Barid (caliphate)

The barīd (Arabic: بريد‎‎, often translated as Postal Service) was the state-run courier service of the Umayyad and later Abbasid Caliphates. A major institution in the early Islamic state, the barid was not only responsible for the overland delivery of official correspondence throughout the empire, but it additionally functioned as a domestic intelligence agency, which informed the caliphs on events in the provinces and the activities of government officials.

The etymology of the Arabic word barid has been described by historian Richard N. Frye as "unclear". A Babylonian origin has been suggested by late-19th-century scholars who offered the following disputed explanation: berīd = Babyl. buridu (for the older *(p)burādu) = 'courier' and 'fast horse'. It has also been proposed that, since the barid institution appears to have been adopted from the courier systems previously maintained by both the Byzantines and Persian Sassanids, the word barid could be derived from the Late Latin veredus ("post horse") or the Persian buridah dum ("having a docked tail," in reference to the postal mounts).

The Muslim barid was apparently based upon the courier organizations of their predecessors, the Byzantines and Sassanids. Postal systems had been present in the Middle East throughout Antiquity, with several pre-Islamic states having operated their own services. A local tradition of obliging the population living next to roads to carry the luggage of passing soldiers and officials, or of having the entire population contribute pack animals to the state as in Ptolemaic Egypt, has been documented since at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire and had been enforced by Roman legislation in the 4th century.

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