia in the period from the 7th to the 10th century. Basing his work on the 10th-century geographer al-Maqdisi, further informed by a vast array of sources, including the geographies of al-Istakhri and Ibn Hawqal, and with a full command of the scholarly literature, Paul Wheatley has given us the most comprehensive, profoundly detailed, and clearly articulated discussion of the physical location, historic settlement patterns, and institutions of Middle East Islamic cities. This work follows upon Wheatley's seminal work in Chinese history, The Pivot of the Four Quarters, which provided a new theory of the origin of Chinese cities as shrine centers. One can only stand in awe before Wheatley's extraordinary linguistic, historical, and cultural range. Sadly, Wheatley died before this work was published.