ABSTRACT
In recent years the question of the relations between village and city in the Middle East has become a subject of frequent discussions. A volume published in 1972 on a conference dealing with rural politics and social change in the Middle East bears witness to the fact that the controversy continues. 'A suggestion which stimulated lively methodological discussion during the Conference was that rural-urban conditions be viewed as a continuum, not a dichotomy'.! Such a suggestion or similar views seem to have gained ground among scholars dealing with the history or sociology of Islamic countries. 'Abu-Lughod agrees that to view rural and urban as polar concepts or even as opposite ends of a continuum leads to a misinterpretation of the Egyptian evidence'.2 ' •.• rural and urban categories are likely to assume less importance for analysis. While these terms served a useful purpose in the past they never really acquired precise and distinct meaning'. 3 '"Rural" and "urban" are another pair of such megaconcepts badly in need, and nowhere more than in Middle Eastern studies, of some kind of disaggregation. A number of people here have stressed that they do not form a dichotomy, which is at least the beginning of wisdom. As Peters said rather more exactly, "city" and "village" don't confront one another as units.'4 Very similar generalizations have been voiced recently in other studies. Thus we read: 'To understand all the realities of geographical structure in the Muslim world, we should eschew the urban-rural dichotomy ... ' 'The urban-rural antithesis ... has become increasingly untenable as more varieties of urban experience come within our purview'.5
