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• History
of Christianization of Europe
• Soviet
Union, Communist influence
• Map
of European ethnic groups
• Map of Fascism
in Europe (1922-75)
• History
of Islamic conquest in Europe
• Religions
& ethnic groups in Russia
• Detailed
map of French colonization
• Detailed
map of British colonization
• Napoleon's
conquests & legacy
--MORE &
NON-ENGLISH--
• Muhammad cartoon crisis in pictures
• Stalin's private summer home
• Ravenna: capital of Gothic empire
• Czar Nicholas II's Ukrainian palace
• European traditional costumes/dress
• Inside the Vatican, house of all wealth
--MORE
& NON-ENGLISH--
• Islamic Mujahidin
vs. Spain & El Cid
• Poland-Lithuania vs. Teutonic Order
• Nevskiy's Russia vs. German Crusaders
• Mussolini vs. Libyan Islamic fighters
• Qadafi: Europe will soon be Islamic
• Ivan the Terrible vs. Muslim Tatars
--MORE
& NON-ENGLISH--
• The Gypsies in history and today,
Europe's public enemy
• History of Jihad in Chechnya
& Caucasus vs. Russians
• History of the Muslim Tatars in Russia
• Ethnic & religious history of Serbs, Croats, & Bosnians
• Breakaway
states and independence movements in Europe
• The ancient Germanic Runic alphabet and
Runestones
• Inside Bulgaria, 1st Slavic nation,
land of Thracian masters of gold
• Visual history of Yugoslavia
• 4,000-year-old white mummies of China,
bringers of Buddhism
--MORE
& NON-ENGLISH-- |
|
A 10th-century Muslim
depiction of pre-Christian Slavs
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)
 Print
this Article • About
the Author • Bibliography/Sources
This EHL article covers the
cultural, ethnic, and political primary sources of 10th-century
Abbasid Arab Muslim traveler and ambassador Ahmad ibn Fadlan
in his journey along the Volga river basin, including his
depictions of the pre-Christian European Finns, Slavs, and
the Turkic Muslim Bulgar tribes. If an error has been made
or if you have any questions, feel free to notify us.
Historical and Cultural Background:
Today part of the massive
dominion of the Russian Federation, in the 10th and 11th centuries,
the wilderness along the large Volga River in central-southern
Russia was still free of Slavic rule. The dominant and thriving
Slavic Kievan empire originally built by the invading Vikings
("Varangians") did not convert nearly all Slavic
cultures to Orthodox Christendom until 988 upon the conversion
of Vladimir the Great. Other extant Slavic nations during
the timeframe included Bohemia (today including the Czechs
and Slovaks) before its annexation by the Germans, Bulgaria,
Poland, Croatia, and more. From the 5th century onward, Turkic
peoples marched westward from Central Asia, settling along
the Volga river, the Caucasus, and today's Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan where the Slavs of the later Russia had not exerted
full dominion yet. The racially-Mongol tribes today seen in
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and eastern Russia had not entered
the region as extensively as seen today until the 13th-century
Mongol conquest of Asia. The foremost powerful Turkic tribes
were the Tatars, Bulgars, and Khazars. In the 9th century,
the Turkic peoples almost in entirety submitted to Islam,
but retained their non-Arabic Turkic languages. From the late
8th century onward (until being obliterated by the Kievan
Slavs), the most powerful of these peoples was the Khazar
kingdom. Apparently acting as a vassal, the Bulgars became
the most powerful Islamic Turkic tribe in the region. The
Khazars leaders later converted to Judaism, an event that
is academically quite debated and mysterious in terms of its
reason. It is generally accepted that the Bulgar Islamic hordes
remained independent from Khazar rule but functioned as a
tributary vassal.
