Communications · a Light

The postmaster's real job was reporting on the governor

The barid was the state post, a chain of relay stations along the main roads with fresh mounts waiting at each. It carried official mail, not private letters. Its second function was intelligence: the postmaster in each province reported directly to the caliph on prices, harvests, unrest and the conduct of the governor he lived beside. One such official, Ibn Khurradadhbih, used the road registers to write the earliest surviving Arabic geography of routes, listing stages and distances across the empire. The Mamluks rebuilt the system under Baybars in the thirteenth century, moving despatches from Cairo to Damascus in about four days, with a parallel pigeon service and towers built to receive the birds.

Abbasid and Mamluk state post