Documentary Evidence for the Early History of the Barīd

The Near East is no stranger to land-based empires, and empires have never been able to survive without the ability of rulers to communicate regularly and speedily with the remotest provinces of their lands. The usual method of communication employed by imperial rulers is often referred to as a &s;postal system&s;. It could be argued that the fewer literary sources we possess for a particular subject, the more important documentary sources for the same subject become. In the case of the Barid , this simple formula could not be truer; there is frustratingly little information on the pre-Mamluk Barid in literary sources. However, considering the inherent relevance of documents to pre-modern postal systems, there is surprisingly little non-literary material that sheds light on the early history of the Barid , and it would be impossible to trace the evolution of the Islamic postal system in any detail without using the scattered literary references to the Barid in conjunction with the documentary material.