Cities, Ribāṭs and Other Settlement Types in Palestine from the Seventh to the Early Thirteenth Century: An Exercise in Terminology

Abstract

Different societies have various definitions and names for their units of residence, such as “cities” or “villages”. This article examines the categories people had for settlements in Palestine from the seventh to the thirteenth century. A rich corpus of textual sources is used, comprising chronicles, geographies, letters and epigraphy, in Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. The article presents a coherent set of five contemporary terms up to the eleventh century,...