Military Foundations, Ribāts, and Urbanization: The Roman, Early Islamic, and Spanish Empire in Comparison

This workshop brought together a lively group of eight scholars from North Africa, Germany, Spain, and Denmark to discuss the role of the military in processes of urbanization, the impact of empires on conquered societies, and in turn the acculturation of these societies to changing imperial cultures.It was a fruitful test of the Center's commitment to the comparison of empires.The lectures and notably the ensuing discussions explored the foundation of cities and of ribs (as a special form of military settlement) in three empires-the Roman (Michaela Konrad, Peter Bang), the early Islamic (Stefan Heidemann, Joan Negre, Werner Schwartz, Abdelkerim Chebli, Mehdy Shaddel), and the Spanish Empire in the Americas (Javier Francisco).While in the latter two cases, a salvation religion was fundamental to imperial expansion, the Roman Empire's expansion and subsequent processes of Romanization were not driven by a specific religious claim, apart from celebrating the cult of the emperor.It was not until much later in the Roman period that Christianity was adopted as a statepreserving religion.However, all three empires built strongholds in preexisting cities as well as in new urban, often military, foundations.The geographical layout and conditions varied-Rome was a maritime empire integrating the entire Mediterranean Basin; the Islamic Empire was a landed empire, despite its dominance over the Arabian Sea; and the Spanish Empire was oceanic with vast distances to bridge-but in all cases they established or reinforced a set