After the successive waves of conquest by the Muslims, the Islamic Empire’s borders at its height grew to encompass territories as far West as Spain and Portugal, to India and China in the East, and from central Asia in the North, to Arabia in the South. The levied taxes upon the conquered populations generated insurmountable revenue for the Islamic empire’s treasury.

The spread of Islam in these territories established a new mode of urban planning. The majority of urban towns and cities beginning west in Muslim Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia and reaching east in the Indian subcontinent and ending in the Muslim towns established in China had the same core elements of the Islamic city. Ibn Battuta, when he visited the Muslim quarter of a Chinese town, observed that its market was arranged exactly as in the towns of the dar al-Islam (abode of Islam). ¹ The souq was an essential enterprise to the socioeconomic constitution of any Islamic city.

The Islamic Empire in the Middle East was in a strategic location that controlled most of the world’s important land and maritime trading routes, effectively facilitating intercontinental commerce. The Islamic Empire acted as a two-way channel streamlining goods and merchandise from India, China, Southeast Asia, and East Africa to Europe, and vice versa. The favorable geographical position of the Islamic lands made the Islamic heartlands wealthy and prosperous, prompting the inundation of luxurious goods, spices, and textiles from Europe and the East into the hands of Muslim court elites and common citizens.

Islamic cities like Alexandria, Gaza, Damascus, Baghdad, Rayy, Bukhara, Samarkand, Mecca, and Aden were prominent trade and port cities that coalesced along the Silk Road. The Arab and Muslim rulers established grandiose urban metropolises with proper urban planning, facilities, and amenities. One of the most vital establishments in any Islamic city at the center of economic life was the public market (Ara. souq, Per. Bazaar).

History of the souq in the medieval Arab world

The souq or Market is an Arabic word that is a loan from the Aramaic “šūqā” (“street, market”), itself a loanword from the Akkadian “sūqu” (“street”). The souq was a large-scale communal market that stretched far and wide across the city and catered to the residents’ everyday needs.

Historians debate the origin of the souq, whether it derived from ancient Roman and Greek models or was a natural extension of the deep-rooted generational knowledge in matters of commerce from pre-Islamic times that was later translated into much more developed financial institutions and structures after Islam was revealed, or maybe a combination of both.

This expertise has stemmed from the Arab’s long history of engaging in local and regional trade for millennia given the geographical location of the peninsula on the incense road which was a destination for caravans coming from every corner of the world, converging the land routes connecting the Mediterranean world and Europe to Africa and the East and vice versa. The souq is merely a sophisticated manifestation of the Arab’s profound business intuition that they’ve cultivated over centuries, even millennia, and also displays their cemented economic structures founded since ancient times.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, Arabs had several temporary markets that were held in specific areas at certain times of the year. Following these markets, Arabs were motivated to travel from one area to the other. They also went beyond Arabia to bazaars in Iraq, Syria, and Ethiopia. Among these bazaars, Okaz was the most prominent due to its role in political, cultural, and social affairs, and its influence on Arabic poetry.

Okaz was located near a temple, in a big field southeast of Mecca. Its proximity to Mecca made this suq an important gathering and shopping place, especially for Hajj pilgrims. After the advent of Islam and the rising power of the Muslims, new urban centers such as Basra, Kufa, Baghdad, and Qayrawan were created. The suq was designed as a permanent part of a city—no longer the seasonal or temporary market that was typical in Arabia.²

The establishment of the Islamic souq began in the early days of Islam when the Prophet of Islam built a Souq in Medina after the Hijra, close to the jami’ (the Friday mosque). The souq in the early Islamic cities had a primitive layout made of humble booths or kiosks in a large open space, sometimes shaded with fabrics and umbrellas, surrounding the outer perimeters of the central mosque. It is only later under the Umayyad Caliphate that the enclosed and covered shops we see in most souqs today did they began to appear.

 

To understand the intricate interplay of the souq within the functions of other establishments in the medieval Islamic city, we have to understand what a Medieval Islamic city comprised. Most Islamic cities more or less had four main functions that are physically manifested in: (1) the governmental authority, represented by the palace or the citadel; (2) the religious and intellectual life, represented by mosques and madāris; (3) the economic exchange that took place in the souks, qīṣāriyyas, and caravansarais (4) and the residential neighborhoods, occupied by the urban population.” ³ There were other key elements to the socioeconomic feature of the city, such as the public bathhouses (hammam) and the main square (maydan).

There were two kinds of souqs: permanent and temporary. The permanent markets operated daily, all year round, usually placed within the city walls, close to the central mosque in the city center, with designated routes, and provided essential services and goods to the occupying population. In contrast, the temporary markets were seasonal and peripatetic, erected outside the city walls, and served travelers who came during pilgrimage seasons, and itinerant visitors who were unfamiliar with the city’s directions.

Sometimes they were erected on occasions of special celebrations and festivals and were extended for the duration of these celebrations and later dismantled. There were markets designed to serve the army during warfare and military campaigns, and they were selling the necessary armaments, uniforms, and equipment.

How were the souqs erected, supervised, and maintained

The Souq: professions, their divisions, and supervision

The medieval Islamic Souq was a sophisticated enterprise that was highly organized and self-sufficient. The market was divided into different trades (sina’aat) and crafts (hiraf) essential to sustain an urban population. The retailers, shopkeepers, middlemen, and even peddlers of the same profession were congregated in the same lane or quarter for convenience’s sake, usually marked by bearing the name of the trade itself- i.e souq ash-shammaen (the candles market) and souq al-anbareen (ambergris souq), souq Al-halaweiyean (confectioner’s souq), and souq as-sanadiqeen (the chests souq) for selling wooden chests, boxes, and trunks for storage.

