Defining Cities and Non-Cities through Emic and Etic Perspectives: A Case Study from Israel/Palestine during Early Islam

Abstract

Differentiating urban places from rural is often obscure. This paper advances some clarification based on the analysis of settlements from the seventh to the eleventh centuries in Israel/ Palestine. In this case study, archaeo logical sites in central Israel are classified into types based on their finds, settlement types are identified through termino logy in texts from or about Palestine, and the results of the two analyses are compared. The main category for distinguishing one settlement type from another is the amount of services it provides, with the greatest range of services in cities. However, cities in this study are not big, not spatially central, and not very industrial; the only entity to answer such criteria is the metropolis. The paper thus highlights the importance of a contextual inquiry, a regional overview, and a bottom-up perspective.