ISLAMIC URBANISM AND ACCESS REGULATION AS A GUIDE TO THE FUTURE THE CASE OF MEDIEVAL CAIRO

Abstract

In the present century, when not only building styles, but techniques and materials though out the Islamic world are increasingly drawn from alien understand what traditional Islamic society itself sees as significant in its architecture, Islamic settlements reveal a consistent underlying order of hierarchical sequences of access and enclosure responding to pattern of social intercourse and allegiance particular to Islamic society. In this paper we will investigate the domestic sphere in an Islamic context of Medieval Cairo, we will examine Cairene domestic architectural types and access regulation to see how the domestic spaces reflect and addressed include multi-house compound. Privacy and access regulation will be analyzed at four hierarchical levels of settlements within an urban setting; the courtyard house, the residential alley, the quarter and the city .The traditional Islamic city was composed of nested hierarchies of space, based on the primary unit of inward-looking courtyard house. Traditionally, the nested hierarchies were created the development of shari’a established tradition as a guide to the present. In this sense, we will turned to medieval documents, not to reconstruct the past, but to appropriate clear prescribed regulations that will rectify the estrangement caused by the careless intrusion of Western forms .