Imagined cities

TIMOTHY R. PAUKETAT, ANN E. KILLEBREW,

AND FRANςθISE MICHEAU

Some cities were imagined, designed, and created wholly or partially in ways that forever shaped their histories and the identities, governments, religions, and economies of their citizens.

These include the great cities of Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cahokia. They also include other imperial capitals (similar to Baghdad), lesser territorial centers, and religious complexes and pilgrimage centers (such as Jerusalem and Cahokia). Whatever they were and however they developed later in time, the details of their founding, along with the momentous and monumental constructions that redesigned or redefined various sectors within them make them case studies in the historical processes surrounding cities and their regional and continental effects.

Here, we seek to outline the commonalities, juxtaposed against the distinguishing features, of Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cahokia in ways that draw out those processes. The multi-layered “eternal” city of Jerusalem, imperial Baghdad silenced for centuries before reemerging in the twentieth century, precocious Cahokia virtually evaporating in history: What was it about the creation of these places that transcended their histories? What was different in each case, such that their developmental outlines diverged? Comparisons with other cities will help us to focus on the reasons for such similar processes and divergent histories.

Foundational theories

To be clear, the extent that any city, city district, and city building, public space, or monument was designed and executed by people is the extent to which imagination and memory work need to be considered alongside the political, economic, and urban processes that produced the world's great places.^{^[425]} Great public and urban spaces may be designed with some greater social or cosmic order in mind.² They might inscribe the mythos or memories of a people, an event, or another place into their spaces.³ But they also have experiential qualities that affect human emotions, knowledge, and institutions in unintended ways.⁴ They might even be designed as imaginaries, which is to say as places where futures are actively reimagined or where people come to interact with their gods.⁵

Such imaginary potential might be purposive or not.

It might also be realized by some but not all people, depending on their experiences of city spaces and monuments. Certainly, the sensuous dimensions of city spaces, including the things in them and the physical characteristics of them, can produce varying perceptions and understandings depending on who they were and why they were there.⁶ In the same way, the experience of urban spaces might discipline the body, or clothe it with memories and sensibilities mundane and monumental.⁷ Cities, that is, are the grounds for much embodied knowledge, that which is done because the body has learned to do it as second nature.⁸ The merger of such embodied knowledge with governance becomes the basis of political authority.⁹

Indeed, we might consider these alternately commemorative or imagined qualities of city spaces in more purely political, social, and economic terms. The merger of embodied knowledge and governance, for instance, might be read as an intentional political strategy of city planners. The effect of life in

Melanesian Society,” in Bender (ed.), Landscape, pp. 85-106; and Nick Shepherd and Christian Ernsten, “The World Below: Post-Apartheid Imaginaries and the Bones of the Prestwich Street Dead,” in Noeleen Murray, Nick Shepherd, and Martin Hall (eds.), Desire Lines: Space, Memory and Identity in the Post-Apartheid City (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 215-32.

² Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters (Chicago: Aldine, 1971).

³ Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

⁴ Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994); and Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Donald Nicholson-Smith (trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

⁵ Shepherd and Ernsten, “The World Below,” pp. 215-32.

⁶ Susan Kus, “The Social Representation of Space: Dimensioning the Cosmological and the Quotidian,” in James A.

Moore and Arthur S. Keene (eds.), Archaeological Hammers and Theories (New York: Academic Press, 1983), pp. 277-98.

⁷ Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

⁸ Rosemary A. Joyce and Lynn M. Meskell, Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and Egyptian Experience (London: Routledge, 2003).

⁹ Susan Kus, “Sensuous Human Activity and the State: Towards an Archaeology of Bread and Circuses,” in Daniel Miller (ed.), Domination and Resistance (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 140-54.

urban spaces, on the other hand, is a social process that might complicate the best-laid political intentions by introducing alternate motivations rooted in gender, class, ethnicity, and the like. So too would such complications have their own economy, with futures constrained by genealogies of social transactions, the relative success of exchanges in the marketplace, or even the biographies of specific things (precious stones, heirlooms, or magical objects).

Saying all of this is simply to caution against any simplistic reading of the foundations of cities, especially those such as Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cahokia where the reasons for their initial establishment might seem apparent to us today. Simple measures of a city's historical developmental patterns might allow us to gauge the degree to which such cautions are warranted. In his study of Urartian cityscapes, Adam Smith focused on the relative uniformity or diversity of cities through a comparative-historical study of the symmetries and distributions of city plans.^{^[426]} We might approach Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cahokia similarly.

