When during the crusades (1095-1291), the Western Christians came in contact with the Muslim East, Erbstosser says, the size and structure of Muslim cities must have been impressive for such crusaders.[1] At the beginning of the 11^th century, Tripoli  in today’s Syria , had 80,000 inhabitants and its fortifications enclosed an area of about 12,000 hectares. Not only did it possess a series of palaces, but its five and six storey buildings were also an impressive sight.[2] The city also had centralised water supply systems, which were either in the form of cisterns with pipes leading to the houses of the wealthy citizens at least, or, in individual cases, consisting of an integrated mains supply system for the entire city.[3] The same can be said for other cities, where also street lighting had been common in their centres since the 10^th century, vegetable oil being used as fuel in Syria, for example.[4] Public baths, with strict male and female segregation and sometimes of considerable artistic merit, were just as familiar a part of the urban scene as the great hospitals, libraries and schools.[5] The streets of Muslim cities were also paved, and many were actual mosaics of different coloured stones, often shaded with canopies stretching between the roofs of the buildings to give shelter from sun and rain.[6]

It was, thus, a new and alien world with advanced economic and cultural standards, that confronted the crusaders.[7] Indeed, the contrast between East and West as far as urbanisation goes could not be sharper. In medieval times, whilst Western Christendom was formed of a society primarily agrarian, feudal, and monastic, the strength of Islam was in its great cities, wealthy courts, and long lines of communication.[8] In Europe, the cities of antiquity had disappeared due to economic crises, (5^th century) invasions and brigandage; the town was now merely a cramped castrum for defence and refuge; the period was marked by the triumph of the large estate and of rural economy ‘Barbarisation and ruralisation having spread over almost the whole of the Western World,’ says Lombard.[9] Which contrasts sharply with Islamic Cordova, a city of fountains; baths, schools, and much else, its thoroughfares, for a distance of miles, brilliantly illuminated, substantially paved, kept in excellent repair, regularly patrolled by guardians of the peace.[10] In Paris there were no pavements until the 13^th century; in London none until the 14^th; the streets of both capitals were often impassable, and it was only at the close of the reign of Charles II (17^th century), that even a defective system of street lighting was adopted in London.[11] And the contrast was even greater, when considering that a city such as Baghdad  at the end of the 9^th century had a population exceeding one million people, whilst even in the 13^th century, Lombard insists, we are struck by the difference with Western Christendom; cities in Italy, or Flanders, with population not exceeding thirty or forty thousand people.[12] In 1700, London, the most populous city of the Christian West, was only half as large as Cordova was in 900, when Almeria and Seville  had ‘each as numerous a population as the capital of the British Empire eight hundred years afterwards.’[13] It was only in the 14^th century that Paris, the largest city in the Christian West, reached three hundred thousand inhabitants.[14]

It is not just this contrast which is startling, especially when one considers today’s situation, it is more astounding that the early environment of Islam was the sands and tents of Arabia . Most remarkable of all, though, is the fact that, whilst Western medieval contemporaries, as just noted, were amazed at the superiority of the Islamic urban setting, just as the medieval Western scholars were amazed at Islamic learning, modern Western ‘scholars,’ in general, in their comments and writing on Muslim cities, turn everything upside down, and instead, deride the whole Islamic history of urbanism. This is one of the points of focus in this chapter. Other points will deal with the remarkable integration of early Islamic cities, including facilities and services, which surely anticipated those prevalent in modern cities of the advanced world today, and a management of urban services which today’s Islamic cities will be at great pain to match.