Özet:

In the Qur'ān the most significant words used to indicate settlement are diār, qarya, madīna, miṣr and balad. Among these, Karya and Madina are the most important ones. While Qarya means, county, city, urban, land and settlement, madīna means town. Miṣr is used for a city as well as for a specific name of a country. Diyār indicates a geographic border and the places of a settlement, and balad infers a political unity of a number of settlements. Due to this use in 'Arabic, the word balad is used as a country and a state at the same time. Recently, there are some studies focusing on examining the terms of karya and madina. Moreover, we cannot encompass the semantic area of these words only by looking up their dictionary meaning and how they were used in the Quran. Therefore, in this study the old cities are examined as they exist in their places. In this study, we have used from the modern and contemporary scientific findings that were made for urbanization and its history. For a better understanding of the concept of urbanization, some prophets' stories have been revised. In the Qur'ān the words indicating urbanization are related to society, nature, place, human, art, economy, politics and reconstruction. Therefore, the concepts of the diár, qarya, madīna, miṣr and balad used to describe the settlements point to the relationship of society with different elements and activities.

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