A town in the hot desert, on a river

With what grows here (barley and dredge, wheat), this land can feed a town of about 36,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Toulouse around 1300.

Build a town in the hot desert, on a river

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 13 km around, 1 day by cart (comfortable). About 420 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 26 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). Grown to 150,000 people, its grain comes from 51 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile). A city of 1,000,000 cannot live off this land alone.

In history

Egypt lived by the Nile's flood. Monsoon rains on the Ethiopian Highlands between May and August swelled the river, and the first rise showed at Aswan as early as June. Farmers walled their land into basins, let the flood in, closed them for about 45 days while the silt settled, then drained them and sowed; the harvest came three or four months later, and in the dry season nothing grew. Officials read the rise on nilometers, such as the stairway of 52 steps on Elephantine at the southern border, and the height of the flood set the year's tax. Records from AD 622 to 999 show that on average 28% of floods fell short.

In the Sonoran Desert, around today's Phoenix, the Hohokam led the Salt and Gila rivers into the most complex canal network of the Americas before European contact. They grew maize, beans, squash, cotton and tobacco, and traded for shell from the Gulf of California and parrots from central Mexico. Their canals were earth ditches that needed constant upkeep. In the mid-14th century repeated floods deepened the Salt River's bed and tore away the canal heads; the Hohokam extended them upstream, new floods carried the extensions off, and after 1375 most villages and canals of the lower Salt valley were abandoned.

How large a city?

PeopleGrain fromBy cartVillagesScholarsBy ship to fit in a day
3,0007 km around0.5 days (comfortable)12012–
10,00013 km around1 day (comfortable)42040–
40,00026 km around1.5 days (strained)1,70016015%
150,00051 km around2.5 days (fragile)6,20060080%
1,000,000130 km around5.5 days (not by land alone)42,0004,000more than ships can bring

Living there

There are no woods to spare here. The town needs about 5,300 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops: it burns straw (about 7,100 tonnes a year), dung and brush, and buys the rest. Provisional figure.

Its market sells grain, rice, flax, cotton and dates, and buys timber and iron. About 23 market towns stand in its countryside.

About 40% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 39%, fish 35%, gardens 26%. That is some 3,500 livestock units on 52 km² of pasture, and about 680 fishers in 170 boats. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

  • A low flood means hunger: if the river does not rise high enough, the upper fields stay dry. A flood too high washes away villages, dykes and canals.
  • The river sets the calendar. Flooded fields give one harvest and then lie bare through the dry season, so the granaries must last until the next flood.
  • The river can drop away from its own canals. A flood that scours the bed leaves the intakes hanging above the water, and the network has to be dug again further upstream.
  • Whoever holds the gauge holds the tax. Nilometers often stood inside temples where only priests and rulers could enter, and their reading decided what every farmer owed.
  • The dams are the town's throat. In 1788 and 1789 the emir of Bukhara razed Merv, on the Murghab, broke its dams and deported about 100,000 people of the oasis.

Hard years

About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 530 of the 1,800 tonnes of grain its land gives it, and the water lets it bring the gap in. A plague that kills 39% of the town, as the Black Death did in Europe's towns, would leave about 680 km² of its fields idle.

What it can make

Grain, Rice, Flax, Cotton, Dates, Dye plants, Orchards, Herbs, Maize, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides, Cheese, Pigs and bacon (at a cost), Goats, Camels, Honey and wax, Fish, Shipyards (at a cost)

What its land cannot give, a town here must buy: timber.

What it lives on

Barley and dredge, Wheat

Underground

What a city digs depends on the rock under it: Granite, Volcanic rock, Ultramafic rock (peridotite, serpentinite), Schist and gneiss, Marble, Limestone and chalk, Sandstone, shale and clay, Salt beds, River gravels and sands

Found here

Gathered (Rerum): Agave Leaf, Aloe Vera Gel, Beetle Wing, Bighorn Sheep Meat, Camel Fat, Capers, Century Plant Fibre, Aguamiel

Hear it

Hot Desert in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the hot desert, A town in the hot desert, on the coast

By city size

1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000

Sources

Open the city builder — MGS Toolbox