Mongol Relay Network
The Yam relay system that sped messages and protected merchants across the Mongol Empire's roads in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Overview
The empire built relay stations every 30 to 40 kilometers where mounted couriers changed horses, carrying official messages at speeds unthinkable before, reportedly several hundred kilometers a day on urgent runs. Merchants traveled under the paitze, inscribed paiza tablets serving as diplomatic passports, and ortogh merchant partnerships financed caravans underwritten by Mongol princes. The Pax Mongolica made a single customs zone of much of Eurasia and let the Silk Road reach its commercial peak. Fragmentation after the 1260s and the Black Death of the 1340s, which traveled these same roads, broke the system.
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