The Islamic and Byzantine City

The conquest by the Ottoman Turks of Constantinople in the mid-fifteenth century and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire to the Arab provinces in the Fertile Crescent and North Africa in the sixteenth century led to a period when the wealth of empire was concentrated in their capital Konstantiniyee (Constantinople), known by its popular Turkish name as Istanbul. Istanbul grew to become one of the largest cities in the world, whereas former major metropolitan centers such as Cairo were demoted to mere provincial capitals, losing population and economic vigor. Severely weakened, province after province fell victim to European colonial incursions in the course of the nineteenth century, and the remaining remnants of the Ottoman Empire, with the exception of Anatolia, were lost to the victorious Allies after World War I.

While twentieth-century decolonization movements, with few exceptions, succeeded in liberating the countries of western Islam, the region was fragmented into many small states, in contrast to the unities in religion and law the region had enjoyed during the heights of earlier empires, and the poor economic conditions due to subservience to the industrialized West left a heritage of underdevelopment. Although urban populations increased, from both higher rates of natural increase and immigration from the countryside (Istanbul in the early 2000s has a population of eleven million and the greater Cairo region houses perhaps sixteen million), economic development lagged behind, creating conditions typical in Third World cities. In most countries, although Islam remains the official religion, governing laws mostly derive from the Napoleonic Code. Many of the older forms of urban property law, charity, and personal behavior no longer sustain vital urban functions.