291 Religious Communities and the Postal System of the Mongol Empire Márton Vér Turkological Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary e-mail: vermarton@gmail.com Abstract It is a well-known fact that at an early stage of the conquests the Mongols recognized the need for a fast and reliable flow of information and commercial goods. This necessity led to the establishment of the postal relay system of the Chinggisid Empire (Turk.: yam, Mong.: ǰam). The empire-wide messenger and postal station system was unprecedented in both size and efficiency, and it became one of the most important institution of the empire. Another well- known fact that the Mongol rulers were highly tolerant towards religious communities and the representatives of the different religions played a very important role in their policy. However both topics were in the centre of scholarly interest during the last decades of research so far we are lack of a detailed analysis of the relations between these two important agents (the ǰam- system and the religious communities) of the Mongol Empire. Among the Old Uyghur texts from East Turkestan around 70 documents can be connected with the postal system of the Chinggisid Empire, from which amount around a dozen of documents contain information concerning representatives of religions or religious communities. The present article, on the one hand, shall summarise what we know about the relations between the postal system and the religious communities in the Chinggisid Empire in general. On the other hand, the connections between the postal system and the religious communities in the eastern part of the Chaghadaid ulus of the Mongol Empire will be analysed in particular, on the basis of the Old Uyghur documents. Key words: Mongol Empire, East Turkestan, postal relay system, religious communities, taxation “The Catholic inquisitors of Europe who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration… a singular conformity may be found between the religious laws of Zingis khan and of Mr. Locke” (Gibbon 1914, 4, fn. 8.) Whatever they (the īlchīs) found in the villages they tyrannically took, and if in one day they came to ten villages and post-houses (khaylkhāna), they would take from all Konferencia kötet section+.indd 291 2017. 09. 21. 15:14