The growing role of Islam
in Turkic culture, and the resultant Jihad against the non-Muslim
Turkic minority and the Russian Christians naturally caught
the eye of their southerly Islamic neighbor, the Sunni Abbasid
Islamist state centering around Baghdad. The fundamentalist
Abbasid caliphate was the central force of the Islamic world,
and arguably the world's greatest superpower, as most of Europe
outside of the increasingly-dominant German and Byzantine
empires were suffering from internal conflict and only growing
statehood for the brief time being. The Iraqi state's reigns
stretched from Libya to Iran, and from Armenia to Oman and
Yemen. Its wealth, trade, and mathematical advancements dwarfed
even the most advanced local kingdoms outside of their rule.
To expand their realm, to
ensure the triumph of the Jihad of Islam throughout the world,
and to hinder the expansion of the growing Christian kingdoms
in the east (Byzantium, Kievan Russia, Bulgaria, etc.), the
Abbasid Caliph al-Muktadir sent a missionary embassy to meet
the Islamic Turkic tribes along the Volga to open trade agreements,
to built mosques, and to hold diplomatic audience for pan-Islamic
partnership (as the Abbasids, in effect, ruled the near entirety
of the Islamic world). Along with the embassy came famous
9th-10th century Arab writer, traveler, historian, and diplomat
Ahmad ibn Fadlan, ibn al-Abbas, ibn Rashid,
ibn Hamad [أهماد إبن ألفدلن] (one name). Along his journey,
he made famous and rare primary source documents depicting
the early local tribes of the Turkic, Finnic, Slavic, possibly
Hungarian, and possibly also the Germanic (the Vikings) races.
Though the Iraqi embassy failed due to the inability to meet
with the Turkic kings sufficiently, his experience gives us
one of the few pictures of the separate ethnic European and
Turkic tribes before and during Christianization. His venture
is depicted, albeit absurdly loosely, in the Michael Crichton
novel Eaters of the Dead and the film The 13th Warrior,
starring Omar Sharif and Antonio Banderas as Ahmad ibn Fadlan.
Ahmad ibn Fadlan in the film "the 13th Warrior",
played by Antonio Banderas
Ahmad ibn Fadlan's travels and ethnocultural observations:
On his embassy's adventure
he traveled through the trails, trade networks, deserted wildernesses,
and sandstorm-torn regions of Central and Southwest Asia.
He traveled by horse and camelback from Baghdad to Tehran,
Bahktaran, near Ashgabat, to the majestic city of Buqara and
possibly near Samarqand, along the Caspian of today's Kazakhstan,
along the Volga, into the steppe lands of the Khazars, and
into the Bulgar Turkic capital of Bulğar (pronounced "Bool-ahr"),
where he organized an audience with local Turkic Muslim rulers,
scholars, and Islamic jurists of al-Qur'an. There, he bolstered
political and economic relations between the Islamic powers,
but failed to assert the Iraqi declaration upon them that
all Muslims are to pray to Allah fivefold per day (the local
Turkic tradition was apparently 3-4), and did not convince
them to enforce the law that men and women are to both bathe
(purifying pre-prayer ablutions) and pray in segregation,
following the tradition of all other Islamic peoples. The
mission was less successful than expected.
After the majority of his
missionarial efforts with the Turkic Bulgars were complete,
we learn of a series of depiction of the nearby ethnic Finnic,
Slavic, and possibly Germanic (the few Vikings who remained
following state creation of the Kievans) populations to the
far north (who traded goods regularly with the Bulgar Muslims
to the south, where Ahmad ibn Fadlan was residing for the
time). Most of his descriptions are considered second-hand,
and are extremely biased and racist against the non-Muslim
Europeans. Though probably exagerated grossly, we nonetheless
gain a rare picture of the generally illiterate, pre-Christian
peoples in the region.
Ahmad ibn Fadlan readies the caravan by camel-back to the
north.
