From church and forum to mosque and Sūq: The evolution of mediterranean cities during the umayyad period

This article’s aim is to explore the interplay between the Muslim occupation of cities and those cities’ urban development during this period. How did the Muslims manage to integrate themselves as a new ruling class in functioning urban tissues with almost no destruction of churches and synagogues? I suggest that the Muslims employed a uniform, premeditated policy, whose surviving physical manifestation is the proximity between churches and mosques, mostly in cities’ centers. I further suggest that this proximity transformed the cities’ markets from fora and cardisnes into aswāq.