Ahmad ibn Fadlan

Ahmad ibn Fadlān ibn al-Abbās ibn Rāšid ibn Hammād (Arabic: أحمد بن فضلان بن العباس بن راشد بن حماد‎) was a 10th century Arab traveler, famous for his account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Arab Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars. His account is most known for providing a description of the Volga Vikings, including an eye-witness account of a ship burial.

Manuscript tradition

For a long time, only an incomplete version of the account was known, as transmitted in the geographical dictionary of Yāqūt (under the headings Atil, Bashgird, Bulghār, Khazar, Khwārizm, Rūs), published in 1823 by Fraehn. Only in 1923 was a manuscript discovered by the Turkic scholar of Bashkir origin Zeki Validi Togan in the Astane Quds Museum, Mashhad, Iran/Persia. The manuscript MS 5229 dates from the 13th century (7th cent. Hijra) and consists of 420 pages (210 folia). Besides other geographical treatises, it contains a fuller version of Ibn Fadlan's text (pp. 390–420). Additional passages not preserved in MS 5229 are quoted in the work of the 16th century Persian geographer Amīn Rāzī called Haft Iqlīm ("Seven Climes").

The Embassy

Ibn Fadlan was sent from Baghdad in 921 to serve as the secretary to an ambassador from the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir to the iltäbär (vassal-king under the Khazars) of the Volga Bulgaria, Almış.

The embassy's objective was to have the king of the Bolğars pay homage to Caliph al-Muqtadir and, in return, to give the king money to pay for the construction of a fortress. Although they reached Bolğar, the mission failed because they were unable to collect the money intended for the king. Annoyed at not receiving the promised sum, the king refused to switch from the Maliki rite to the Hanafi rite of Baghdad.

The embassy left Baghdad on June 21, 921 (Islamic Calendar: 11 Safar 309). It reached the Bulghars after much hardship on May 12, 922 (Islamic Calendar: 12 Muharram 310). (This day is an official religious holiday in modern Tatarstan.) The journey took Ibn Fadlan from Baghdad to Bukhara and Khwarizm (south of the Aral Sea). Although promised safe passage by the Oghuz warlord, or Kudarkin, they were waylaid by Oghuz bandits but luckily were able to bribe their attackers. They spent the winter in Gorgan, Iran before travelling north across the Ural River until they reached the towns of the Bulghars at the three lakes of the Volga north of the Samara bend.

After arriving in Bolğar, Ahmad ibn Fadlan made a trip to Wisu and recorded his observations of trade between the Volga Bolğars and local Finnic tribes.

Rus

Further information: Rus' people

I have seen the Rus as they came on their merchant journeys and encamped by the Itil. I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy; they wear neither tunics nor kaftans, but the men wear a garment which covers one side of the body and leaves a hand free. Each man has an axe, a sword, and a knife, and keeps each by him at all times. Each woman wears on either breast a box of iron, silver, copper, or gold; the value of the box indicates the wealth of the husband. Each box has a ring from which depends a knife. The women wear neck-rings of gold and silver. Their most prized ornaments are green glass beads. They string them as necklaces for their women.

Ibn Fadlan, on the Rus merchants at Itil, 922.

A substantial cut of Ibn Fadlan's account is dedicated to the description of a people he called the Rūs روس or Rūsiyyah. Most scholars identify them with the Rus' or Varangians, which would make Ibn Fadlan's account one of the earliest portrayals of Vikings.

The Rūs appear as traders who set up shop on the river banks nearby the Bolğar camp. They are described as having bodies tall as (date) palm-trees, with blond hair and ruddy skin. They are tattooed from "fingernails to neck" with dark blue or dark green "tree patterns" and other "figures" and that all men are armed with an axe and a long knife.

Ibn Fadlan describes the Rus as "perfect physical specimens" and the hygiene of the Rūsiyyah as disgusting (while also noting with some astonishment that they comb their hair every day) and considers them vulgar and unsophisticated. In that, his impressions contrast those of the Persian traveler Ibn Rustah. He also describes in great detail the funeral of one of their chieftains (a ship burial involving human sacrifice). Some scholars believe that it took place in the modern Balymer complex.

Fiction

Elements of Ibn Fadlan's account are used in the novel Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton (adapted to film in The 13th Warrior with Antonio Banderas as Ibn Fadlan), in which the Arab ambassador is taken even further north and is involved in adventures inspired by the Old English epic Beowulf. Indeed Crichton designed "Eaters of the Dead" as being a fictional version of the historic events which created the basis of the epic "Beowulf".

A major Arabic TV series, The Roof of the World or Saqf al-Alam, (Arabic: سقف العالم‎), was produced in 2007 charting Ibn Fadlan's journey from a contemporary perspective. The 30 one-hour episodes tackle the relations between Islam and Europe at two moments: the time of Ibn Fadlan and the present. The motivation for the series was the 2005 Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in Denmark.

See also

• List of Arab scientists and scholars
• List of Islamic scholars
• Nabidh
• Elteber
• Volga Bulgaria

Further reading

• Flowers, Stephen E. (1998). Ibn Fadlan's Travel-Report: As It Concerns the Scandinavian Rüs. Smithville, Texas: Rûna-Raven. OCLC 496024366. 
• Gordon, Stewart (2009). When Asia Was the World. [Cambridge, Mass.]: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-81739-7. OCLC 191926190. 

http://www.sammustafa.com/Resources/Fadlan.pdf

References

• Ibn Faḍlān, Aḥmad; Frähn, Christian Martin (1823) (in German). Ibn Foszląn's und anderer Araber Berichte über die Russen älterer Zeit. Text und Übersetzung mit kritisch-philologischen Ammerkungen. Nebst drei Breilagen über sogenannte Russen-Stämme und Kiew, die Warenger und das Warenger-Meer, und das Land Wisu, ebenfalls nach arabischen Schriftstellern. Von C. M. Frähn. Saint-Petersburg: aus der Buchdruckerei der Akademie. OCLC 457333793. 
• Ibn-Faḍlān, Ahmad (1988) (in French). Voyage chez les Bulgares de la Volga. trad. Canard, Marius; Miquel, Andre. Paris: Sindbad. OCLC 255663160. 
• al-Faqih, Ibn; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad, Aḥmad Ibn Faḍlān, Misʻar Ibn Muhalhil Abū Dulaf al-Khazrajī, Fuat Sezgin, M. Amawi, A. Jokhosha, and E. Neubauer (1987). Collection of Geographical Works: Reproduced from MS 5229 Riḍawīya Library, Mashhad. Frankfurt am Main: I. H. A. I. S. at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. OCLC 469349123. 

External links

• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 3 (2000), containing "Ibn Fadlan and the Rūsiyyah", by James E. Montgomery, with an annotated translation of the part of the account pertaining to the Rus.
• Judith Gabriel, Among the Norse tribes, 1990, Saudi Aramco World
• Encyclopedia of Ukraine
• Muslim heritage
• Kroraina (in Bulgarian)