Abundance, threshold practices, and intergenerational memory in Şanlıurfa’s transition from courtyard houses to apartments

This qualitative case study examines how Şanlıurfa’s transition from courtyard houses to apartments reorganizes domestic space, everyday religious practice, and intergenerational memory. Twenty-seven semi-structured interviews were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were developed: the relational order of open space; storage, thresholds, and situated precaution; the spatial-moral economy of abundance; and selective intergenerational transmission, critique, and contemporary vocabularies. Courtyard houses were remembered as connecting open air, household work, neighbors, storage, and hospitality, whereas apartments improved heating, hygiene, and maintenance but reduced opportunities for shared outdoor life. The term abundance is used to render bereket, a locally meaningful Islamic-moral notion linking divine provision to sufficiency, sharing, restraint, and waste avoidance. Protective repertoires concerned the evil eye, jinn, amulets, threshold caution, and, in some accounts, limited disclosure of household resources; negative-energy language marked a contemporary reinterpretation. Participants continued, reinterpreted, remembered without endorsing, or rejected practices on religious or scientific grounds. The article conceptualizes a spatial-moral economy of abundance organized by material sufficiency and moral obligation. Housing change modifies the settings of practice and memory, while intergenerational transmission proceeds through continuation, reinterpretation, remembrance, and rejection. The findings support housing strategies combining climatic comfort with socially connective semi-open spaces.