On a second thought, Fang Xuanling (房玄齡) must have spent much of his time waiting the horse to be fed.
Oh, this is not (only) because most of the government structure and ordinance of the Tang Empire were planned by Fang. One of his most remarkable achievement - and also of the Empire - was the establishment of an ordered system of road and horse station (驛站): travellers and, more importantly, messengers of military news did not have to stay and wait for their tired horse - they simply changed to another one in the station. There were nearly 1500 stations of this kind in the Empire, and it took just a week or so for one to send urgent military news from Baghdad to Chang'an (長安) - at that time the biggest and the most cosmopolitan city in the world.
(Of course this system showed signs of collapse from the middle of the Tang dynasty - partly explaining why Tang's influence on the mid-Asia diminished. It is a hard task to set up those stations, but 10 times more difficult to maintain them for hundreds of years.)
PS. As I told Vivian some time ago, the transport system of the Tang Empire would be an excellent PhD topic for a person like me.
Oh, this is not (only) because most of the government structure and ordinance of the Tang Empire were planned by Fang. One of his most remarkable achievement - and also of the Empire - was the establishment of an ordered system of road and horse station (驛站): travellers and, more importantly, messengers of military news did not have to stay and wait for their tired horse - they simply changed to another one in the station. There were nearly 1500 stations of this kind in the Empire, and it took just a week or so for one to send urgent military news from Baghdad to Chang'an (長安) - at that time the biggest and the most cosmopolitan city in the world.
(Of course this system showed signs of collapse from the middle of the Tang dynasty - partly explaining why Tang's influence on the mid-Asia diminished. It is a hard task to set up those stations, but 10 times more difficult to maintain them for hundreds of years.)
PS. As I told Vivian some time ago, the transport system of the Tang Empire would be an excellent PhD topic for a person like me.
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