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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Modern Middle Eastern cities, from Afghanistan to Morocco, have, in addition to an almost limitless variety of detail, some general characteristics in common. These common features include among many other things, the narrow, twisting, often dead-end alleys on which the houses in the older quarters are typically located. These houses are inward-oriented to a degree that contrasts markedly and in many ways with “western” urban dwellings. These alleys and houses are an integral part of a complex whole that also includes mosques, shrines, madrasahs, bathhouses and bazaars.
Other general characteristics of modern Middle Eastern cities are the new wide streets for automotive traffic that form networks around the old quarters and often are cut through them as well. Visually, these new streets and the new buildings that accompany them often contrast so sharply with the old that many people are tempted to assume the existence of radically different cultural patterns among their respective inhabitants, radical differences that are isomorphic with the differences in street patterns and architecture.
The color slides for whose presentation this paper is the text were taken in the summer of 1969 and in the academic year 1970-71. Travel to Isfahan in 1969 was paid for by the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina, Dr. Moye W. Freymann, director. Travel to, and residence in, Isfahan in 1970-71 was paid for by National Science Foundation grant GS-3108 (“Cultural Influences on Human Fertility”). The research on this project was carried out under the auspices of the University of Isfahan's Center for Population Studies, Dr. Mahmud Sarram, director.
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