Souk
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- For the use of the word 'sook' in Australian English see Australian words.
A souk (سوق, also sook, souq, or suq) is a commercial quarter in an Arab city. The term is often used to designate the market in any Arabized city. It may also refer to the weekly market in some smaller towns where neutrality from tribal conflicts would be declared to permit the exchange of surplus goods.
Though each neighbourhood within the city would have a local souk selling food and other essentials, the main souk was one of the central structures of a large city. A central marketplace, it was where textiles, jewellery, spices, wooden sculptures and other valuable goods as well as the money changers were arranged in a line. A quadrilateral of stone-vaulted streets parallel to or crossing each other or a tight mass of buildings too packed together for roads to intersect them. The workshops were further away from this centre of exchange as were the main residential quarters – those the wealthier merchants or scholars might live within the centre of the city.
The souk was a level of municipal administration. The Muhtasib was responsible for supervising business practices and collecting taxes for a given suq while the Arif are the overseers for a specific trade.
In a souk, the final price of an item is reached by bargaining with the shopkeeper. Traders of a given commodity would all sell in the same souk, thus ensuring a competitive market. In some African countries the souk was a place where people could come and talk, or sit down to tell stories.
See also: Bazaar.
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