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MeatballDom t1_j5wx49l wrote

Reply to comment by Iron_Man_88 in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

By area? Population? and how do you define conquered?

There's been a lot of great cities that have been sacked, raided, or completely taken over by a new government, but in many cases the population had greatly dwindled by that time (e.g. Rome in its later years, Constantinople).

Then you have to think about effect and if you're including that. The Fall of Constantinople had a huge effect, as did the conquering of Tenochtitlán, which while not the biggest city to ever exist, did hold a lot of importance to the region and the resistance, and its fall reverberated quite widely.

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Iron_Man_88 t1_j5x8tn8 wrote

Largest by population at the time it was conquered by war (a 100,000 pop city in antiquity would be massive even if it's not large by today's standards) - city does not necessarily need to have survived the war.

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nanoman92 t1_j5yub1h wrote

Niniveh by the Babylonians (100k), Rome by Alaric (500k), Ctesiphon by the Arabs (500k), Bagdad (1M) by the Mongols were the largest cities in the world when conquered.

Niniveh and Babylon were razed, in Rome and Ctesiphon the sacks wasn't that bad.

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