Coal is one of the most important minerals that is the source of energy production in many industries. That is, the extraction of this mineral is of special importance. The most important methods of underground extraction of this mineral are the room and pillar method and the longwall mining method. The focus of this research is on the room and pillar method. The design and stability of the pillars is a complex issue in the field of panel control in the room and pillar mining method. The key role of the pillars is to bear the weight of the overburden load. The pillars in the room and pillar mining can be divided into two categories: production (panel) pillars and barrier pillars. The stability of these pillars determines the overall stability in the extractive panels. Various approaches have been proposed by researchers for designing production pillars which their sustainability has been highly considered. In contrast, so far, no systematic method has been proposed for designing barrier pillars; just a few experimental relationships, each specific to a specific region. While in none of them the base resistance and the load applied to the base during the room and pillar mining process has been considered. The main purpose of this thesis is to develop an analytical-empirical method to design barrier pillars. In this method, the loads on the panel and its strength during the mining process are considered. Therefore, considering what kind of loads the pillar may withstand during the mining operations, a proposed method for designing barrier pillars in eight steps is presented. In this method, the barrier strength is estimated using the Mark-Bieniawski experimental relationship. There are two different kinds of loads applied to barrier pillars: development load and side abutment loads which development load is estimated using the tributary area theory and side abutment loads are considering the theory of destruction using simple mathematical equations relatively. Also, the safety factor for the initial design of the barrier pillars is 1.5 and during the recovery-phase is 0.8. Finally, the proposed method was used in the central Tabas coal mine (zones P5 and P6), where the initial width of the barrier pillar was 21.4m and its width was 14.8m in the recovery phase.