Mission to the Volga Read online

  MISSION TO THE VOLGA

  LIBRARY OF ARABIC LITERATURE

  EDITORIAL BOARD

  GENERAL EDITOR

  Philip F. Kennedy, New York University

  EXECUTIVE EDITORS

  James E. Montgomery, University of Cambridge

  Shawkat M. Toorawa, Yale University

  EDITORS

  Sean Anthony, The Ohio State University

  Julia Bray, University of Oxford

  Michael Cooperson, University of California, Los Angeles

  Joseph E. Lowry, University of Pennsylvania

  Maurice Pomerantz, New York University Abu Dhabi

  Tahera Qutbuddin, University of Chicago

  Devin J. Stewart, Emory University

  EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

  Chip Rossetti

  DIGITAL PRODUCTION MANAGER

  Stuart Brown

  ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR

  Gemma Juan-Simó

  FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM COORDINATOR

  Amani Al-Zoubi

  LETTER FROM THE GENERAL EDITOR

  The Library of Arabic Literature series offers Arabic editions and English translations of significant works of Arabic literature, with an emphasis on the seventh to nineteenth centuries. The Library of Arabic Literature thus includes texts from the pre-Islamic era to the cusp of the modern period, and encompasses a wide range of genres, including poetry, poetics, fiction, religion, philosophy, law, science, history, and historiography.

  Books in the series are edited and translated by internationally recognized scholars and are published in parallel-text format with Arabic and English on facing pages, and are also made available as English-only paperbacks.

  The Library encourages scholars to produce authoritative, though not necessarily critical, Arabic editions, accompanied by modern, lucid English translations. Its ultimate goal is to introduce the rich, largely untapped Arabic literary heritage to both a general audience of readers as well as to scholars and students.

  The Library of Arabic Literature is supported by a grant from the New York University Abu Dhabi Institute and is published by NYU Press.

  Philip F. Kennedy

  General Editor, Library of Arabic Literature

  ABOUT THIS PAPERBACK

  This paperback edition differs in a few respects from its dual-language hard-cover predecessor. Because of the compact trim size the pagination has changed, but paragraph numbering has been retained to facilitate cross-referencing with the hardcover. Material that referred to the Arabic edition has been updated to reflect the English-only format, and other material has been corrected and updated where appropriate. For information about the Arabic edition on which this English translation is based and about how the LAL Arabic text was established, readers are referred to the hardcover.

  MISSION TO THE VOLGA

  BY

  AḤMAD IBN FAḌLĀN

  TRANSLATED BY

  JAMES E. MONTGOMERY

  FOREWORD BY

  TIM SEVERIN

  VOLUME EDITOR

  SHAWKAT M. TOORAWA

  NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

  New York

  NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

  New York

  Copyright © 2017 by New York University

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ibn Fadlan, Ahmad, active 922 author. | Montgomery, James E. (James Edward), 1962– translator. | Toorawa, Shawkat M. editor. | Severin, Timothy author of foreword.

  Title: Mission to the Volga / by Ahmad ibn Fadlan ; translated by James E. Montgomery ; foreword by Tim Severin ; volume editor, Shawkat M. Toorawa.

  Other titles: Kitab al-Rihlah ila malik al-Saqalibah. English

  Description: New York : New York University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016038305 | ISBN 9781479899890 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781479826698 (e-book) | ISBN 9781479829750 (e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Tatarstan (Russia)—Description and travel. | Bulgars (Turkic people)—Russia (Federation)—Volga River Region—History. | Ibn Fadlan, Ahmad, active 922—Travel—Asia, Central. | Volga River Region (Russia)—History.