However, we also will consider the legacy effect of the materials used to construct cities. We do this because the media through which people live their lives and, especially, build their cities are bound to constrain not only the immediate futures of cities, but also the long-term legacies of those cities.

That is, if the histories of Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cahokia were strongly influenced by the circumstances surrounding their foundations, then their legacies - how they were remembered or whether they might be forgotten - were based in part on their construction materials: stone, mudbrick, earth, or wood. In such ways, we may begin to ground the theories of our imagined cities in the hard realities of their foundations.

Foundational developments

In some ways, the foundations of Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cahokia were very similar. All experienced intensive construction phases based to some extent on connections that people made between themselves and the cosmos. Although the foundations of these three cities are a result of different cultural imaginings in space and time, all three share a sense of cosmic order and destiny that is expressed tangibly and intangibly. In the case of Jerusalem and Cahokia, pilgrims traveled to these centers to engage the numinous in some way. The same is less true of Baghdad, although the city was said to have been founded in accordance with God's plan and its spatial order evinces a plan based on the cosmic principles that undergirded the Abbasid Caliphate.

Archaeological excavations reveal that Jerusalem was already inhabited by the fourth millennium bce. Tradition holds that, long before Solomon erected his temple to early Israel's god on Mt. Moriah, Abraham (the father of three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) offered up his son Isaac (or Ishmael according to Islamic belief) to God. This event, followed by the biblical account of the selection ofJerusalem by King David as his religious, administrative, and political capital, marks the beginning of Jerusalem's transformation into a spiritual center that remains a powerful symbol in the imagination of countless cultures and one of the world's most contested cities.

The physical development of Jerusalem has not always followed its imagined history. As is typical of many ancient sites in the region, Jerusalem emerged as a major urban and fortified center during the Middle Bronze Age (first half of the second millennium bce).

Though mentioned numerous times in the fourteenth-century bce Amarna Letters, there is scant evidence for Late Bronze Age Jerusalem. The material remains and nature of Jerusalem during the tenth-century bce United Monarchy, which is portrayed in the biblical account as a magnificent holy city built by Solomon, are ambiguous and remain a topic of heated debate.^{^[427]} Only several centuries later, during the late eighth and seventh centuries bce, does the archaeological evidence correspond to the literary descriptions of Jerusalem as a major cultic, administrative, and political center.

The later ebbs and flows of Jerusalem's past reflect the region's tumultuous history and occupation by numerous empires and peoples, all of whom left their mark on the city. The city as the Judean spiritual and physical capital weathered several conquests, including its destruction at the hands of the Babylonians in 586. Herod the Great's magnificent city and temple, considered one of the architectural marvels of the Roman world, was razed to the ground by Titus in 70 ce. Beginning in 130 ce, Hadrian rebuilt the city, renamed it Aelia Capitolina, and expelled the remaining Jews from it. Several centuries later, Byzantine Jerusalem developed into the spiritual capital for all Christians. By the later seventh century ce, the city fell to Arab conquerors and evolved into one of Islam's holiest sites.

Shortly thereafter, Baghdad was founded in 762 ce by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur after his regime had overthrown the Umayyad caliphs (all a result of an Islamic empire following Muhammad). Settling upon the site, the stars were consulted in its foundation, and the location - up to then just a small town - was deemed propitious. At that point, the caliph brought in engineers, architects, surveyors, and large numbers of workers to implement his vision. The population rapidly surged into the tens of thousands.

Being the seat of an imperial domain, the political administration physically defined Baghdad as the center of the world by importing pieces of that world and its history into the city center.

The Caliph ripped down a palace elsewhere with the intent to use its pieces to build one in Baghdad. Iron gates thought to be connected to Solomon were imported from another city and used as entrances to inner Baghdad's “Round City.”

