Originating in the writings of French scholars who worked in North Africa in the first decades of the twentieth century, the study of the ‘Islamic city’ has attempted to establish the fundamental characteristics that distinguish the traditional urban environments of the Islamic world from towns and cities in Europe and elsewhere. In the realm of architecture and town planning, researchers have pointed to such factors as the centrality of the mosque and market area (suq or bazar), the general absence of large open spaces, and a street plan consisting of narrow, twisting streets and alleys. As Jean Sauvaget has demonstrated in his analysis of the centres of Damascus and Latakia in Syria, those straight passageways remaining in the urban fabric were vestiges of classical street plans. The emphasis on privacy is seen in the inward focussing of domestic architecture on the courtyard. Houses often lack a distinctive façade to the street, having only a doorway and walls punctuated on upper storeys by wooden grille windows (mashrabiyya). Indeed this internalised focus can also be detected in the design of some mosques; for instance the drab exterior walls of the monumental Masjid-i Jami' in Isfahan look much the same as those of other buildings around it.