Rabaḍ (Arabic: ربض, romanized: rabaḍ, lit. 'outskirts, suburb') refers to the suburbs of seventh- to eighth-century cities in Central Asia, including what is now the Turkistan Region in southern Kazakhstan, Iran, and Afghanistan.[1]
This term, in the Andalusī Arabic form of ar-rabāḍ, was borrowed into Spanish as arrabal and into Portuguese as arrabalde.[2]
A typical qalʿat ("fortress") in Central Asia was based on a tripartite city model: citadel, shahristan (residential area inside the walls), and rabaḍ (suburb). This city model is valid not only for Central Asian city typology, but is also used to describe similar city types elsewhere in the Muslim world.[3][4]
