The Islamic and Byzantine City

Within one century of the death of the Prophet, Islam had spread to a vast area that included, in addition to the Arabian peninsula, Sassanid Persia as far north as the Caucasus and including Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent, and a thin coastal layer along North Africa that stretched from northern Egypt up the Nile to Cairo and had reached the westernmost tip of Morocco. The Byzantine Empire, defenders of Orthodox Christianity, controlled much of the northern edge of the Mediterranean, from its base in Anatolia and its capital, the New Rome, in Constantinople. While it is impossible to estimate what proportion of the populations in these two juxtaposed "empires" actually lived in urban centers (and that would depend upon the demographic definition of a city one accepted), it must be acknowledged that, for its time, the region was, along with the Indian subcontinent and China, certainly one of the most "urbanized" in the world.

Over the ensuing centuries, the Arab Conquest increased the levels of urbanization in three ways: by establishing temporary encampments for its troops and their accompanying dependents, by founding new "princely" cities for the successive ruling dynasties that came to power in various subregions of western Islam, and by occupying preexisting cities that would grow larger under conditions of increased prosperity.