The shape of this Round City itself referenced the shape of the world and the position of new Baghdad at that world's center. And at the center of this circular double-walled and ditched construction, some 2-3 kilometers in diameter, was the caliph's palace. Other buildings inside are palaces and administrative buildings. Outside were planned districts or quarters, mercantile areas, neighborhoods of Arabs and Persians, and slaves from Africa and Eastern and Central Europe, etc. There was no outer wall around Baghdad because there was no need. Baghdad was the all-powerful seat of an empire, with an unchallenged prosperity due to the economic wealth that its elites appropriated and concentrated from across its wider domain.^{^[428]}

A similar point might be made about Cahokia in its first century, although it was not the capital of an empire. Rather, between 1050 and 1150 ce, Cahokia was an unwalled seat of both religious and political authority comprised of at least three major precincts strung out in an irregular band some 10 kilometers in length. It was practically impossible to wall such a tripartite complex, which, in turn, is probably revealing of the organization(s) that crystallized as part of the founding.^{^[429]}

Cahokia's three precincts (St. Louis, East St. Louis, and Cahokia proper) each have their own distinct organizational symmetry, with some internal variation as well. Each precinct was composed by and large of thatched-roof wooden pole structures, large upright marker poles, and earthen pyramids. One precinct's architectural constructions and monuments were aligned to the cardinal directions and built around a single plaza. A second was built along an axis oriented io degrees west of north, with no clear central plaza. The third, and largest (aka, Cahokia proper), was configured along an axis that tilted 5 degrees east of north. This precinct, the largest, has one superordinate and several lesser plazas.

There are other known differences between at least two of these precincts. Special-status neighborhoods, those replete with public and ritual architecture, characterize all of East St. Louis. On the other hand, a mix of the public, ritual, and ordinary-status residential housing is well documented in the Cahokia precinct. A significant number of ordinary inhabitants in the latter area, as well as farmers in the countryside, appear to have been immigrants and resettled villagers who moved to the city in its early decades.

By the late twelfth century, bastioned palisade walls were added around the interior portions of East St. Louis and Cahokia. These construction projects mark the beginning of the end of Cahokia as a city and, some time in the late iioos, a fire consumed most of the East St. Louis complex. A general emigration of citizens began. Many residents moved out of the city; many farmers left rural districts and went to points unknown outside of the region. Their departure meant that the city's pole-and-thatch architecture could not be rebuilt at the scale at which it had been for a century. And without reconstruction, the buildings that gave Cahokia its distinctive appearance and experiential potential ceased to exist.

Comparisons

In some ways, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cahokia all speak to the importance of founding moments. In other ways, the three occupy different positions along a politico-religious continuum. Jerusalem, with its centrality to three major religions, lies at one extreme. It is unique in its spiritual, physical, and political complexity, a continuously inhabited city of stone where construction and destruction events are yet remembered in detail. On the other hand, Cahokia was a short-term city built on a precarious balance of politics and religion. Once abandoned, few Native Americans returned, and it dropped out of oral histories. Baghdad occupies a position on the continuum between Cahokia and Jerusalem: a mudbrick city founded abruptly for clearly political reasons. It was abandoned for a long period before being resurrected in recent times.

To what extent are these differences a function of the variably religious, political, or administrative character of their foundations? Answers might be located in foundation stories, often imbued with heroic and religious underpinnings, which are a common feature of countless historic cities.^{^[430]} However, unlike Jerusalem, whose foundation stories remain meaningful to many, most traditions associated with ancient cities are considered little more than entertaining myths, which may or may not retain a kernel of historicity.

Indeed, few cities can boast a sacred tradition that can be traced back for millennia. Rome, the center of the Roman Empire, has kept its status as a Christian holy city over the centuries. Constantinople, the heart of Byzantine Christianity, was later conquered in 1453 by the Sultan Mehmed and transformed into a capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Orthodox Greek Christianity continues to see this city as its spiritual center. Mecca, where tradition holds Ibrahim (Abraham) built the Kaaba, is the birthplace of Muhammad and the location where the Qur'an was composed. Today it continues to serve as Islam's most revered site and place of pilgrimage. The history of Varanasi, located on the River Ganges in India, is a city sacred to both Hinduism and Buddhism. Tradition holds that the city was founded by the Hindu deity Lord Shiva. Today, it serves as a major pilgrimage destination.

What distinguishes Jerusalem, in imagination and stone, from these sites and others is its sanctity for three major religions and resulting contested status, a reality that has shaped its history and continues to play a major role in Jerusalem today.^{^[431]} To some extent, that is, the density of the imaginings, and the ways in which (that is, the materials through which) these imaginings took shape, especially during their founding moments, may well have forever shaped the histories of these and other cities, along with the associated identities, governments, religions, and economies of their people.

