ديوان الخاتم

ديوان الخاتم

The seal registry: Mu'awiya was the first to institute it, appointing Ubayd Allah ibn Aws al-Ghassani and handing him the seal, whose bezel read 'for every deed a recompense'. Its occasion was a warrant for one hundred thousand which a man unsealed and raised to two hundred thousand; when the account came up and Mu'awiya disavowed it he established the diwan al-khatim thenceforth, sealing letters so they could neither be opened nor padded — a practice that lasted among the Abbasid caliphs to their last days ¹.