Do you know of any intelligence services that existed during the Third Crusade? I'm planning on writing a story about that period and wish to know a bit more...
Invincibility lies in defence, while the possibility of victory in the attack -Sun Tzu Akouson me, pataxon de (hit me, but first listen to me)-Themistocles to Euribiadis prior to the battle of Salamis.
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Pitt Daimyo
posted 12-15-12 05:05 AM
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What, like the Crusader Intelligence Agency?
Intelligence collection and spying generally was ad hoc for practically all of human history. People like Sir Francis Walsingham were considered spymasters, but their agents reported to them personally, and networks didn't continue after their spymaster's death.
Reading each other's mail and cracking each other's codes and ciphers was commonplace, however.
In Late Antiquity and the early mediaeval period, the Arab world had a relatively advanced understanding of cryptology. The earliest known description of cracking ciphers by using frequency analysis (that is, identifying the most commonly used letters and comparing that to the enciphered text) is attributed to a polymath bearing this monolith of a moniker: Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Is-haq ibn as-Sabbah ibn 'omran ibn Ismaīl al-Kindī.
In the ninth century AD he wrote the treatise A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages.
"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French." - P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins
Terikel Grayhair Imperator
(id: Terikel706)
posted 12-15-12 09:48 AM
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Didn't Caesar use a code where he simply shifted the alphabet over one letter?
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@Pitt I was talking about known spies/assassins of the period. For instance, the Hashshashin were notorious...
Invincibility lies in defence, while the possibility of victory in the attack -Sun Tzu Akouson me, pataxon de (hit me, but first listen to me)-Themistocles to Euribiadis prior to the battle of Salamis.