Mission to the Volga. Ahmad Ibn Fadlan

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      INTRODUCTION

      On Thursday, the twelfth of Safar, 309 [June 21, 921], a band of intrepid travelers left Baghdad, the City of Peace. Their destination was the confluence of the upper Volga and the Kama, the realm of the king of the Volga Bulghārs. They arrived at the court of the king on Sunday, the twelfth of Muharram, 310 [May 12, 922]. They had been on the road for 325 days and had covered a distance of about 3,000 miles (4,800 km). They must have managed to travel on average about ten miles a day.

      The way there was far from easy. The province of Khurasan was in military turmoil. There were many local potentates, such as the Samanid governor of Khwārazm, who were often lukewarm in their support for the caliphate in Baghdad: our travelers had to secure their permission to continue. The Turkish tribes who lived on the Ustyurt plateau, on the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, were mostly tolerant of Muslim merchants, but they were proudly independent and suspicious of outside interference. The Khazars, who controlled the delta where the Volga flowed into the Caspian, had always defied Muslim control. And there was the terrain and the weather: deserts, mountains, rivers, snows, and bitter cold.

      Why would someone want to make such a journey in the early fourth/tenth century, from the luxurious splendor of caliphal Baghdad to a billet in a yurt among the Bulghārs, a semi-nomadic Turkic tribe?

      Some months before the travelers left, a missive had reached the court of Caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 295–320/908–32). The king of the Volga Bulghārs had embraced Islam. He was asking to be accepted as one of the caliph’s loyal emirs—the caliph’s name would be proclaimed as part of Friday prayers in Bulghār territory. The king petitioned the caliph to send him instruction in law and in how he and his people were to correctly perform religious devotions as proper Muslims. He also asked that the caliph bestow enough funds on him to enable him to construct a fort and thus protect himself against his enemies.

      The petition was granted, and arrangements were made to meet the king’s request. A diplomatic mission was assembled to visit the king and formally recognize him and his people as members of the Islamic community.

      We know about the events and its actors from a remarkable book by Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān, a member of the mission. Yet all of the members of the diplomatic mission remain shrouded in obscurity, especially the book’s author.

      Sadly our other extant sources make no mention of this adventure. We rely exclusively on the information provided in the book to enable us to reconstruct the composition of the embassy. The only other early source that mentions any of the characters involved is an annalistic chronicle known as Experiences of Nations, Consequences of Ambition (Tajārib al-umam wa-ʿawāqib al-himam), by the civil servant, philosopher, and historian Miskawayh (d. 421/1030), and, even then, not in the context of the embassy but of the affairs of the reign of al-Muqtadir.

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      It is difficult to work out from Ibn Faḍlān’s book who took part in the mission and who played what part.

      1. The Representative: Nadhīr al-Ḥaramī. The man placed in charge of the embassy, who did not actually travel, was the official assigned to recruit the personnel and finance the mission. He seems to have enjoyed al-Muqtadir’s confidence, and it is likely, from his name “al-Ḥaramī,” that he was a eunuch who guarded the harem. In addition to organizing the embassy, he entrusted it with (at least) two letters: one was addressed to Atrak ibn al-Qaṭaghān, the field marshal of the Ghuzziyyah (Oghuz Turks), along with several gifts; the other was addressed to the king of the Bulghārs. It is clear from the account that Nadhīr had been in communication with the field marshal and with the Bulghār king. His relationship with the Ghuzziyyah is based on their host-friend system, described in the text, and the Bulghār king had written to him asking for more medication (this is an otherwise unattested detail that features prominently in some non-Arabic accounts of the Bulghārs’ conversion to Islam).

      2. The Envoy: Sawsan al-Rassī. Sawsan is bound to Nadhīr as his freed man. Sawsan’s name “al-Rassī” is obscure but may indicate that he was of Turkic or other Central Asian origin. Sawsan would presumably have been well acquainted with the geopolitics of the region. We discover, when the embassy leaves al-Jurjāniyyah for the Ustyurt, that he is accompanied by a brother-in-law, who is not mentioned elsewhere in the account.

      3. The Local Expert: Takīn al-Turkī. Takīn (the name is a Turkic honorific) was well acquainted with and known in the area. The khwārazm-shāh, the Samanid governor of Khwārazm, recognizes him and refers to him as a slave-soldier and notes that he had been involved in the arms trade with the Turks, suspecting that he is the prime mover behind the mission. On the Ustyurt, we meet him chatting with a fellow Turk, and, in the enforced stay in Bulghār, he informs Ibn Faḍlān of the presence there of a giant from the land of Gog and Magog.

      4. The Soldier: Bārs al-Ṣaqlābī. Bārs may have been the Samanid commander, the chamberlain of Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad and governor of al-Jurjāniyyah, who defected, in 296/908–9, with a force of some 4,000 Turkish slave-troops from the Samanids to Baghdad. Ibn Faḍlān’s account provides no substantial information on him.

      5. The Financier: A further member of the mission is Aḥmad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārazmī, who is appointed as the agent for the estate from which the mission is to receive its principal funds. Unaccountably, he leaves Baghdad later than the embassy and is easily thwarted in his attempts to reach Bukhara. The mission, therefore, must proceed without the funds the king of the Bulghārs so badly wanted.

      6. The vizier Ḥāmid ibn al-ʿAbbās, who otherwise does not feature in our account, has entrusted the mission with a letter for the king.

      7. The king is represented by a Khazar: ʿAbdallāh ibn Bāshtū, the Bulghār envoy, was a Muslim of Khazar origin, who may, according to some scholars, have been involved in the dissemination of Islam throughout Volga Bulgharia. The French scholar of Ibn Faḍlān, Marius Canard, thinks he is a political refugee from Khazaria and sees in his ethnic identity a clear indication that Khazar enmity was the occasion of the Bulghār petition.¹ From his actions in Khwārazm, it is clear that ʿAbdallāh’s advice was respected by the mission.

      8. The jurists and the instructors. These nameless individuals are an enigma. When the mission is about to set out from al-Jurjāniyyah, we discover that there is only one instructor and one jurist. The jurist and the instructor decide not to continue to Bulghār territory. No reason is given.

      9. The retainers or slave-soldiers. It also appears, from the report of the departure from al-Jurjāniyyah, that the mission was accompanied by retainers or slave-soldiers (ghilmān), who likewise do not continue. This is the sole reference to them in the account.

      10. The guide. The mission picks up a guide named Falūs, from al-Jurjāniyyah. It is not clear whether this guide also acts as the tarjumān, the interpreter.

      11. The interpreter. Ibn Faḍlān mentions “the interpreter” in twelve paragraphs: §§19, 20, 30, 31, 38, 40, 45, 47, 61, 84, 85, 88. It is unclear how many interpreters there are. The king’s interpreter was presumably ʿAbdallāh ibn Bāshtū al-Khazarī, whom he sent to Baghdad with his petition, although the text does not say that he fulfilled this function for the king. We also meet Takīn al-Turkī acting in the role of interpreter. Were there more interpreters, one the mission brought along with it as the “guide” from al-Jurjāniyyah and one serving the king of the Bulghārs? The interpreter not only translates on СКАЧАТЬ