Great Cities Rise and Fall

The history of man, it is said, can be read as a series of metropolises risen and fallen.

Sure, Athens and Rome are still there with their legacy of grandeur and glory.  Yet there are more great cities throughout history that are difficult to find on the map now.  Either their names have been changed, which isn’t such a dreadful fate, or they have simply ceased to be.

Earlier than Athens and Rome were those civilizations and great cities by the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris rivers and along the Silk Road.

There was Babylon.  There were the cities of Persepolis, Nineveh and Thebes.  And Samarkand.  Bactra once lorded it over, too.  Where in the world are they now?

Babylon had existed for centuries, from about 4000 BC when it was first settled.  Its political prominence and commercial and cultural dominance reached their zenith in 1850 BC.  It slowly imploded by the second century BC.  Babylon, located in what is now Al Hillah, was in Mesopotamia, now Iraq.  Babylon was Babel in the Bible.

Thebes was another famed ancient city that rose around 2200 BC.  Its height was in the 14th century BC when its wealth included foreign tributes.  By AD 21, the city of power and wealth had become a village.  Luxor in Egypt now stands near where Thebes used to be.

Like Babylon and Thebes, Nineveh is as old as the Bible’s Old Testament period.  Built around 1800 BC, it is as ancient as the Assyrians.  Nineveh’s peak was in 700 BC.  By 612 BC, it was annihilated as the Assyrian Empire ended.  Nineveh once stood in what is now Mosul, Iraq.

In a remote and mountainous region Persepolis was built in the 6th century BC as the capital of the Achaemenian Empire.  It was plundered in the 4th century BC by Alexander the Great, fell under the Macedonian Empire, and was reduced further after Alexander’s death.

Bactra, the capital of Bactria in Central Asia, held importance between 600 BC and AD 600 as a center of commerce and exchange of ideas.  Its relevance ended in the middle of the 7th century, after the Muslim conquest.  Bactra is Balkh, in what is now Afghanistan.

Samarkand, which existed since the 4th century BC, at its peak was Tamerlane’s empire capital.  Its decline was such that it even became uninhabited sometime in the 16th century.  It is in the east-central part of what is now Uzbekistan.

Then the Mediterranean Sea became the means for commerce and prosperity.  The cities of Alexandria, Athens, Carthage, Constantinople, Rome and Tyre emerged.

Outside of the known world, in the fastness of the then uncharted continent now known as Central and South America, are the Aztec, Mayan and Incan cities.

The Middle Ages saw capitalism’s beginnings.  The seats of power and wealth were the independent dukedoms of Florence, Genoa, Pisa and Venice.  These cities are now all part of present Italy.

The passing of centuries had newer cities overtake these Medieval overlords as centers of trade and wealth.

History points out that urban prosperity are caused by positive environments that are helpful to trade.  A capable administration, trustworthy legal and commercial institutions, and fair taxes have made cities flourish.  Their industrialization was also sped up by access to resources and the skilled labor of their citizens.

Deemed most important though for cities to achieve greatness is freedom and religious tolerance.  These attract minority groups, artists, scientists, philosophers, and skilled labor that they take along with them.  A convergence of differences, open-mindedness and strong institutions thus gives vibrancy to cities and make them great.  The absence of all this means slow decay and eventual implosion of cities.

Social and political strife are also known causes of decayed cities.  Others implode because of greed.  Maintaining or protecting commercial interests through costly military campaigns is its virulent expression.

The death toll of the Black Death in Medieval Europe which hastened the decline of the Mediterranean port cities showed that metropolises implode when their greatest resource, their people, are decimated by disease.

The 5th century Greek historian Herodotus had thus spoken to all the ages when he observed that “The cities that were formerly great, have most of them become insignificant, and such as are at present powerful, were weak in olden times.”

Today we only need to read the news to know which cities are the world’s greats.  It does take centuries for cities to rise and fall, one may note.  But like the great humans that inhabit them, they too meet their end.

(2006)