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Introduction
The urban fabric in traditional Muslim cities is very complex (Figure 1 - See PDF,). It is an outcome of interaction between the conditions of sites, the customs of the community and the legal mechanisms that are derived from the Islamic law, Fiqh . The conditions of the sites could be identified in the topography, the local materials and the climatic agents. Evidence of these conditions can be seen in the diversity of forms and typology, which greatly differs from Morocco to Persia. Similarly, local customs that derive from the inherited values and developed by different ethnic communities and known in Islamic culture as Urf (customs, traditions) have been highlighted in previous studies (Akbar, 1988, Hakim, 1994).
Urban fabric is also an outcome of many successive building activities that were undertaken by individuals and the community over a long period of time that lasted decades and sometimes centuries. Morphologic complexity therefore differs from one city to another with regard to their age. The urban fabric thus becomes an archival record of all the activities undertaken by the actors from the city's foundation to its present state. The older the city, the more complex its urban fabric. In other words, the age of the city reflects the number of activities undertaken, and thus the degree of maturity of the city, and vice versa; the complexity of the urban fabric mirrors the age of the city.
Many recent studies have highlighted the presence of such mechanisms that stand behind the development of urban fabric, and thus go beyond the simplistic formalist and design approaches that dominated the studies of Islamic studies for decades (Akbar, 1988; Hathloul, 1996; Ben-Hamouche, 2003; Hakim and Zubair, 2006; Hakim, 2007). These studies, mostly undertaken by planners and architects, were based on unedited manuscripts of law and jurisdiction, which provide legal opinions and juridical decisions that have been issued by Muslim scholars of different schools of law at different places and times with regard to urban and building issues. Among such manuscripts, we can cite Al-Jidar , a document that was authored by the Andalusian scholar Ibn al-Imam Isa ben Musa (died in 386 H/996 G), and Al-Ilan bi Ahkam al-buniyan , written by Ibnu al-Rami. Both were edited by the...