Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World

by Adam J. Silverstein

• ISBN13: 9780521858687
• ISBN10: 0521858682
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-07-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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 sheds light not only on the role of communications technology, but also on how nomadic culture contributed to empire-building in the Near East. This is a long-awaited contribution to the history of pre-modern communications systems in the Near Eastern world.

Table of Contents

List of maps	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
List of abbreviations	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
The Pre-Islamic Background	p. 7
Pre-Islamic postal systems	p. 7
The East: Iranian postal systems from the Achaemenids to the Sasanids	p. 7
The West: the Cursus Publicus from Rome to Byzantium	p. 29
Communications in pre-Umayyad Arabia	p. 42
Conquest and Centralisation - the Arabs	p. 53
al-Barid: the early Islamic postal system	p. 53
Diwan al-Barid: the Middle Abbasid period	p. 90
Conquest and Centralisation - the Mongols	p. 141
The Mongol Yam and its legacy	p. 141
The Mamluk Barid	p. 165
Conclusions	p. 186
distances and speeds of the Barid	p. 191
Bibliography	p. 194
Index	p. 209
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