The eastern and northern
Volga had long been populated before the Russian and Mongol
conquest by allegedly Finnic- and Ugric-speaking (today's
designated as Hungarian) peoples, Slavic Russians, and occasionally
Germanic seafarers traveling along the Volga to conquer and
explore. Neither the Slavs, Finns, Germans (specifically Swedes),
nor Hungarians were yet Christian by majority. As infidels
and white-skinned Europeans each, Ahmad's rantings on their
bEHLlf is predictably dubious. So too, it is difficult to
identify which race he is observing in his sources, as the
distinct cultures and languages of the Finns, Hungarians,
Russians, and Germans in relation to the region were shrouded
and elusive both then and now, especially to a palace-bred
Arab Muslim from so far away. Today, his depictions are considered
to focus on "the Rus", whose meaning originally
referred to the minority Germanic seafarers who created the
first unified Russian powerhouse, after which the name passed
to the local non-German Slavic Russians. Therefore, it can
be assumed that his descriptions refer to the pre-Christian
Slavs and the Finnic-speakers west and east of the Volga,
respectively. Ahmad referred to his writing subjects as the
Rus ("Russiyya" [ألرسِي]) as well. The term "Rus"
during this period is often used today in academia to refer
to the Varangian Germanic ruling class, though this article
will show that population's lack of involvement in the tales
of Ahmad ibn Fadlan.
The main criticism of the
Europeans, as laughably exploited in The 13th Warrior,
focuses on the Europeans' lack of hygiene. A famous scene
from the film that is directly based upon his descriptions
shows a series of Vikings (as the film ridiculously inaccurately
portrays) passing around a communal washing bowl into which
the residents spit, sneeze, and collectively wash their faces
and hair. Upon passing the bowl to Ahmad ibn Fadlan and Omar
Sharif's character, the two disgustingly grin and pass it
onward whilst the nomad Europeans (in reality, the Slavic
Rus or the Finnic peoples) continue to bath in mucous and
saliva waste.
From Ahmad ibn Fadlan's actual
work regarding cleanliness and washing ritual of the pre-Christian
Slavic Rus:
Every day they must wash
their faces and heads and this they do in the dirtiest and
filthiest fashion possible....every morning a girl servant
brings a great basin of water; she offers this to her master
and he washes his hands and face and his hair - he washes
it and combs it out with a comb in the water; then he blows
his nose and spits into the basin. When he has finished, the
servant carries the basin to the next person, who does likewise.
She carries the basin thus to all the household in turn, and
each blows his nose, spits, and washes his face and hair in
it.
---
This harsh criticism can
be partly disregarded as hyperbole not only because of Ahmad's
lifestyle as an upper-class Arab scholar in the world's wealthiest
city, but also because of the fact that any local European
tribes were effectively nomadically engaging in trading, settling,
traveling, and encampment after weeks of travel. Any city-bred
person of today would appear the same way to an elite like
Ahmad after such distant camping and trading routes. The minority
Germanic culture present in the region were actually famed
for their hygiene, medicine, and tradition of cleanliness
back home in the Teutonic Odinist and Tyrist world in comparison
with the backwards local societies in the Baltic and Slavia.
Previous and later Iranian scholars depicted the Germanic
peoples of the further north as prestine, clean, faithful,
well-ordered, gentlemanly, and proud, as they were collectively
admired even by the Romans (especially visible in Tactitus
"Germania"). Thus, it is again more plausible aside
from simple geography that these subjects are Slavic, Finnic,
Magyar (Hungarian), or another European ethnic group instead
of the Germanic minority.
The Arab Muslim also described
the Slavs' or Finns' local sexual bEHLvior in the villages
he saw. Again, there is no evidence of his actual presence
amongst the Europeans; it may entirely be second-hand in addition
to its anti-non-Muslim intensity. Nonetheless, Ahmad did experience
shocking lengths of days, but this does not signify his presence
in the far north. He was surprised by how very short the nights
are, a characteristic seen both in the far north, in Siberia,
and the southern Russian steppe depending upon the time of
year -- Ahmad may have ventured to the region in the summer.
