A wide range of works on the history of economic life and social institutions of the pre-colonial East, including the Arab countries, have appeared in recent years in Western European and American bourgeois orientalism. A special place among them is occupied by a series of publications devoted to the social structure and role of the city in the "traditional" (medieval) Muslim society1 . Various aspects of this problem, such as the specifics of the internal organization of a Muslim city of the Middle Ages, the specifics of its economic functions, and the system of city - village relations, have become the subject of extensive scientific discussion. In the 1960s and 1970s, they were discussed at a series of symposia convened by groups of specialists in Islam and Middle Eastern history from the Sorbonne, Oxford University, and the University of Pennsylvania .2 Several monographs have been published that present the results of specific studies (mainly based on the material of medieval Egyptian and Syrian cities), as well as generalizing schemes that create a collective, conditional image of a traditional Muslim city. The discussion, which was initiated by a colloquium held in Oxford (1965), was attended by such authoritative scientists as K. Caen - Professor at the Sorbonne, founder of the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, A. Khurani-professor at a number of American and Beirut universities I. M. Lapidus-professor at Cambridge University, author of studies on the history of Cairo, Damascus and other Middle Eastern cities, whose theoretical views found a wide response among specialists and had a great influence on modern concepts of the city's place in the socio-economic structure of Arab - Muslim societies. In the 1970s, works on the social history of Cairo were published by S. Staffa, a Dutch researcher, and J. Abu-Lugod, a professor at Princeton University, a specialist in sociology and urban issues .3 A series of local-historical studies focus ... Read more