Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World write by Adam J. Silverstein. This book was released on 2007-06-21. Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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 provinces, 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 in Islamic history, 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.
The Secret World
The Secret World - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Secret World write by Christopher M. Andrew. This book was released on 2018-01-01. The Secret World available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The first-ever detailed, comprehensive history of intelligence, from Moses and Sun Tzu to the present day The history of espionage is far older than any of today's intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the most successful World War II intelligence agency, were completely unaware that their predecessors in earlier moments of national crisis had broken the codes of Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars and those of Spain before the Spanish Armada. Those who do not understand past mistakes are likely to repeat them. Intelligence is a prime example. At the outbreak of World War I, the grasp of intelligence shown by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was not in the same class as that of George Washington during the Revolutionary War and leading eighteenth-century British statesmen. In this book, the first global history of espionage ever written, distinguished historian Christopher Andrew recovers much of the lost intelligence history of the past three millennia--and shows us its relevance.
Late Ottoman Origins of Modern Islamic Thought
Late Ottoman Origins of Modern Islamic Thought - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Late Ottoman Origins of Modern Islamic Thought write by Andrew Hammond. This book was released on 2022-11-17. Late Ottoman Origins of Modern Islamic Thought available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In this major contribution to Muslim intellectual history, Andrew Hammond offers a vital reappraisal of the role of Late Ottoman Turkish scholars in shaping modern Islamic thought. Focusing on a poet, a sheikh and his deputy, Hammond re-evaluates the lives and legacies of three key figures who chose exile in Egypt as radical secular forces seized power in republican Turkey: Mehmed Akif, Mustafa Sabri and Zahid Kevseri. Examining a period when these scholars faced the dual challenge of non-conformist trends in Islam and Western science and philosophy, Hammond argues that these men, alongside Said Nursi who remained in Turkey, were the last bearers of the Ottoman Islamic tradition. Utilising both Arabic and Turkish sources, he transcends disciplinary conventions that divide histories along ethnic, linguistic and national lines, highlighting continuities across geographies and eras. Through this lens, Hammond is able to observe the long-neglected but lasting impact that these Late Ottoman thinkers had upon Turkish and Arab Islamist ideology.
The dromos and Byzantine Communications, Diplomacy, and Bureaucracy, 518–1204
The dromos and Byzantine Communications, Diplomacy, and Bureaucracy, 518–1204 - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The dromos and Byzantine Communications, Diplomacy, and Bureaucracy, 518–1204 write by Jason Fossella. This book was released on 2023-09-25. The dromos and Byzantine Communications, Diplomacy, and Bureaucracy, 518–1204 available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The postal system of the Byzantine Empire, the cursus publicus or dromos, was a pony express-style system of routes and relays, capable of moving messages at up to 100 miles (160 km) per day. In this fascinating book, Jason Fossella describes the infrastructure, operations, and administration of the dromos. Drawing on sources as varied as papyri, seals, inscriptions, and ancient histories, the author examines how the dromos was integrated into Byzantine society and influenced the development of Byzantine diplomacy, ceremony, and religion, demonstrating that it played a key role in the development of Byzantine imperial power.
Medieval Islamic Maps
Medieval Islamic Maps - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Medieval Islamic Maps write by Karen C. Pinto. This book was released on 2016-11-01. Medieval Islamic Maps available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Hundreds of exceptional cartographic images are scattered throughout medieval and early modern Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscript collections. The plethora of copies created around the Islamic world over the course of eight centuries testifies to the enduring importance of these medieval visions for the Muslim cartographic imagination. With Medieval Islamic Maps, historian Karen C. Pinto brings us the first in-depth exploration of medieval Islamic cartography from the mid-tenth to the nineteenth century. Pinto focuses on the distinct tradition of maps known collectively as the Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik, or KMMS), examining them from three distinct angles—iconography, context, and patronage. She untangles the history of the KMMS maps, traces their inception and evolution, and analyzes them to reveal the identities of their creators, painters, and patrons, as well as the vivid realities of the social and physical world they depicted. In doing so, Pinto develops innovative techniques for approaching the visual record of Islamic history, explores how medieval Muslims perceived themselves and their world, and brings Middle Eastern maps into the forefront of the study of the history of cartography.