  Classification: LCC DK511.T17 I2313 2017 | DDC 914.7/45042—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038305

  New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

  Series design and composition by Nicole Hayward

  Typeset in Adobe Text

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Josh, for the journey

  CONTENTS

  Letter from the General Editor

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Notes to the Introduction

  Map: Ibn Faḍlānʼs Route to the Volga

  MISSION TO THE VOLGA

  Baghdad

  Bukhara

  Khwārazm

  Al-Jurjāniyyah

  The Ghuzziyyah

  The Bajanāk

  The Bāshghird

  The Bulghārs

  The Rūsiyyah

  The Khazars

  YĀQŪT’S QUOTATIONS FROM THE BOOK OF IBN FAḌLĀN

  Ibn Faḍlān’s Logbook: An Imagined Reconstruction

  Notes

  Glossary of Names and Terms

  Bibliography

  Further Reading

  Index

  About the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute

  About the Translator

  The Library of Arabic Literature

  FOREWORD

  TIM SEVERIN

  I was still a university student the only time I rode with a camel caravan. A gang of Baluch tribesmen were smuggling contraband to Hormuz on the shores of the Persian Gulf and had chosen to take an obscure track through highland wilderness to avoid police checkpoints. Marco Polo was likely to have used the same trail on his way to Cathay—I was trying to retrace his path using his description of the terrain—and the caravan was very small, some twenty beasts. The Baluch walked, leading the animals, but I had a broken foot so was permitted to perch up on an extremely uncomfortable saddle. I travelled with them for only a few days, but the memory of the discomfort is enough for me to appreciate what Ibn Faḍlān must have endured as he accompanied the mission to the Volga. Also I shared his sense of unease about the rapacity of his companions of the road.

  In his tale, Ibn Faḍlān comes across as someone trying to make the best of a disagreeable but unavoidable situation. You sense his alarm when the citizens of al-Jurjāniyyah, the last city in Khwārazm before he enters the realm of the semi-nomadic Turks, warn him that extreme cold will make the next stage of his journey thoroughly unpleasant. They predict that he will perish unless he is warmly dressed, and one suspects they succeeded in persuading him to purchase the necessary extra garments from them.

  While Ibn Faḍlān and his companions wait in al-Jurjāniyyah for the weather to improve, the mission purchases “Turkish” camels. Were these animals locally bred and owned and therefore better able to cope with the harsh conditions that lay ahead? Or are we to infer that his idea of a “Turkish” camel is a two-humped Bactrian in contrast to the one-humped dromedary? Having arrived from Baghdad, Ibn Faḍlān would have been familiar with dromedaries, and they would have been better suited for the earlier stages of his journey as when skirting around the Dasht-e-Kavir. Beyond al-Jurjāniyyah, the Bactrians were certainly to be preferred.

  What is clear is that al-Jurjāniyyah had a large livestock market to supply the needs of travellers. Our traveller mentions later that his carav
an numbered three thousand mounts, though this included horses. Of this multitude, by no means all would have been pack animals carrying trade goods. Some camels, like Ibn Faḍlān’s own mount, were for riding, and many would have been needed to carry the essential marching supplies. The camelmen were professionals: they knew from experience that the caravan would have to be self-sufficient on its journey, and for how long. So they packed sufficient bread, millet and cured meat to last three months. All this food would have to be loaded, together with tents, cooking gear, spare harnesses, fodder, and—significantly—equipment for crossing rivers. Here again one senses Ibn Faḍlān’s puzzlement, then increasing concern, as he watches the camelmen spread camel hides flat on the ground, place the wooden frames of the camel saddles on top, then stretch the skins up and around the saddle frames. They are assembling and testing the rudimentary coracles that they will deploy when the caravan reaches the banks of the great rivers. The animals will be swum across, with much shouting and cajoling. Meanwhile small groups of travellers must balance in these makeshift vessels and paddle themselves and their goods to the far bank. Unsurprisingly, these make-do watercrafts prove to be none too stable and at least one capsizes during a river crossing, and the passengers drown.

