Question for the fellow historians!

Dear fellow history lovers!

Those of you who visit the Monastary part of these forums may recognize this message!

For my MA thesis about the population of imperial Rome I'm looking to do a good comparative study. Abbasid Baghdad seems like a comparable city in terms of size and importance. I'm having some trouble finding good sources for this topic, however. Would any of you know of any good books or (preferably) articles that handle this topic?

Or perhaps you know of another city that would be worth comparing to Rome? I'm thinking about comparing the ways we arrive at population estimates, so the and availability and handling of sources must be present in the secondairy literature.

Thank you all a lot!

well, i'm no historian, but wouldn't Constantinople work? would imagine there being plenty of sources? (but then again, i'm not a historian, so might be way off)

If you have access to Jstor I found an article in a quick search (about 5 minutes) that might be of some use to you. Not specifically about population, but about the size, growth, and layout of Abassid Baghdad which all obviously do have ties to population and could be useful. I'm sure if you looked further you could find more articles on JSTOR. Its a goldmine relatively speaking.

I can't link the article apparently but the title is "Massignon and Baghdad: The Complexities of Growth in an Imperial City"
It's written by Jacob Lassner

Hope this helps!

Hi Intrepid Adventurer,
Gaston Wiet wrote a book on the subject and here there is an article:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/wiet.html
The book: Baghdad: Metropolis of the Abbasid Caliphate

Otherwise, on google books: That

Sir Robin, thanks for the JSTOR suggestion. I usually search via Picarta (not sure if you know it) and I hadn't come across that article yet. Reading through it right now.

In essence, this is what I need: I need a city that is comparable to Rome in terms of size and importance. There is a great deal of debate about the size of Rome. If I can compare the results of the debate about another city to Rome, I might be able to draw some conclusions based on that. For example: if city X had so many inhabitants and was in a similar position, then perhaps our estimates about Rome should either be higher or lower. I hope that makes sense.

If someone thinks that's a completely retarded way of thinking, I'll gladly take suggestions! ;D

I think it is an interesting subject for an article, but that there is not enough meat on it for a Ma Dissertation (though the Danish ones these days are only supposed to be 50- 70 pages, mine was 97 and should have been a PhD thesis). I think you should possibly broaden your research a bit (we also have precious few sources for most of these cities), perhaps to include more cities, perhaps instead re-evaluate the way we measure populations by looking at all the cities we have sources for? Though there we go at a PhD Thesis again...

What about looking at a Han Chineese city? Or Edo? There should be ample sources for them (or am I totally off the track?). Medieval European ones you can forget about, not enough sources, nor comparable size. What about Alexandria? The other great city of its time? Or Athens? Brunt mentions that it is comparable on a smaller scale in that it was a city-state that grew an empire...

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In essence, this is what I need: I need a city that is comparable to Rome in terms of size and importance. There is a great deal of debate about the size of Rome. If I can compare the results of the debate about another city to Rome, I might be able to draw some conclusions based on that. For example: if city X had so many inhabitants and was in a similar position, then perhaps our estimates about Rome should either be higher or lower. I hope that makes sense.

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The ones I have in mind right now are;

- Al-Qahira/Caïro, Fatimid Egypt
- Baghdad, Abbasids
- Chang'an, Qin Dynasty or Tang Dynasty

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Originally Posted by Intrepid Adventurer

Sir Robin, thanks for the JSTOR suggestion. I usually search via Picarta (not sure if you know it) and I hadn't come across that article yet. Reading through it right now.

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You only search in one online db!? :s

Actually, Picarta is so useful, because it combines a lot of databases! And usually it catches the JSTOR references, too.

For a good source of classical documents I would reccomend the Perseus website.

As for cities comparable sites other than Baghdad would possibly be

Constantinople, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Achaemenid/Seleucid Babylon.

Good luck with investigating population, I am currently doing my MSc thesis on the arrival of the Belgae in Britain and quantification of population for that population has been a real problem to past authors (not me, I am ignoring quantification!)

On a side note: Why does the "Historian" sig banner have an archaeological excavation on it?

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Originally Posted by Brennus

On a side note: Why does the "Historian" sig banner have an archaeological excavation on it?

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Because it looks cool. ;)

Thanks for the suggestions. So far, Constantinople hasn't turned up with much useful articles or books: apparantly I'm the only one interested in its population size. ;) People keep telling me: "Babylon!" so I'll look into that next.

The census was not very common in ancient times, of course. Even those tended to leave out large segments of the population. Modern estimates for ancient areas are not generally known for their precision. I'm guessing that's the big reason there's more sources for Rome. The other posters have brought forth a good list of cities which one could use for a comparison. There's a lot of good reasons to choose various cities, regardless of whether you can get good numbers for the total number of bodies. Knowing how dependent many large Mediterranean cities were on grain transported by sea (I'm assuming this is still the case for Imperial Rome - not my area of expertise) a comparison with another city (perhaps inland Baghdad\Babylon) that did not resort to grain imports could be interesting. If grain transport along the rivers was as important to these cities as it was to Rome, that could be good too. In any case, let us know if you settle on a topic.:2thumbsup:

Also, have you talked to your advisor about the attitude towards languages? Presumably you read Latin, but in the department I got my M.A. it would have been frowned upon (heck, unacceptable) to write thesis covering an area where you didn't know the language of most of the sources you'd use. If you have to rely on translations, you're missing a big chunk of original analysis.

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Originally Posted by Intrepid Adventurer

Actually, Picarta is so useful, because it combines a lot of databases! And usually it catches the JSTOR references, too.

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Actually I never use Picarta, nor do I often use the picartalike db of our own university which searches a lot of db's as well. I didn't know it referenced that many db's. But then again I simply prefer to go over all the seperate relevant db'ses, as from my experienced it takes longer but generally provides me with more and better results.

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Originally Posted by MisterFred

Also, have you talked to your advisor about the attitude towards languages? Presumably you read Latin, but in the department I got my M.A. it would have been frowned upon (heck, unacceptable) to write thesis covering an area where you didn't know the language of most of the sources you'd use. If you have to rely on translations, you're missing a big chunk of original analysis.

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I hearthily agree with you, but I'll bluntly say we don't have such restrictions. I do read Latin, but it's far too rusty to make any decent use of it. It's a topic that's been heavily debated within our university.

Well, potentially good for you, since you can write on the topic you're most interested in while doing less prep work. I mentioned it largely so you could avoid pain and delay coming from disapproving committee members or advisors later.