ISSN:
0026-749X
Source:
Cambridge Journals Digital Archives
Topics:
Ethnic Sciences
,
History
,
Political Science
,
Economics
Notes:
The concept of the city as religious centre, administrative capital and economic pivot for a society, state or kingdom, expressed in the Islamic concept of madina (Gibbs and Kramers 1961: 291; Lapidus 1969: 69) pre-dates Muslim influence in Southeast Asia. The physical as well as functional characteristics of the Southeast Asian city, deriving from its urban features, as distinct from its rural surroundings, were a culmination of gradual evolution since the rise, about the middle of the second century A.D., of the first trading ports and cities. The distinction between the city as urban centre and its rural surroundings is attested in the traditional Javanese view of the negara. In the fourteenth century Nawanatya the negara is defined as ‘all where one can go out (of his compound) without passing through paddy fields’ (Pigeaud 1960, 3: 121). It is by virtue of their evolutionary origins through their total symbiosis with the surrounding rural peripheries that Middle-Eastern and Southeast Asian cities, even pre-dating Islam, contrasted significantly with the cities of Medieval Christendom with formally constituted municipal laws and corporate institutions (Hourani 1970: 15).1 The pre-eminence of cities in their composite role as capitals for religious, political and economic activity was a significant feature of the historical evolution of pre-modern Southeast Asia and will constitute the definition of a city within the purview of this survey.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X0000086X
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