They are the filthiest
of God's creatures. They have no modesty in defecation and
urination, nor do they wash after pollution from orgasm, nor
do they wash their hands after eating. Thus they are like
wild asses. When they have come from their land....they build
big houses of wood on the shore, each holding ten to twenty
persons more or less....With them are pretty slave girls destined
for sale to merchants: a man will have sexual intercourse
with his slave girl while his companion looks on. Sometimes
whole groups will come together in this fashion, each in the
presence of others. A merchant who arrives to buy a slave
girl from them may have to wait and look on while a Rus completes
the act of intercourse with a slave girl.
---
The 13th Warrior briefly
shows hints of promiscuity amongst the locals, including slavery,
though Ahmad makes no attempt to deride the Europeans for
their slaveholding, as the Muslims had the largest collections
of slaves in the world. The Arab's depiction of promiscuous
sexuality may also not be his own personal comparison between
the Iranian and Arabic world of his fundamentalist home empire,
but rather it may root in the fact that Ahmad (himself a fundamentalist
Muslim and Islamic scholar) considered them pathetic infidels
apostate from the Islamic law of purity he was seeking to
bring to the southerly Turkic tribes. The tasting of pork,
the drinking of alcohol, etc. stimulate this hatred and disgust
for the infidel by the Muslim Arab writer.
Ahmad, however, did praise
them as upright, beautiful, and unique. He described their
features as clearly European. The descriptions are true of
both the Slavic, Germanic, and Finnic races alike. He describes
their culture and tradition as unique and simple.
I have seen the Rus....I
have never seen more perfect physical specimens,
tall as date palms, blonde and ruddy; they
wear neither tunics nor caftans, 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. The
swords are broad and grooved, of Frankish (German) sort. Every
man is tattooed from finger nails to neck with dark green
(or green or blue-black) trees and figures.
---
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 beads
of green glass of the same make as ceramic objects one finds
on their ships. They trade beads among themselves and they
pay an exaggerated price for them....They string them as necklaces
for their women. No standard measure [economic
unit] is known in the land.... They are very fond of pork
(Haram/forbidden in Islam)....The Rus are a great host, all
of them red haired; they are big men with
white bodies. The women of this land have boxes made, according
to their circumstances and means, out of gold, silver, and
wood. From childhood they bind these to their breasts so
that their breasts will not grow larger.
---
Ahmad also describes the
religion of these Finnic and Slavic Russian peoples. It appears
to be monotheistic or henotheism (many gods, one triumphal
godhead), with a great use of idols and figurines. There is
no evidence of the pan-Germanic religious tradition of Odin,
Tyr, and Thor more popular amongst eastern Germans. This may
give us a rare image of pre-Christian Slavic or Finnic religion,
as very little evidence survives.
When the ships come to
this mooring place, everybody goes ashore with bread, meat,
onions, milk and intoxicating drink and betakes
himself to a long upright piece of wood that has a face like
a man's and is surrounded by little figures, behind which
are long stakes in the ground. The Rus prostrates himself
before the big carving and says, "O my Lord, I have come
from a far land and have with me such and such a number of
girls and such and such a number of sables", and he proceeds
to enumerate all his other wares. Then he says, "I have
brought you these gifts," and lays down what he has brought
with him, and continues....If he has difficulty selling his
wares and his stay is prolonged, he will return with a gift
a second or third time. If he has still further difficulty,
he will bring a gift to all the little idols and ask their
intercession....And he addresses each idol in turn, asking
intercession and praying humbly....and he takes a certain
number of sheep or cattle and slaughters them,
gives part of the meat as alms, brings the rest and deposits
it before the great idol and the little idols around it, and
suspends the heads of the cattle or sheep
on the stakes. In the night, dogs come and eat all, but the
one who has made the offering says, "Truly, my Lord is
content with me and has consumed the present I brought him."
