Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World

Name: Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World
Price: 11.99 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780521858687

ISBN-10: 0521858682

ISBN-13: 9780521858687

Edition: 2007

Authors: Adam J. Silverstein

List price: $109.00

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Description:

Adam Silverstein's book offers a fascinating account of the official methods of communication employed in the Near East from pre-Islamic times through the Mamluk period. Postal systems were set up by rulers in order to maintain control over vast tracts of land. These systems, invented centuries before steam-engines or cars, enabled the swift circulation of different commodities - from letters, people and horses to exotic fruits and ice. As the correspondence transported often included confidential reports from a ruler's province, such postal systems doubled as espionage-networks through which news reached the central authorities quickly enough to allow a timely reaction to events. The book…

Book details

List price: $109.00
Copyright year: 2007
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 6/21/2007
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 230
Size: 6.30" wide x 9.29" long x 0.94" tall
Weight: 1.122
Language: English



List of maps


Acknowledgements


List of abbreviations


Introduction



The Pre-Islamic Background



Pre-Islamic postal systems


The East: Iranian postal systems from the Achaemenids to the Sasanids


The West: the Cursus Publicus from Rome to Byzantium


Communications in pre-Umayyad Arabia



Conquest and Centralisation - the Arabs



al-Barid: the early Islamic postal system



Diwan al-Barid: the Middle Abbasid period



Conquest and Centralisation - the Mongols



The Mongol Yam and its legacy



The Mamluk Barid


Conclusions



distances and speeds of the Barid


Bibliography


Index