ABSTRACT
Following an exposition of the major political values in Islam, using the Qur’an, Sunnah and Rashidun Era, this study asks, ‘What kind of city would the concretization of those values create?’ ‘What kind of political order best represents those values?’ Or, ‘What would be the guiding eidos in that political system?’ This chapter aims to highlight the consequence of those political values as creating an Islamic civic culture, a high classicalism which may be referred to as ‘La Convivencia’. That term describes the period of Moorish rule over the Iberian Peninsula – present-day Portugal, Spain and Sicily, in which Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities positively engaged with one another and exchanged ideas in relative harmony. Moreover, during the renown ‘millet’ system in Ottoman Turkey the words used to describe civilizational harmony were ‘hosgoru’, which literally means ‘to see the other in a good way’. 2 These historical eras impressed upon the world a lasting legacy of civilizational concord that would resonate in cities of pax Islamica from Toledo, Seville, Lisbon and Palermo to, more contemporary, Sarajevo and Istanbul. It was this Islamic civic culture that initiated the world’s first truly cosmopolitan cities.
