The Ulama and the Shape of the City

June 17, 2006

The Ulama, or learned people, are a group that I have always had a hard time getting my head around. Chapter 3 ("The Urban Society") of Ira Lapidus' book Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages has gone a long way toward clearing up the identity of this class of people for me.

First, who were these learned people?

The ulama were that part of the Muslim community learned in the literature, laws, and doctrines of Islam. They were judges, jurists, prayer-leaders, scholars, teachers, readers of the Koran, reciters of traditions, Sufis, functionaries of mosques, and so on. Their essential duty was to preserve the knowledge of the divine will, and to sustain the community as an Islamic community... [107]

Moreover, the ulama were not a distinct class, but a category of persons overlapping other classes and social divisions, permeating the whole of society. [108]

The important point is that they were by no means a single coherent group. One way to define "learned people" in America would be the group of people who have doctoral degrees or who teach in higher education. In medieval Islamic cities there would be some who were "learned" in this kind of official sense.. those who had studied with the best teachers and received diplomas (ijazaat), but these would be joined by a vast group of others who had won a level of community respect by different routes. In this way the ulama are somewhat closer to what people mean when they refer to the "cultural elite" (used in a derogatory sense). I think people imagine a group of people who control culturally important positions.. ranging from journalists to politicians to liberal university professors to pop singers.. all conspiring to uphold a version of the world. The ulama in medieval Islamic societies would be something like that, only without the hostile edge.

Lapidus provides some evidence supporting the idea that this cultural elite was not the butt of medieval talk radio, but actually defended by a substantial portion of the population:

Scattered but numerous episodes in the chronicles reveal the solidarity of the common people with the ulama. Renowned divines inspired deeply felt religious passions in the populace at large, but more to the point, mass demonstrations and fighting on behalf of their sheikhs and qadis exposed the depths of those loyalties. [113]

Earlier in this chapter Lapidus had discussed three other patterns of association in the medieval Islamic city: neighborhoods, trade groups, and fraternal associations. With the exception of neighborhoods (which could be organized according to regional origin, and often functioned in almost a tribal fashion) these cities were empty of public associations. Trade groups did not develop into the guilds one associates with medieval European cities. Nor did alternative fraternal organizations rise to a place of dominance.

It is from the vantage point of this vacuum of civic organization that Lapidus would have us understand the role of the ulama:

Moreover, what organized means there were for handling the community's affairs were informal circles and clienteles, and the schools of law built around the ulama. No special interests within the city were so well organized as to stand apart from these wider relationships or fail to be represented in them. Nor were there special agencies to deal with the affairs of the city as a whole. There were no municipalities, and as we have seen, no regular bureaucracy to deal with city-wide concerns. For these reasons the ulama had a unique social role to play... [114]

I have often wondered why Arabic historical accounts of cities so often take the form of endless brief biographical notices. I recently encountered an historian who wrote that one reason for these biographical collections was the demand of hadith collectors to know the character of those who passed down traditions.. and thus these basic biographies were collected into reference works. Another reason surely must be the basic conception of a city in terms of its ulama. When medieval Arabic historians came to imagine their city, they did so in terms of this web of the cultural elite..

This social structure not only influenced the written versions of medieval Islamic cities, but even their physical structure.. and this is where I found Lapidus particularly insightful:

But in the markets, in the public part of the city, amorphous form resulted from the absorption of physical features by the style of social life. All institutions, shops, mosques, schools, and administrative offices were thoroughly intermingled to accommodate the demand for easy access and constant change of activities, from trade to prayer to teaching and so on. Only in societies where functions and personnel are more clearly separated will there be a consequent differentiation of physical entities to accommodate the separate functions. Cities need boulevards when people must travel a great deal for their affairs. Factories and churches and homes and schools will be apart when life itself is compartmentalized. The Muslim city had the physical form of the bazaar because it was appropriate to the fluid pattern of social interchange and of daily living. [114]

That manages to hit on one of the main themes of this blog, namely, the interconnection between cognitive structures and physical structures. The way we think is the way we live. In this case, the undifferentiated system of social organization.. dominated by the vague class of ulama.. comes to shape the physical pattern of the city.

What does one end up with? A system which collapses many of these functions into a single space. That is exactly what is confusing about walking around and trying to imagine the life of a medieval structure.. First, what was it? It was a mosque, but also a mausoleum.. and a school, and a center for teaching the law.. and it was economically supported by a number of nearby shops whose revenue was dedicated to the mosque. The space becomes intertwined.. but that is because I keep wanting a church to be a church.. a school a school.. a market a market.. but the whole point of this system was that there was no such differentiation. Spaces were as hard to define as the ulama themselves.