Susan in NC’s Reviews > Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention > Status Update

“ But where medieval cities excelled was in the development of humankind’s most technologically complex machine before the spacecraft: the ship. The evolution of the Venetian great galley, the Hanseatic cog and the Portuguese caravel and carrack as vessels, interchangeably, of war and commerce was the work primarily of the competing European maritime cities.”

“ Business always came first. The Hansa fought for gold and profit, not God and country; they were led not by kings, earls and knights, but by merchants, town councillors and mayors.”

“ In 1252 bankers from Genoa and Florence began minting gold coins. Bullion coin had not been issued on the continent for well over five centuries. Gold, credit and global trade heralded the rejuvenation of the European economy and the rebirth of cities.”

“ The destruction, in the thirteenth century, of several global cities—Palembang, Merv, Kiev, Baghdad and Constantinople—disrupted ancient patterns of world trade. But this titanic disruption sparked the emergence of new cities and urban cultures. The thirteenth century was to be pivotal in the history of urbanisation.”

“By pioneering smart-city technologies and green policies and trumpeting its architecture, cleanliness, safety and quality of life, [Singapore] offers an Asian alternative to the West. Placed deliberately at the centre of the Asian Civilisations Museum, the Belitung shipwreck, and the world it represents, foregrounds a time when Asia was the world’s urban powerhouse and Europe was an unsophisticated…backwater.”

“…we know more about Uruk in the fourth millennium BC than we do about Palembang in the eleventh century AD. Indeed, much of the medieval Indian Ocean urban world is like that: it was an ever-shifting, free-flowing, outward-looking culture, that left scant remains in its wake.”

“Palembang was where the traders of the two greatest empires on earth, those of the Abbasid caliphate and the Tang dynasty, encountered one another. For centuries a booming, busy, cosmopolitan place, Palembang ranks as one of the great vanished world metropolises of history. Unfortunately, not much remains of the city; the Sri Vijayan Empire was wiped off the face of the earth in the thirteenth century…”

“ One of the hallmarks of the Islamic renaissance was the way in which masses of knowledge—both ancient and modern—were brought together, synthesised, and simplified for everyday use. In other words, it was utilitarian. Mathematics, astronomy and geography were the keys to world mastery because they produced, among other things, maps and navigational aids.”

“ By the middle of the ninth century Baghdad was by far the biggest storehouse of knowledge in the world. The Bait al-Hikma—the House of Wisdom—was a massive royal archive of manuscripts and books. The concept of Baghdad as the “crossroads of the universe” did not just apply to trade.”

“ The Abbasid caliphs regarded their city as “the navel of the universe,” and its perfect roundness was an embodiment of that metaphor. Mesopotamia was considered to be the centre of the world, and Baghdad the centre of Mesopotamia.”