Mission to the Volga. Ahmad Ibn Fadlan

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СКАЧАТЬ arranged fifteen automata, knights on horseback, who performed a cavalry maneuver. The lavishness of this craftsmanship and the ingenuity of its engineering match the opulence of the caliphal architectural expenditure for which al-Muqtadir was rightly famed. The Arboreal Mansion was just one of the many awe-inspiring sights of the caliphal complex (which included a zoo, a lion house, and an elephant enclosure) on the left bank of the Tigris: one observer reckoned it to be the size of the town of Shiraz.

      Al-Muqtadir remained caliph for many years, and his longevity was accompanied by a decline in administrative consistency. Fourteen different administrators held the office of vizier during the period. This was one of the secrets behind the length of al-Muqtadir’s rule: he, with the complicity of his bureaucracy, was following the precedent set by Hārūn al-Rashīd when, in 187/803, Hārūn so spectacularly and inexplicably removed the Barmakid family from power. The financial expedient of muṣādarah (“mulcting”: the confiscation of private ministerial fortunes, a procedure usually accompanied by torture and beating) contributed to these changes, with courtly conspiracy and collusion the order of the day. We have an example of this in Ibn Faḍlān’s account, for the funds to cover the construction of the fort in Bulghār territory were to be acquired from the sale of an estate owned by a deposed vizier, Ibn al-Furāt (§§3, 5).

      Baghdad, with its population of between a quarter and half a million people in the fourth/tenth century, was the world’s largest consumer of luxury goods, and trade was buoyant, but it was also a city on the brink of lawlessness and anarchy. It was poorly managed, food supplies were unreliable, famine was a regular occurrence, and prices were high. There were sporadic outbreaks of disease, largely because of the floods occasioned by municipal neglect of the irrigation system.

      Factionalism was commonplace, and religious animosities, especially those between the Shiʿi community and the Ḥanbalite Sunnis, under the energetic direction of the theologian and traditionist al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Khalaf al-Barbahārī (d. 329/941), frequently erupted into violence. Although doctrinally quietist and sternly opposed to formal political rebellion, the Ḥanbalites, followers of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), did not disregard divergent expressions of Islamic belief or public displays of moral laxity. They took to the streets of Baghdad on several occasions to voice their disapproval of the corruption of the times. The great jurist, exegete, and historian al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) is thought to have incurred their wrath when he pronounced a compromise verdict on a theological dispute concerning the precise implications of Q Isrāʾ 17:79:

      Strive through the night—as an offering in hope that your Lord may raise you to a praiseworthy place.

      This verse had been adopted by al-Barbahārī as a slogan, following the realist and anthropomorphic exegesis of it advocated by his teacher, al-Marwazī (d. 275/888). According to the Ḥanbalites, the verse declared that God would physically place Muḥammad on His throne on Judgment Day—anything less was tantamount to heresy. According to several sources, Ḥanbalite animosity to al-Ṭabarī persisted until his death, when a mob gathered at his home and prevented a public funeral being held in his honor. Al-Ṭabarī was buried in his home, under cover of darkness.

      Ḥanbalite agitation was at its most violent in 323/935, when the caliph al-Rāḍī (r. 322–29/934–40) was compelled formally to declare Ḥanbalism a heresy and to exclude the Ḥanbalites from the Islamic community.

      And then the authorities had al-Ḥallāj to contend with. Abū l-Mughīth al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr, known as al-Ḥallāj, “the Wool-Carder,” was a charismatic Sufi visionary. In the markets of Baghdad he preached a message of God as the One Truth, the Only Desire. He installed a replica of the Kaaba in his house and passed the night in prayer in graveyards. He appealed to the populace to kill him and save him from God, and, in a fateful encounter in the Mosque of al-Manṣūr in Baghdad, he is said to have exclaimed, “I am the Truth.” In other words, he shouted, he had no other identity than God.

