How did Baghdad at its apogee compare to Rome at the height of the Roman empire?

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To get a sense of scale, the town in the background here is the small circle labelled Samarra in the middle of the first map I posted, while the mosque is the square a bit northeast of it.

about 12 km by 2 km

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This might be what the 'Round City' in Baghdad looked like. It was only the very center of the city though.

Any idea on how many people lived or worked there?

WE

I looked it up but couldn't find anything. I did find a book claiming roughly half a million for Baghdad though.

>Baghdad wasn't a massive trade hub
>Arabs weren't traders by practice
>Romans weren't brutal as fuck

wew
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why do muslims love octagons so much

There's loads of information on the city here byt the way; bisi.ac.uk/sites/bisi.localhost/files/Northedge_Historical_Topography_of_Samarra_I.pdf

Apparently the round city idea came from Persia, specifically Firuzabad. I guess an octagon with straight walls was just easier to build or something.

couldnt possibly be that they were the cradle of agricultural civilisation and worshipped the sun as god or anything

Thanks for the book, just one question before I get cozy with it.

Why did they move the capital to Samarra? It's not that far away, what was the point?

>Baghdad wasn't a massive trade hub
Overland trade is more difficult. Baghdad had good access to the Tigris, Euphrates and Persian gulf, but judging by the population around these areas it was much smaller than the resources around the Mediterranean.

>Arabs weren't traders by practice
>Romans weren't brutal as fuck
The Arabs could be brutal and the Romans were also good traders. This doesn't discount geographical differences.

Sorry if this triggers you, if it is any consolation it is due to geography not inferiority/superiority.

That myth has been debunked many times.

The Turkish and other mercenary armies of the caliphate ware generally disliked by the population of Baghdad, so the caliph al-Mu'tasim decided to move the regiments and the court to a new location away from the general population. Samarra was a good location because there were already canals and structures there from Sassanid times, which the Abbasids restored and extended. It was basically a military and nobility city, filled with palaces and army cantonments rather than a large civilian population (except for the likes of artisans and servants). Think of it as the Abbasid version of Versailles, putting some space between the elite and the masses.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Samarra#Foundation

>Overland trade
>Baghdad had good access to the Tigris, Euphrates and Persian gulf
Pick one.
Look, most estimates give Baghdad's population as fluctuating between 500,000-1,200,000 people for the pre-Mongol Islamic period. Sorry if this triggers you.

>by the population around these areas it was much smaller than the resources around the Mediterranean.
Those areas were generally more densely populated than the Mediterranean at pretty much any time before the last 700 years or so, excluding a few outliers like Egypt (where settlement still followed the Nile more than the coast.)

Rivers were just as good if not better as seas.

What other cities had a population of a million or more? I know Angkor, Beijing (and some other Chinese cities) and Tokyo probably did.

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Another example of powerful inland urbanization following rivers: China, where metropolises commonly reached 1 million people as well. You better believe the large cities were major trade hubs as well.

Constantnople was that big

Some people claim Alexandria and even Cairo briefly reached that amount, but it's shaky.
Siamese Ayutthaya reached 1 million in the 18th century, which is a plausible number for the time.

But London and other Western capitals realyl were a special case. The populations of the largest cities just exploded in the 19th century. Suddenly it went from "maybe 1 million and occasionally collapsing" to "2, 3, 4, 5 millions." It was insane.

Tokyo is a new thing. maybe some Indian city along the Ganges

Rome didn't need to be fed by the entire Mediterranean. It just skimmed off the excess of the Nile, North Africa, and Southern Gaul harvest for free. Baghdad had incredible harvests at its doorstep, and with its trade income could pay for any more it needed further away in Basra or the Jazira, utilizing the rivers for cheap transport.

Finally, Rome was also an inland city on a river.

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Constantinople was only about 750,000 at its height, before the Plague of Justinian.

>Siamese Ayutthaya reached 1 million in the 18th century, which is a plausible number for the time.
I've read that but I find it really hard to believe. What's it based on? Ayutthaya wasn't especially extensive (it was nowhere near the size of Angkor), and Southeast Asian cities usually weren't very densely populated. European descriptions of the city describe it as somewhat underpopulated for its size. It was still a huge city, but I think 1 million is an exaggeration.

>500,000-1,200,000
Rome's estimated population was between a million and 1.5 million. Unless you want to cherry pick you would be hard pressed to claim that peak Rome was smaller than peak Baghdad.

>Sorry if this triggers you.
not a romaboo, just saying

>more densely populated
not as much of a factor if you can ship the grain to one place

>Rivers were just as good if not better as seas.
>a few outliers like Egypt
Of course, Rome received a large proportion of its grain from Egypt which was taken on barges down the Nile to Alexandria and shipped to Rome. Grain was free at various points.

This is Egypt alone, it doesn't include North Africa, Spain, Gaul, Greece, Anatolia, Dacia and the Levant. Rome just had more resources.

China produces vastly more food than Mesopotamia as evidenced by its population. If you were arguing that some Chinese city was superior to Rome that would be more compelling.

You could also argue quality > quantity and Baghdad made better use of its lower amount of resources, not needing a huge population of slaves for instance. Though you can't claim it is hands down superior.

>Rome's population of one million was only surpassed by London in the 1800s.

Not even close to accurate.>What other cities had a population of a million or more?

A bunch

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history

Tokyo apparently had over a million people during the Shogunate, then dropped to about half that after the Meiji Restoration before recovering later in the 19th century, at least according to this; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_Japan_by_population_by_decade

Well, take it account that your painting is about 50 years older than the time when it is claimed it had 1 million people, and Ayutthaya actually seems to have greatly improved after the Siamese Revolution. Its importance in East Asian trade networks apparently increased.
Given that it was already compared to Paris in the 17th century, it's not difficult to believe it may have almost doubled in size in a few decades, especially if they started settling outside of the walled island. This happened to quite a few cities.

Well the city was described as underpopulated around 1690 and it was destroyed in 1767, so it would have to experience massive growth to reach a million people in that time frame. I suppose it's not impossible though, especially if the city did improve after the revolution like you said (I always assumed the opposite, but then again I suppose the movement of the court from Lopburi back to Ayutthaya would have encouraged growth).

I have a feeling that the Khmers are really just afraid of living inna jungle and so sprawled the shit out of their city.

Osaka was above 1m too

Baghdad probably had much less degeneracy going on to be honest

>the city was described as underpopulated around 1690
Makes sense if many people fled the unrest and later came back once things settled down.

>I suppose the movement of the court from Lopburi back to Ayutthaya would have encouraged growth
Another likely cause for the increased prosperity was king Thai Sa/Sanphet IX, who greatly developed the infrastructure and sea trade between 1709 and 1733. Seems he also beat the Cambodians into paying tribute to Siam.

I suppose a million isn't so unlikely then, but I'm still not sure what the number is based on. Is there some record or foreign account (since the Thai records were destroyed in 1767), or it is based on archaeology or something else?

dunno it was pretty degenerate in 1001 arabian nights

If you're interested, the following book devotes several pages (Chapter 5, page 93 onward) to compiling estimates of the city's size and checking them against city plans and maps:
gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=877843AE22BC8997036B07E4F223FAA7

This site also has better quality maps and discussions:

ayutthaya-history.com/Geo_OldCarto1.html
ayutthaya-history.com/Essays_MappingIudea.html
ayutthaya-history.com/Geo_Street.html

Thanks for these, I'll check out that book.