Of particular concern here is what we might call the legacy effect of cities. Some last for millennia, as did Jerusalem. Stories, institutions, and religions grow up around them. Others had important historical effects, but their window of history was open for only a short period. Their brief histories might have been a function of the durability of their construction materials either by design or default.

Take for example Amarna in Egypt, which was built of mudbricks, allowing it to be established in a remote location in short order. Of course, this also made it easily abandoned and forgotten after the reign of Akhenaten. In this way it was like early Baghdad, which was also built of unfired mudbricks, giving it a degree of fragility. It could be deconstructed and abandoned as a world center, both physically and conceptually. Indeed, invasions, destructive floods, and fires led to a physical erasure of the spaces of Abbasid Baghdad after 1258.

The long-term effects of material differences between cities, whether they were built of stone, earth, wood, or mudbricks, are evident in other early cities around the world. For instance, Shang-period Chinese cities covered up to 30 square kilometers, featured inner enclosures, temples or palaces, and elite residences. But they were built entirely of earth and wood and, in some cases, occupied for just over a century.^{^[432]} Similarly, the proto-urban Olmec city of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, Mexico, covered 5 square kilometers atop a mesa.^{^[433]} The city's monuments are modest earthen and rubble constructions characterized by the episodic structured deposits of colored sediments.^{^[434]} The city survived for only 300 years.

The Olmec example is similar to Cahokia if not another proto-urban example, Tiwanaku in western Bolivia. Developing rapidly around 500 ce, Tiwanaku dominated the Titicaca Basin in Bolivia. It was a planned cosmic capital comprised of stone platforms, sunken temples, and plazas covering 4 to 6 square kilometers.^{^[435]} ^{^[436]} The central complex was surrounded by a moat, which was not built for defense but to define the city as an axis mundi?⁰ Physical portals through which pilgrims passed and various commemorative offerings attest to the significance of the city space enacting religion in a way that defined the city and its region for 6oo years.^{^[437]}

The early Chinese and Mexican cities, like Cahokia, were relatively shortterm affairs. The Chinese cities were impermanent constructions of earth and wood that afforded easy relocations of administrations and populations as necessary in early China's shifting political landscape.^{^[438]} So too could San Lorenzo be forgotten because its impermanent monumental symbolism “had ‘escaped' into wide regional and social circulation.”^{^[439]} Tiwanaku, on the other hand, was occupied for the longest amount of time, its highly visible stonework in its sunken temples, platforms, gates, and monoliths affording prolonged commemorations by residents and pilgrims. But even it did not have the dense overlay of sacred traditions, like Jerusalem, that might have seen it last beyond ιιoo ce.

Conclusions

Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cahokia are similar to the extent that cultural narratives, political institutions, and religious traditions were instantiated in their foundational imaginings and subsequent reimaginings. These were more than population aggregations with urban effects. They were more than commercial centers and trade hubs. And their histories were not simply defined by political cycles. The conditions surrounding their creation in each case gave them history-transcending qualities. They shaped and in some ways continue to shape collective identities and religious traditions.

They were, of course, very different in many ways. Jerusalem is the eternal city at the core of three major world religions. Imperial Baghdad's prominence was established by design but was silenced for centuries before reemerging again in the twentieth century. Precocious Cahokia burned brightly for three centuries before burning out. Yet their divergent histories - the facts of Jerusalem's enduring qualities, Baghdad's birth and rebirth, and Cahokia's disappearance - are due in some goodly measure to their imagined character.

Cities everywhere are to variable extent imaginaries. They enable people to experience and envision narratives, traditions, and institutions. But imagination is both an immaterial and a material process. People envision, experience, and imagine in spaces and through architectural constructions with things in hand.^{^[440]} That process might be variably dense, diverse, and complicated, like Jerusalem, or more uniform and centrally managed, like Baghdad or Cahokia. Either way, the process has clear historical implications. At its most basic level, a city's duration might be affected either by design, as in ancient Chinese cities if not to some extent Baghdad, or default, as with Olmec San Lorenzo, Amarna, or Cahokia. The point would seem to be that, even in their diversities and divergences, imagined cities share a common grounding in the processes of construction and the media of experience.

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