Describing the souqs of Baghdad, al-Yaqubi observed that for the traders of each specific good or service, there were defined lanes and that no group or trade was mixed with any other nor was a category being sold with another category. He also noticed that the crafts within the market area were kept separate from each other, with each type of craft having its own lane. ⁴

If we examine Medieval market inspection manuals (hisba) written in different Arabo-Islamic cities, one would marvel at the specialization level of each craft and its subdivisions. According to al-shirazi’s hisba manual, he recounts supervising well over 36 professions and sub-professions selling various foodstuffs and their cooking, textile work, apothecaries and pharmacists, doctors, veterinarians, oculists, bone casters, surgeons, cobblers, goldsmiths, jewelers, cashiers, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, ironmongers, potters, ceramic sellers, glassware sellers, wood sellers, sawdust sellers, and carpenters, builders, gypsum craftsmen and brick makers, slave merchants, real estate agents, and beasts of burden brokers, bathhouse supervisors, cuppers and blood-letters, boy and girls’ tutors, and supervision over non-muslims (collecting taxes and moral conducts).

For example, souqs specializing in food had different shops selling fruits, vegetables, pulses, grains, meats, poultry, seafood, and dairy that people would buy for their consumption. Within the food souqs, public market cooks were assigned to stalls tasked with cooking various meals for people who would’ve purchased the ingredients from the market beforehand, or the meals were prepared fresh inside the stalls and sold to the masses. Sometimes the food was sent for order and delivered as takeout to residences and homes, or consumed right away at eateries and restaurants within the market.

Average-income households and poor folks didn’t cook in their houses due to limitations of space and safety precautions. In contrast, the affluent and elite had private kitchens built in their residences with proper chefs and personnel handling the food.

Each market cook was designated to cook a specific meal item or a dish that was either savory or sweet. They ranged from bread bakers, meat roasters, fish cooks and fryers, sausage cooks, and porridge (Hareesa) cooks, to confectioners, doughnut (Zalabiyeh) fryers, sweet beverage sellers, and juicers. There were ancillary food items that were allotted a separate workshop, like millers (flour grinders), spice sellers, vinegar, sugar, salt sellers, ghee, and oil sellers.

 

The textile industry, like the food industry, was equally as specialized due to its prominence as one, if not the most lucrative, commercial industry for Medieval people. The handling of textiles in their raw and unfinished forms required multiple processes, with each process having a specific seller/dealer such as the spinner (ghazzal), weaver (ha’ik), dyer (sabbagh), linen workers (kattan), and cotton fluffer (naddaf) and comber (qattan) until a finished piece of fabric is made.

The finished fabrics are sold as raw or ready-to-wear clothing (dress, pants, robe, etc). Garment-making professionals included the tailor (khayyat), hemming and mending professional (rafaa’), embroiderer (tarraz), pattern professional (raqqam), not to mention clothiers (bazzaz), silk merchants (Harairriean), and cap makers (Al-qalanisean). The process of washing fabrics and clothing was similarly divided into different domains like the fuller (qassar), launderer (ghassal), and finally, the starcher (nasha’), which prepares the garment for ironing, and batting professional (daqqaq)–the word daq meaning to beat or pound. A separate market (souq Al-abbareen) sold all the accompanying implements needed for sewing, from scissors, threads, and different types and sizes of sewing needles.

Also, these trades and professions were divided according to their respectability in terms of their proximity to the city’s grand mosque. Crafts and trades deemed most respectable and pristine according to Islamic jurisprudence such as candle sellers, herbalists, incense merchants, perfumers, and textile merchants as well as items that booksellers and binders would sell were placed close to the central mosque within the city complex, while less respectable and unsanitary crafts that were undesirable to the sensibilities of the urban population like trash-collectors, saddle-makers, potters, and tanneries were situated on the peripheries of the city.

Trades that could cause hazardous conditions, especially those necessitating the use of fire (bakeries, blacksmiths, oven workers), were advised to prop their stalls away from vendors selling items that would easily catch fire, like herbalists, chemists, and wood sellers.

Each trade was headed by a master (‘arrif) who had reached the pinnacle of expertise in that particular field and would be appointed by the market supervisor (muhatsib) to monitor and root out any fraudulent activities, supervise weights and measures, and regulate prices, and ensured that daily business ran as seamlessly as possible. The muhtasib was also tasked with collecting tax revenue from the merchants and sellers, upholding the market’s affairs (sanitation, equipped facilities), public morality, and religious duties, especially when it came to ensuring merchants and customers observed prayer times at the mosque.

 

 

 

1. ABDULLATIF AWAD, J. (1984). ISLAMIC SOUQS (BAZAARS) IN THE URBAN CONTEXT: THE SOUQ OF NABLUS [Master’s Thesis]. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/33362255.pdf ↩︎
2. Gharipour, M. (2012). The bazaar in the Islamic city : design, culture, and history. American University In Cairo Press. ↩︎
3. The Souk in the Islamic City between Power and Organization of Space, Nour Eddine Nachouane, Aicha Knidiri, Hesperis Tamuda, ISSN 0018-1005, Nº. 56, 4, 2021 (Ejemplar dedicado a: The City in the Islamic World: Genesis and Changes/ Geographical and Urbanistic Approaches), págs. 221-236 ↩︎
4. The Souk in the Islamic City between Power and Organization of Space, Nour Eddine Nachouane, Aicha Knidiri, Hesperis Tamuda, ISSN 0018-1005, Nº. 56, 4, 2021 (Ejemplar dedicado a: The City in the Islamic World: Genesis and Changes/ Geographical and Urbanistic Approaches), págs. 221-236 ↩︎