Cities and Urbanization in West Asia and North Africa

This peer-reviewed book series will consist of monographs and collected volumes dealing with the cities and urbanization in West Asia (Near-Middle East) and its surroundings from ancient times to the modern age. Urbanized society emerged for the first time in human history in ancient West Asia and formed a social structure in which the characteristics of each region were determined and centered on a city. The remains of the cities of West Asia provide voluminous data about the birth of urban culture and its transformation during ancient times, in the form of abundant archeological records and numerous cuneiform texts written on clay tablets. Thus, West Asia represents the cradle of civilization and the origin of the urban culture now prevailing all over the world. The tradition of West Asian cities continued, and transformed the region through its emergence in the earliest ancient times down to the Hellenistic-Roman, Byzantine, and Sasanian periods, Muslim era, and finally, the modern day. This series will encourage publications of innovative studies of the cities, city landscape, urban culture, and city environments in West Asia and its surroundings throughout the ages. It may embrace various research fields, including archaeology, philology, history, anthropology, sociology, city planning, architecture, geology, and geography. Thus, the series provides a platform with broad-ranging perspectives opened for forward-looking publications concerning cities in the region. This broadly inclusive format may help to overcome the chronologic separations of conventional periodizations and create bridges between different research disciplines.