Compare the position of cities in the west and east of the 16-18 century.

West and East are two world civilizations that are not only polar to each other, but also strongly contradictory in spiritual and material life. Nevertheless, much in these world cultural areas is still similar. The city as a phenomenon of the Middle Ages and Modern Times can serve as a vivid example of this.

Similar features of the cities of the West and the East
The medieval city in both the West and the East was finally formed at the beginning of the second millennium AD. It became the center of the cultural and political life of a society of two different worlds. The main Christian and Islamic religious centers were concentrated here, trade and usury were actively pursued, whole intellectual schools were formed. It was in the city in the West that the first lyceums and Latin schools – gymnasiums – began to open, and in the East, religious educational centers – madrassas. Cities have always been architecturally decorated and supplemented with sculptures, they organized competitions in splendor. In Christian Europe and the Middle East, cities have become the main abode of high society – as evidenced by the residences of the kings and emperors of the West and the “pearls of the East” – the palaces of the shahs and sultans.

Differences between cities of the West and the East
The main source of differences between cities in the Middle East and Western Europe lies in their political system:

The western city is an autonomous self-regulating society, with its own representatives – magistrates, burghers. Eastern despotism as a phenomenon cannot imply any independence, and therefore the city in the East was equated in rights (or rather lack of rights) with a rural district;
in cities in the West, it was often possible to meet large feudal lords, knights, large landowners who lived within the city. They only controlled their estates in the rural area, but preferred to live in cultural developing centers. Wealthy people of the East lived outside the city and more often participated in the issues of their lands;
The autonomy of a Western European city implied restrictions on royal taxes and fees, and the absence of this on the territory of the East turned the city into the same financial source for the royal treasury as a remote province.