Population of Medieval Baghdad

**Fragony** · 06-08-2010, 21:16

Why are you so interestested in population growth it's what just happens when city's grow, it isn't so hard to figure out why it grew somewhere and declined somewhere else. If you can narrow down your question a bit

**Intrepid Adventurer** · 06-09-2010, 11:05

Originally Posted by Fragony

Why are you so interestested in population growth it's what just happens when city's grow, it isn't so hard to figure out why it grew somewhere and declined somewhere else. If you can narrow down your question a bit

As a matter of fact it's very hard to figure out why and how much a city grew, if you don't have any quantitative sources. That's exactly our problem: there is no ancient source that tells us how many people lived in the city. The reason for a comparative study is this: if you can find a city with a comparable (supposed) number of inhabitants, in a comparable position in the world (i.e. capital of an empire), you might be able to base some conclusions on those facts.

For example, most people believe Rome had about 1 million inhabitants. My study so far shows that this is by no means certain and that it could easily have been half that number. A comparison might support either a higher or a lower number. No, it's not solid science, but it's the best we've got in terms of ancient demography.

**VersusAllOdds** · 06-09-2010, 17:07

I for one know that Baghdad was the centre of Islamic and Arab culture in the medieval times. It is impossible to determine how many people perished during the Fall of Baghdad in 1258, I personally believe that it is up to a million, meaning that the population before that was more than a million. Actually, I think that you can learn more of population of Baghdad researching it's fall than data on it's population before it. Entire Islamic and Arab world was were shaken for decades when it fell... It must have been really large, and very developed.

**Intrepid Adventurer** · 06-10-2010, 09:54

That is exactly the reason my prof and I thought it would be a good comparative study. (:

**aimlesswanderer** · 06-13-2010, 05:28

Hmm, how about Chang'an or Luoyang? They were the capitals of the Han Dynasty at the same time as Imperial Rome was going strong. There is a reasonable amount of info about them I think. There was even a book about the capital cities of China I read, which had lots of info about the cities and their populations.

**Fragony** · 06-22-2010, 15:12

Originally Posted by Intrepid Adventurer

As a matter of fact it's very hard to figure out why and how much a city grew, if you don't have any quantitative sources. That's exactly our problem: there is no ancient source that tells us how many people lived in the city. The reason for a comparative study is this: if you can find a city with a comparable (supposed) number of inhabitants, in a comparable position in the world (i.e. capital of an empire), you might be able to base some conclusions on those facts.

For example, most people believe Rome had about 1 million inhabitants. My study so far shows that this is by no means certain and that it could easily have been half that number. A comparison might support either a higher or a lower number. No, it's not solid science, but it's the best we've got in terms of ancient demography.

Damascus might suit your needs then