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The Arab Islamic city has been always a glamorous urban dream in human cultural memory. This is manifested in Cairo, the world's largest medieval urban system where traditional lifestyles are still implemented. Nevertheless, despite the extensive efforts to preserve Historic Cairo, it is sadly vulnerable. This book investigates the reasons behind this condition, exploring and comparing regional and international case studies. Questions such as how and what to conserve are raised and elaborated through the perspectives of different stakeholders. A resulting evaluative framework is accumulated that underpins the criteria for assessing area conservation in the Arab Islamic context and that can be used to delineate the causes responsible for the present condition of Historic Cairo.

Re-excavating Jerusalem: Archival Archaeology is concerned with the archaeology and history of Jerusalem. It is a story of ongoing crises, of adaptations, inheritance and cultural transmission over many centuries under successive rulers, where each generation owed a cultural debt to its predecessors, from the Bronze Age to the modern world. It is not a summary history of occupation over four millennia, but rather a reflection of events as revealed in a major programme of archaeological excavation conducted by Dame Kathleen Kenyon in the 1960s, which is still in process of publication. The excavation archive has an ongoing relevance, even though knowledge of the city and its inhabitants has increased over the decades since then, revealing fresh insights to set against contemporary work. The preservation of such archives has great importance for future historians. Among topics addressed are the nature of a dispersed settlement pattern in the 2nd millennium BC; a fresh look at the vexed problems of the biblical accounts of the work of David and Solomon and the development of the city in the 10th and 9th centuries BC; the nature of the fortifications of the town re-established by Nehemiah in the 5th century BC; some evidence of the Roman occupation following the almost total destruction of the city in AD 70; and an exploration within the Islamic city during the 12th to 15th centuries. The latter illustrates the endless interest in Jerusalem shown by the outside world.

This edited volume addresses the ways in which the city has been explored in works of literature by classical and modern ‘Arab’ authors from different theosophical and ideological backgrounds. Crucial to its organizing theoretical paradigm is its rejection of the stark rupture that most often separates the pre-modern and modern Arabic literary traditions. Instead, we view the entirety of the tradition as an evolving continuum, making our collection relevant to scholars of both classical and modern Arabic literature.