  So Ibn Faḍlān sets out from al-Jurjāniyyah under no illusions about whether that the road ahead is gruelling. It has neither bridges, fords, nor ferries and certainly no caravanserais to offer food and shelter. His worst fears are quickly realized. Two days out from al-Jurjāniyyah he finds himself perched on the back of a camel plodding through knee-deep snow. He is swaddled in so many layers of clothes that he can scarcely move, yet he is chilled to the bone. He feels he is ready to die. Plaintively he complains in one of his well-turned phrases, “It made the cold of Khwārazm seem like summer time.”

  Did Ibn Faḍlān take and keep notes as the caravan moved across the countryside at a modest average of ten miles per day? It is unlikely. Writing while on camel back is nigh-on impossible, and he would have been too wet, cold and woebegone at each campsite to do so. Also, there was little about the countryside that would have caught his eye. The terrain he crossed was largely featureless, flat and desolate, covered in snow at the outset, and scrubby grassland after the snowmelt. It remains as much a blank in his narrative as in the report written by the Franciscan friar Giovanni da Pian del Carpini who also rode to the Volga three centuries later as a papal legate to the Mongols.

  We get to know more about Ibn Faḍlān when he encounters the semi-nomadic Turkish tribes. He is manifestly not a country man. He concludes that the sheep of the Turks were fat in the winter because they ate snow, only to lose condition in summer because they ate grass. Apparently he was unaware that in spring the flocks were shorn of their wool and so looked thinner. Coming from the splendid metropolis of Baghdad with its brick-built houses and convenient network of water channels, he is aghast at the habits of those who dwell in portable homes and regard water as a resource too precious to be used for personal hygiene. He portrays the Turks as uncouth, dirty and ignorant.

  This honest assessment adds to the value of Ibn Faḍlān’s narrative. He has no reason to be polite. We don’t know for whom he compiled his account of his journey, but it is safe to say that he did not imagine that his audience would include Turkish tribesmen from the steppe who would take offense. Ibn Faḍlān was free to express his views, while also enhancing the self-regard of his Arab audience. He is a city sophisticate jotting down a selection of his most lively memories. It gives a freshness to his observations and he can express himself with style. In his account, for example, the burly ruler of the Bulghārs has a threatening voice that seems to come “from inside a barrel.”

  Sometimes one feels a little sorry for our traveller. His piety is offended when the camp muezzin mangles the correct call to prayer, and he shouts at the man to stop. He finds the food distasteful. Some has been stored in underground pits until it rots and smells. Then it is cooked in fish oil rather than the olive or vegetable oil to which he is accustomed. The result is greasy and unpalatable. Nor is he ever quite sure of his standing with his hosts. They can be suspicious and accommodating by turns, and occasionally downright hostile. Ibn Faḍlān admits he was “dazed and in a state of terror” after an interview with the Bulghār ruler who threw Ibn Faḍlān’s official letters back at him, and demanded to know why he hadn’t brought the money promised by Baghdad.

  Yet Ibn Faḍlān doesn’t give up. He does his best to ingratiate himself, handing out gifts of cloth, food, and spices that reflect the importance of the recipient. The leader of a less important tribe gets a not very expensive caftan, some flat bread, a handful of raisins and a hundred nuts, while the ruler of the Bulghārs receives a horse with a special saddle, medical ointment, clothes and pearls with a robe of honor for his wife.

  There’s an occasional hint that the Turks have been sizing him up and are making fun of him. A Turkish soldier picks a louse out of his clothing, kills it by cracking it with a fingernail, and licks it. He notices that Ibn Faḍlān is watching, so holds it up and says “Yum!” Surely it’s a tease. So too when a Turk riding in the caravan mischievously asks Ibn Faḍlān why his God allows such bitter cold. “Because he wants you to say to declare ‘There is no god but God’,” Ibn Faḍlān tells him in all seriousness. “Well, if we knew Him, we would do it!” comes the playful reply.

