THE FOUNDING OF THE FIRST ARAB-ISLAMIC CITIES ACCORDING TO ANCIENT ARAB SOURCES. THE MODEL OF KŪFA

This study looks at the foundation and development of the Arab-Islamic city according to the main ancient Arab sources and focuses on the town planning model of the city of Kūfa which, after a short period of being a military field camp involved in an unstoppable expansionist process of conquests (or futūḥ, “openings”, as Arab chroniclers referred to it), was one of the first sites to be planned and transformed into a genuine city. A series of political, economic, social and strategic reasons, such as the centralizing of power, the consolidation of the emerging state, the influx of substantial economic resources and the presence of specialized skilled workers within new borders, made a profound contribution to the foundation of a primary nucleus of urban centres which, in the years to come, would become powerful cities. The study recounts and analyzes these reasons, which made Kūfa the urban centre par excellence, where a new concept of Arab-Islamic society was revealed and an organization of space was conceived whose general model was then repeated and renewed in different geographical and environmental contexts. Furthermore Kufa, which in the first century of the Egira was repeatedly at the epicentre of political and religious rebellions and revolts involving the entire Muslim world, was a cosmopolitan city and a genuine melting pot, together with the neighbouring rival Baṣra, of Arab-Islamic culture for over four centuries. Furthermore, the name of Kūfa is still today linked to the fame of its school of grammar and its antagonism with nearby Baṣra. which stirred up a linguistic debate that reached its peak during the 9th century and gave birth to a corpus of other disciplines such as logic, theology, rhetoric, critical thought, etc., codified in an astounding descriptive system which no scholar in these fields can leave unconsidered.