GATES AS SIGNS OF AUTONOMY IN MUSLIM TOWNS

Abstract

sion with Oleg Grabar about the Muslim built environment. He advised me to investigate the word khatta and its exact meaning and implication for Muslim towns. That advice gave me a key for future essays, among them this study. Most of the works that have dealt with gates have concentrated on monumental portals such as those to cities and mosques; they range in theme from semiotic interpretations to the geometric innovations of their builders. Gates to shared residential spaces such as dead-end streets have been neglected by historians, mainly because they are not attracted to gates that are neither as elaborately nor as elegantly built as monumental gates are. Here I will argue that residential gates play a role as symbols of control in society and deserve attention because they can contribute to the understanding of the sociocultural structure of societies where they are found. Contemporary scholars have been misled in their observations of the morphology of streets in Muslim towns; they describe them as either a labyrinth of thoroughfares and alleys, or as they exist today a network of linear streets organically arranged. But in the past there were gates all over the city that divided this labyrinthine space into many smaller spaces for the exclusive use of particular groups. These places closed in by gates had a function that has been lost today and that affected many aspects of city life. The same traditional physical organization had a totally different quality than that we see