Includes a series of research reports on historic maps and views as well as on the urban development of Islamic towns: 1) introductory note on the blind alleys of historiography, with bibliography, by Enrico Guidoni; 2) Cairo in the <i>Chorographia</i> of Pellegrino Brocardi (1556), by Ludovico Micara (with bibliographic notes); 3) the theaters of Shah Abbas in 17th-century Persia in the unpublished drawings of Pietro Della Valle's diary, by Mahvash Alemi (with bibliography); 4) the cities of central Maghreb in the archives of the French army engineering corps at Vincennes, France, by Federico Cresti (with notes and bibliography); 5) Naoussa (Macedonia): from the Ottoman community to a new Greek city, by N. Kalogirou and M. Nomikos (with bibliography); 6) building survey of the Medina of Hammamet (Tunisia), compiled by Ludovico Micara.