In this study of one of the fundamental institutions of the Islamic empire in the Middle East, Silverstein surveys the history of the band, or state postal and intelligence network, of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates and its various manifestations under subsequent successor states down to the Mamluk period. He also compares the band with the Mongol post, the yam, which included what was "perhaps the longest postal route in pre-modern history", linking Europe and the Far East. This is institutional history in the tongue duree, synthesising for the first time much material previously confined to scholarship with narrower geographical and chronological parameters, as well as breaking entirely new ground, particularly on the pre-Islamic Arabian and early caliphal band. This long view brings out the great importance of communications to the Arabian and Mongol nomad empires of the pre-modern Middle East, and the extent to which the interaction of their respective nomadic cultures with the institutions of settled empire led to the development of astonishingly swift communications networks.
展开▼