---
Ahmad also depicts the unique
and interesting burial tradition of these local Europeans
that are unfamiliar to the Arab Muslim scholar.
An ill person is put
in a tent apart with some bread and water and people do not
come to speak to him; they do not come even to see him every
day, especially if he is a poor man or a slave. If he recovers,
he returns to them, and if he dies, they cremate
him. If he is a slave, he is left to be eaten by dogs
and birds of prey. If the Rus catch a thief or robber,
they hang him on a tall tree and leave him hanging until his
body falls in pieces.
---
At last I was told of
the death of one of their outstanding men. They placed him
in a grave and put a roof over it for ten days, while they
cut and sewed garments for him. If the deceased is a poor
man they make a little boat, which they lay him in and burn.
If he is rich, they collect his goods and divide them into
three parts, one for his family, another to pay for his clothing,
and a third for making intoxicating drink, which they drink
until the day when his female slave will kill herself
and be burned with her master. They stupefy themselves
by drinking this beer night and day; sometimes one of them
dies cup in hand.
---
When the day arrived
on which the man was to be cremated and the girl with him,
I went to the river on which was his ship. I saw that they
had drawn the ship onto the shore, and that they had erected
four posts of birch wood and other wood, and that around the
ship was made a structure like great ship's tents out of wood....Then
they began to come and go and to speak words which I did not
understand....The tenth day, having drawn the ship up onto
the river bank, they guarded it. In the middle of the ship
they prepared a dome or pavilion of wood and covered this
with various sorts of fabrics. Then they brought a couch and
put it on the ship and covered it with a mattress of Greek
brocade. Then came an old woman whom they call the Angel of
Death, and she spread upon the couch the furnishings mentioned.
It is she who has charge of the clothes-making and arranging
all things, and it is she who kills the girl slave. I saw
that she was a strapping old woman, fat and louring. When
they came to the grave they removed the earth from above the
wood, then the wood, and took out the dead man clad in the
garments in which he had died. I saw that he had grown black
from the cold of the country. They put intoxicating drink,
fruit, and a stringed instrument in the grave
with him. They removed all that. The dead man did not smell
bad, and only his color had changed. They dressed him in trousers,
stockings, boots, a tunic, and caftan of brocade with gold
buttons. They put a hat of brocade and fur on him. Then they
carried him into the pavilion on the ship. They seated him
on the mattress and propped him up with cushions. They brought
intoxicating drink, fruits, and fragrant plants, which they
put with him, then bread, meat, and onions, which they placed
before him. Then they brought a dog, which they cut in two
and put in the ship. Then they brought his weapons and placed
them by his side. Then they took two horses, ran them until
they sweated, then cut them to pieces with a sword and put
them in the ship. Next they killed a rooster and a hen and
threw them in. The girl slave who wished to be killed went
here and there and into each of their tents, and the master
of each tent had sexual intercourse with her and said, "Tell
your lord I have done this out of love for him."
---
Friday afternoon they
led the slave girl to a thing that they had made which resembled
a door frame. She placed her feet on the palms of the men
and they raised her up to overlook this frame. She spoke some
words and they lowered her again. A second time they raised
her up and she did again what she had done; then they lowered
her. They raised her a third time and she did as she had done
the two times before. Then they brought her a hen; she cut
off the head, which she threw away, and then they took the
hen and put it in the ship. I asked the interpreter what she
had done. He answered, "The first time they raised her
she said, 'Behold, I see my father and mother.’ The second
time she said, 'I see all my dead relatives seated.’ The third
time she said, 'I see my master seated in Paradise and Paradise
is beautiful and green; with him are men and boy servants.
He calls me. Take me to him.' "Now they took her to the
ship. She took off the two bracelets she was wearing and gave
them both to the old woman called the Angel of Death, who
was to kill her; then she took off the two finger rings which
she was wearing and gave them to the two girls who had served
her and were the daughters of the woman called the Angel of
Death. Then they raised her onto the ship but they did not
make her enter the pavilion.