  Mission to the Volga excels as one man’s very personal account of his experiences. It has been mined for valuable nuggets of information about the politics, geography and ethnography of Central Asia in the early fourth/tenth century, and there’s a refreshing minimum of hearsay. But the best moments are whenever Ibn Faḍlān puts himself in the picture, telling us what it was like to be confronted by a cheeky and foul-mouthed beggar or to dine in an enormous tent, seated next to a Turkish warlord on a silk covered throne. He is a truly engaging eyewitness. His much-quoted description of the funeral rites of the Rūs on the banks of the Volga has a cinematic quality. It is vivid and unforgettable. You are there with him, watching as the heavily tattooed northmen perform the last rites for one of their chief men. The scene is utterly pagan for a devout Muslim, yet it is to Ibn Faḍlān’s credit that he is scrupulous in explaining that the Rūs consider cremation to be better than burial in the earth.

  We have no idea what eventually happened to Ibn Faḍlān. Presumably he got home in one piece or we wouldn’t have his narrative to enjoy. But it is safe to say that he must have been very glad to be back in familiar, more comfortable surroundings … and he has left us with a classic of travel writing.

  Tim Severin

  West Cork, Ireland

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I first read sections of Ibn Faḍlān’s book as an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow, in the company of John N. Mattock, a guide well seasoned in the classical Arabic tradition. When I began teaching at the University of Oslo in 1992, it seemed only natural that I should guide my students through the description of their Viking forebears. I have read the text in the company of many students at Oslo and Cambridge over the years and learned much from their insights. I would like to thank them all. I can no longer recall what is mine and what is theirs. I guess that’s the camaraderie of the road. The same is true of the audiences at the many institutions where I have talked about Ibn Faḍlān and his journey over the years.

  When I finished The Vagaries of the Qaṣīdah in 1997, I was keen to take a holiday from pre-Islamic poetry, and Ibn Faḍlān’s text seemed like just the site I was looking to visit. I did not intend my stay there to become permanent but, in odd ways, it has. Over the years I have written articles and encyclopedia entries, given papers and radio talks, and received many emails and phone calls from those who have also fallen under the spell of the text. I especially remember the Icelander who lost his patience with me when I tried to explain that Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead was a fantasy novel. Of course, I was hoist with my own petard some years later, when, in the days befo
re library catalogues could be searched electronically, I tried in vain to locate a reference to an article in a journal. I had scribbled it on a piece of paper with no indication as to where I had come across it. After an hour among the catalogues and stacks I realized that the reference was spurious and that it had come from Crichton’s preface to the novel!

  I have kept up my interest in Ibn Faḍlān as a hobby over the years. I have never found the time to learn Russian, so I knew that I was not the person to do justice to the text and its abundant scholarship. So, I have tried, with my edition and translation, to furnish a new generation of scholars with the basic equipment and the grid references they need to find their way through Ibn Faḍlān’s strange but enthralling world.

  Many companions have helped me along the way. An old friend, Geert Jan van Gelder, reviewed my first draft a decade ago and, as is his wont, saved me on many occasions from having egg on my chin before I even left the house. A new friend, Shady Hekmat Nasser, advised on orthography. Thorir Jonson Hraundal, of Reykjavik University, helped with the Glossary and the Further Reading. I am delighted that Ibn Faḍlān has afforded us the opportunity to develop our friendship over the years. Maaike van Berkel gave me a copy of her excellent PhD thesis.

  Most of the work on this volume has been done on flights between London and Abu Dhabi or New York, in the InterContinental Hotel Abu Dhabi, and in various restaurants, hotels, and bars in Greenwich Village and SoHo. I would like to thank the staff of the InterCon and the cabin crews of Etihad and Virgin Airways who looked after me so well. I can well imagine how envious but dismissive of these luxuries Ibn Faḍlān would be.

  Over the years the village of Embsay in Yorkshire has been a welcome retreat where I can combine walking and writing. David and Julie Perrins are wonderful hosts. Nigel Chancellor and Christina Skott took Yvonne and me around the Gulf of Bothnia in their boat and introduced us to the magic of the Finnish sauna. We also managed to explore a Viking cemetery together, despite the depredations of man-eating Finnish insects.