Mission to the Volga. Ahmad Ibn Fadlan
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Guide to Further Reading is intended to provide readers, students, and scholars interested in studying the work further with a representative catalogue of secondary scholarship on Ibn Faḍlān and his world. For ease of reference, it is therefore organized according to subject. I hope this will be a useful study aid to what can sometimes be a complicated bibliographical tumult.
I have also prepared the Glossary as a repository of information that, in a publication intended for an academic audience, might be included in the form of annotations to the text. This approach has the added advantage of keeping to a minimum both the glossary and the annotation to the translation. Each glossary entry includes key references to the copious annotations provided by the scholars who have edited and/or translated the work. I hope that, in this way too, this version of the glossary can become a useful study aid.
CONCLUSION
To be sure, Ibn Faḍlan’s account is in many ways a strange book. It has no textual analogues, no other works from the third/ninth or fourth/tenth centuries we can compare it with. Its obsession with eyewitness testimony, connected ultimately with the practice of, and requirements for, giving witness in a court of law, is almost pathological. It contains many wonderful encounters, conversations, dialogues, and formal audiences—and we hear so many non-Muslims speak, from tribesmen of the Ghuzziyyah and the Bulghār king to the Rūs who mocks Ibn Faḍlān for the primitiveness of his religious observances. On top of all this, it is a cracking good read. I hope others enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed translating it and, along the way, kept alive my boyhood love of adventure stories.
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1 Relation, 51.
2 Zetterstéen and Bosworth, “al-Muḳtadir,” 542; Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 188.
3 See Kennedy, Prophet, 187; Zetterstéen and Bosworth, “al-Muktafī.”
4 Zetterstéen and Bosworth, “al-Muḳtadir.”
5 Massignon and Gardet, “al-Ḥallādj,” 102; Massignon, Hallāj. Mystic and Martyr.
6 Shaban, Islamic History: A New Interpretation, 2:149–51.
7 Reisebericht, xx–xxvii.
8 Bukharaev, Islam in Russia, 39.
9 Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama, 170.
10 Riley-Smith, “The State of Mind of Crusaders to the East, 1095–1300.”
11 Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, 53–85; Zamora, “Christopher Columbus’s ‘Letter to the Sovereigns.’”
12 Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution, 34.
13 Edwards, The Story of the Voyage, 26–27.
14 These quotations are also available, with the corresponding Arabic, on the Library of Arabic Literature Web site.
15 This reconstruction is also available, with the corresponding Arabic, on the Library of Arabic Literature Web site.
MISSION TO THE VOLGA
MISSION TO THE VOLGA
1 This is the written account of Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāshid1 ibn Ḥammād, the envoy of al-Muqtadir to the king of the Ṣaqālibah. His patron was Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān.2 It records his observations in the realm of the Turks, the Khazars, the Rūs, the Ṣaqālibah, the Bāshghird, and other peoples. It also includes reports of their various customs and ways of living, their kings, and many other related matters, too.
Baghdad
2 Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān said:3 In the letter of al-Ḥasan, son of Yilṭawār, the king of the Ṣaqālibah, which al-Muqtadir the Commander of the Faithful received, the king petitioned al-Muqtadir to send people to instruct him in law and acquaint him with the rules of Islam according to the sharia, and to construct a mosque and build a minbar from which he could proclaim al-Muqtadir’s name throughout his kingdom. He also beseeched him to build a fort to protect him against the kings who opposed him. His requests were granted.
3 The representative of the king of the Ṣaqālibah at court was Nadhīr al-Ḥaramī.4 I, Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān, was delegated to read al-Muqtadir’s letter to him, to present him with the official gifts designated, and to supervise the jurists and instructors. Nadhīr identified a fixed sum of money to be brought to him, to cover the construction costs and to pay the jurists and instructors. These expenses were to be covered by Arthakhushmīthan, one of the estates of Ibn al-Furāt in Khwārazm. The envoy from the king of the Ṣaqālibah to the caliph was a man named ʿAbdallāh ibn Bāshtū al-Khazarī. The caliph’s envoy was Sawsan al-Rassī. Sawsan’s patron was Nadhīr al-Ḥaramī. Takīn al-Turkī, Bārs al-Ṣaqlābī, and I accompanied him. As I said, I was charged with the following responsibilities: I presented him with the official gifts for him, his wife, children, brothers, and commanders. I also handed over the medication that the king had requested, in writing, from Nadhīr.5
4 We traveled from Baghdad, City of Peace, on Thursday, the twelfth of Safar, 309 [June 21, 921]. We stayed one day in Nahrawān, then rode hard until we reached al-Daskarah, where we stayed three days. Then we traveled without delay or diversion and came to Ḥulwān, where we stayed two days. From there we traveled to Qirmīsīn, where we stayed another two days, and next arrived at Hamadhān, where we stayed three days. We traveled to Sāwah and, after two days, on to Rayy, where we stayed eleven days, until Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī, the brother of Ṣuʿlūk, had left Khuwār al-Rayy. Then we traveled to Khuwār al-Rayy itself and three days later to Simnān, then on to al-Dāmghān, where our caravan happened to encounter Ibn Qārin, who was preaching on behalf of the dāʿī. We concealed our identity and hurried to Nishapur, where we met Ḥammawayh Kūsā, the field marshal of Khurasan. Līlī ibn Nuʿmān had just been killed. Then we proceeded to Sarakhs, Marw, and Qushmahān, at the edge of the Āmul desert. We stayed three days there and changed camels for the desert journey. We crossed the desert to Āmul and then reached Āfr*n, the outpost of Ṭāhir ibn ʿAlī, on the other side of the Jayḥūn.6
Bukhara
5 We traveled via Baykand to Bukhara, where we went straight to al-Jayhānī, the chancellor of the emir of Khurasan, known there as the chief shaykh. He had ordered a residence for us and had appointed someone to attend to all our needs and concerns and make sure that we experienced no difficulty in getting what we wanted. After a few days, he arranged an audience with Naṣr ibn Aḥmad. We discovered that he was still a boy and did not even have a beard. We greeted him as befits an emir. He commanded us to be seated. His very first words were: “How was my patron, the Commander of the Faithful, when you left him? May God give him long life and cherish him, his retinue, and his spiritual companions.” “He was well,” we replied. He said, “May God increase his well-being!” The letter was then read out to him. It gave the following instructions: the estate of Arthakhushmīthan was to be handed over by al-Faḍl ibn Mūsā al-Naṣrānī, Ibn al-Furāt’s agent, to Aḥmad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārazmī; we were to be provided with funds, with a letter to his governor in Khwārazm ordering him not to hinder us, and with a letter to the garrison at the Gate of the Turks, who were to provide us with an escort and not detain us. “Where is Aḥmad ibn Mūsā?” he asked. “We left the City of Peace without him, and he set off four days later,”7 we replied and he said, “I hear and obey the commands of my patron, the Commander of the Faithful, may God give him long life!”
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