Urban Planning And New Towns In Medieval Sardinia 507
type, present only in certain areas of southern Italy and southern Europe, but
systematically found in North Africa.25 Courtyards, earth-brick houses, and
(Palermo, 1984). Further, on the Islamic cities, see Paolo Cuneo, Storia dell’Urbanistica.
Il mondo islamico (Rome, 1986); Florindo Fusaro, La città islamica (Rome, 1984); Attilio
Petruccioli, Dar Al Islam. Architettura del territorio nei paesi islamici (Rome, 1985); Ira
Marvin Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass, 1967). On the
Iberian context, see Leopoldo Torres Balbas, “La edad media,” in Resumen Histórico del
Urbanesimo en España (Madrid: 1987 [1954]), pp. 67–96; Basilio Pavon, Ciudades Hispano-
musulmanas (Madrid, 1992). On Sardinia, see Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale, pp. 16–28;
Marco Cadinu, “Tradizione insediativa, modelli architettonici ed influenza islamica in
Sardegna,” in Le città medievali dell’Italia meridionale e insulare, in Storia dell’Urbanistica
/ Sicilia IV, Atti del Convegno, Palermo, 28–29 novembre 2002, ed. Aldo Casamento and
Enrico Guidoni (Roma, 2004b), pp. 72–82.
25 The courtyard house, organized around an interior courtyard and not visible from the
public street, is the main dwelling type of the medieval Islamic Mediterranean. All cities,
from Marrakech to Tunis and Algiers, adopted this model. On the dwelling and urban
architecture, see Ludovico Micara, Architettura e spazi nell’Islam. Le istituzioni collettive
e la vita urbana (Rome, 1985); Carlo Moccia, “The Courtyard House in Kairouan,” in The
Mediterranean Medina, eds Ludovico Micara, Attilio Petruccioli, and Ettore Vadini (Rome,
2009), pp. 173–178. Recently, scholars have reconsidered earth construction as it was a com-
mon tradition in the medieval Mediterranean regions. See Maddalena Achenza, Mariana
Figure 19.2 Aerial photograph of Quartu (Cagliari) showing the early medieval urban
settlement based on courtyard compounds.
photo by Gianni Alvito, Teravista, Cagliari.