IMC 2007: Sessions

Session 1023: Cities, Texts, and Social Networks, III: Spaces Described and Imagined

Organiser:	Anne E. Lester, Department of History, University of Colorado, Boulder
Moderator/Chair:	Caroline Goodson, Department of History, Classics & Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London
Paper 1023-a	How to Found a Muslim City (Language: English) Hugh Kennedy, Department of Mediaeval History, University of St Andrews Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Social History
Paper 1023-b	Baghdad in Medieval Arabic Texts (Language: English) Judith Ahola, Independent Scholar, Newport-on-Tay Index terms: Islamic and Arabic Studies, Language and Literature - Other, Social History
Paper 1023-c	'The Best Place in the World': Prisons in the Medieval Urban Landscape (Language: English) Guy Geltner, Lincoln College, University of Oxford Index terms: Law, Mentalities, Social History
Abstract	This series of five sessions examines the ways in which texts, be they legal, descriptive, metaphoric, or architectural, work to create and to transform urban spaces and frame specifically urban experiences. Such texts illuminate the social networks that lay at the heart of medieval urban worlds, where the density of population engendered experiences of space distinctive to the city. Papers in these sessions draw upon a variety of evidentiary sourcesfrom Baghdad to York and consider the physical spaces of cities, the meaning of urban property disputes, the place and power of hospitals and prisons, among other topics.