---
Then the closest relative
of the dead man, after they had placed the girl whom they
have killed beside her master, came, took a piece of wood
which he lit at a fire, and walked backwards with the back
of his head toward the boat and his face turned toward the
people, with one hand holding the kindled stick and the other
covering his anus, being completely naked, for the purpose
of setting fire to the wood that had been made ready beneath
the ship. Then the people came up with tinder and other fire
wood, each holding a piece of wood of which he had set fire
to an end and which he put into the pile of wood beneath the
ship. Thereupon the flames engulfed the wood, then the ship,
the pavilion, the man, the girl, and everything in the ship.
A powerful, fearful wind began to blow so that the flames
became fiercer and more intense.
---
The elaborate burial routine
for their kings and noblemen is common amongst any culture,
but the ship-burning method is unique amongst the north Germanic
tradition as a vessal of passage to Valhalla. The presence
of this tradition amongst the Slavic and Finnic north Volga
is easily due to cultural influence, unless the non-Germans
already engaged in this burial ritual independently (as so
little evidence of them exists).
One of the Rus was at
my side and I heard him speak to the interpreter, who was
present. I asked the interpreter what he said. He answered,
"you Arabs are fools." "Why?" I asked
him. He said, "you take the people who are most dear
to you and whom you honour most and put them into the ground
where insects and worms devour them. We burn him in a moment,
so that he enters Paradise at once.” Then he began to laugh
uproariously. When I asked why he laughed, he said, "His
Lord, for love of him, has sent the wind to bring him away
in an hour.” ...Then they constructed in the place where had
been the ship which they had drawn up out of the river something
like a small round hill, in the middle of which they erected
a great post of birch wood, on which they wrote the name of
the man and the name of the Rus king and they departed.
---
Ahmad ibn Fadlan goes on
in conclusion to offer observations and second-hand visualization
of the capital of this people's kingdom he observes. Ahmad
never ventured nearby, and it is possible that the Slavs or
Finns with whom he cohabitated were speaking of a mythical
homeland, as no evidence of a true local center exists. As
the Slavs of today's Russia were originally ruled by an invading
Germanic minority (which many Russians reject as the so-called
"Normanist Bias"), it could be that Ahmad was describing
Slavs and possibly Finns under the ultimate rule of the Germanic
minority back at the capital at Kiev and Novgorod, and thus
his depictions of the wealthy palaces of the capital are relatively
positive (and still unknown to him directly plus additional
bias) compared to the backward and heathen lifestyles of the
rural nomadic Slavic majority of the empire in its furthest
trade and expedition reaches.
It is the custom of the
king of the Rus to have with him in his palace four hundred
men, the bravest of his companions and those on whom he can
rely. These are the men who die with him and let themselves
be killed for him....These four hundred men sit about the
king's throne, which is immense and encrusted with fine precious
stones. With him on the throne sit forty female slaves destined
for his bed. Occasionally he has intercourse with one of them
in the presence of his companions of whom we have spoken,
without coming down from the throne. When he needs to answer
a call of nature, he uses a basin....The cloth of these lands
and localities is famous, especially that of their capital,
which is called Kyawh. Famous and noted cities of the Rus
are Crsk and Hrqh.
---
Despite its mystery and lack
of certainty in terms of the ethnic cultures subjected to
his observations, as well as his religious and ethnic bias
and probable second-hand credibility, the journals of Ahmad
ibn Fadlan and other Arab and Iranian Muslim scholars give
us among the first depictions of the pre-Christian Finns,
Slavs, and possibly Hungarians over a millennium before our
time.
________________________________________
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
James Mayfield is the owner
and Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I am working
for a doctorate in history, with a specific emphasis on Islamic
and European histories. I am well versed in all world cultures,
ethnicities, religions, languages, politics, and historical
evolution in relation to and against each other.
BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES
USED:
Ahmad ibn Fadlan's Risala
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