      The administration was terrified of the revolutionary appeal of al-Ḥallāj and considered him a threat to the stability of the empire. He was arrested and an inquisition held. His main opponents were Ibn al-Furāt and Ḥāmid ibn al-ʿAbbās, both of whom feature in Ibn Faḍlān’s account. (It was one of Ibn al-Furāt’s estates that was to fund the building of the Bulghār fort, and Ḥāmid ibn al-ʿAbbās provided the mission with a letter for the king of the Bulghārs.) It was a singular event to see both men in agreement in their opposition to al-Ḥallāj. They so hated one another that, when Ibn al-Furāt had been accused of financial corruption and removed from the vizierate, Ḥāmid, who was to replace him, was restrained from a vicious attempt to pull out Ibn al-Furāt’s beard! Al-Ḥallāj was executed on March 26, 922, two months before the mission reached the

      Bulghārs.⁵

      It was from this “City of Peace” that the embassy departed, following the Khurasan highway, but the first leg of their journey was fraught with danger. They made their way to Rayy, the commercial capital of al-Jibāl province. In military terms, this was one of the most hotly contested cities in the whole region. In 311/919, two years before the departure of the mission, Ibn Faḍlān’s patron Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān had been killed in a failed attempt to oust the Daylamite Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī from control of the city. Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī was later formally invested by Baghdad as governor of Rayy (307–11/919–24). At the time of the mission, then, the caliphate, the Samanids, and the Zaydī Daylamites were engaged in constant struggle for control of the region.

      There were other powerful local actors at work in the area, too. Ibn Abī l-Sāj, the governor of Azerbaijan, was a force to be reckoned with. So too was Ibn Qārin, the ruler of Firrīm and the representative of the Caspian Zaydī dāʿī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Qāsim. Al-Ḥasan ibn al-Qāsim was the successor to al-Uṭrūsh (“the Deaf”) (d. 304/917), restorer of Zaydī Shiʿism in Ṭabaristān and Daylam. Both were powerful men hostile to Abbasids and Samanids. This is why Ibn Faḍlān notes, with some relief, that Līlī ibn Nuʿmān, a Daylamite warlord in the service of al-Uṭrūsh and al-Ḥasan ibn al-Qāsim, had been killed shortly before the embassy reached Nishapur (§4), and why he points out that, in Nishapur, they encountered a friendly face in Ḥammawayh Kūsā, Samanid field marshal of Khurasan. The mission thus made its way briskly through a dangerous region and, in order to proceed to Bukhara, successfully negotiated its first major natural obstacle, the Karakum desert.

      Such was the world in which the caliphal envoys lived and against which Ibn Faḍlān would measure the peoples and persons he met on his way to the Volga.

      WHY?

      Why did Caliph al-Muqtadir agree to the king’s petition? What did the court seek to achieve? What were the motives behind the mission? The khwārazm-shāh in Kāth (Khwārazm) (§8) and the four chieftains of the Ghuzziyyah assembled by Atrak ibn al-Qaṭaghān (§33) are suspicious of Baghdad’s interest in spreading Islam among the Bulghār. The Samanid emir shows no interest in the mission. He was still a teenager, after all (§5). Should we be suspicious too or emulate the teenage emir?

      The king asked the caliph for instruction in Islamic law and ritual practice, a mosque and a minbar to declare his fealty to the caliph as part of the Friday prayer, and the construction of a fort. The Baghdad court’s reasons for acceding to the request are not specified. There is no discussion in the account of the lucrative trade route that linked Baghdad, Bukhara, and Volga Bulgharia; of the emergence of the Bulghār market as a prime source of furs and slaves; or of the Viking lust for silver dirhams that largely fuelled the northern fur and slave trade. Yet there are hints. We learn of the political and religious unrest in Khurasan (bad for the secure passage of trade goods), of the autonomy of the Samanid emirate in Bukhara, and of how jealously the trade links between Bukhara, Khwārazm, and the Turks of the north were protected by the Samanid governor of Khwārazm.

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