clement

Now I did not. Rome did not have more than 50,000 people at its medieval peak.

Guaporense

I know these numbers. They are from Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census by Tertius Chandler. 1987, St. David's University Press.

These numbers from the year 1,000 CE or before are plain nonsense. Cordoba never reached 450,000 inhabitants and never was as populous as Rome in the year 100. Rome had a massive infraestructure to support their huge population, of over 1 million: they had ships of 1,500 tons to carry grain from Africa to Rome. The city had 11 aqueducts briging 1 million cubic meters of water per day to the city. No other city from before the 19th century had a comparable infraestructure.

Cordoba and Baghdad had probably less than 100,000 inhabitants during their peaks. A larger population than 100,000 inhabitants would require logistical capabilites beyond the levels achieved by medieval Arab societies.

Constantinople also didn't have 300,000 inhabitants in the year 1,000 CE, that was 2/3 of Chandler's estimate for Rome. That was beyong the logistical capabilities of the Byzantine Empire, since they controlled only 10 million inhabitants and had a lower rate of urbanization than the Early Roman Empire, which had 70 million inhabitants.

My "guesstimates" would be:

Rome 100 CE: 1,250,000
Baghdad 900 CE: 100,000
Constantinople 1000 CE: 80,000
Cordoba 1000 CE: 60,000

Those numbers are based on the relative logistical capabilities of each polity and of western eurasia as a whole. Urban populations require a certain ammount of trade, since city people don't grow their own food and so need to import it. Before the invention of the railroad large cities were possible only in coastal areas and in rivers, as they needed ships to bring the goods. Wagons could only transport luxury goods, not food, for large distances. Therefore inland cities could only support populations up to tens of thousands.

A rough measure of trade is given by the number of shipwrecks in the mediterranean:



The number of medieval mediterranean shipwrecks is usually 10% of the Roman levels of sea-trade from 200 BCE to 200 CE (the peak of prosperity in the classical world). Also estimates of copper, silver, iron, tin and lead production shows that 14th century Europe only had 10% of the levels of metal production reached by the Roman Empire.

Such economic environment would not be able to support very large cities, as the Roman Empire did a millennium before. European cities of hundreds of thousands only appeared again in the 17-18th centuries. When economic activity was again increasing at fast rates thanks to the expansion of Atlantic Trade:



Clearly, the medieval world couldn't have cities such as 1st century Rome of 18th century London. Even the major cities of the Roman Empire besides Rome, such as Antioch, Alexandria and Carthage were several times larger than any medieval city. The medieval world was a world without large scale trade and large urban centers. Venice was the largest trading city of the medieval mediterranean and it had a population around 120,000, 10% of the level achieved by Rome a millennium earlier.

DreamWeaver

Care to explain why?

Clodius

The usual quoted figure for Rome under Augustus seems to be 1.25 million, so if this is correct then 400,000 by 100 AD seems like an apocalyptic decline ...

Thessalonian

Constantinople was the largest European city for some time.....

Guaporense

Cordoba certainly wasn't the largest city in the world in the 11th century. Kaifeng was much larger.

According to this ranking 5 of the 10 largest cities were Islamic cities while only 1 out of 10 was Chinese. That's clearly wrong. China was a civilization much more advanced the medieval islamic civilization in the 11th century. The population of Song China reached 100 million in the 11th century, while the Islamic world had a population of 30-40 million. China was also more urbanized and had greater degree of economic development. The Islamic world didn't have any significant level of economic develoment as the northern half of the mediterranean was Christian while the southern half was Islamic, that division created a barrier for trade which made the economic development of the medieval western eurasian world impossible. Trade was restricted and hence large cities never appareared.

The largest city in Song China was comparable to Rome in population. The largest medieval cities in western eurasia were 1/10 of Rome in population. Probably there were 10 cities in China larger than any city in Europe or the Islamic world in the 11th century.

In Europe from 500 CE to 1000 CE there wasn't any city that reached 100,000 inhabitants at some point, probably very few reached 10,000.

Constantinople never reached the population levels achieved by Rome or Alexandria. As Constantinople was founded in the 4th century, when classical civilization was already in irreversible decline, the city never had the support of a prosperous mediterranean economy as Rome and Alexandria had.

Alexandria had 180,000 citizens in the early 1st century while Rome had a minimum of 200,000 citizens at the same time (probably more like 300,000-350,000 citizens). Cities with such huge number of citizens would have total populations (counting women, children, metics and slaves) near or over 1 million. Constantinople was a mediocre town compared to these titans.

Guaporense

Sorry, I have the habit of writing and posting at the same time.

DreamWeaver

no probs, I quite enjoyed the edit anyway.

clement

Suppressed

clement

This is quite strange because it is widely said that Constantinople reached 500,000 inhabitants under Justinian. This does not seem weird at all, since the Byzantine empire was very centralized. It then fell during the next centuries but not as much as to have less than 100,000 inhabitants.

Though I do believe that Rome was the only town in europe and the middle east that reached the million inhabitants before the 18th century, I don't see any reason to doubt that Baghdad had 500,000 inhabitants and Cordoba at least 200,000. Again, we must remember that these empires were highly centralized and hence, the whole countryside around these cities were at their service. They were "consumer" cities, that imported much from outside.

On the other hand, Rome was huge but was not the only big city in Italy. There were plenty of other cities in the peninsula.