Ahmad ibn Fadlan

Ahmad Ibn Fadlan was a muslim traveler from Baghdad who lived through 9-10 century AD. He was an ambassador from Abbassid Caliph to northern Europe. He recorded his travel diaries (without his personal life) mostly his encounters with different ethnicities during his journey to Russia. In some parts his diary shows biases toward Europeans and non-muslims.
During his time his hometown Baghdad was one of the big cities in the region, even bigger than Paris, Constantinople, and Rome. Baghdad had more than 100,000 workers to build mosques, churches and big buildings.
There was a trade between Russians and the Islamic Empire. In the Islamic Empire there were high demands for amber, pellet, ivory, mink and for Russians there were high demands for gold and silver.
During Ibn Fadlan’s time, Islamic laws were not completely codified; it was the early stage of different cultural groups who converted to Islam. The cultural groups who recently became Muslims, they did not completely erase their old beliefs, most of them blended Islam with their pre-existing beliefs.… (meer)

So my Beowulf journey continues, from Tacitus* in 2 A.D. to the dig beginning in 1939 at Sutton Hoo, and now this tangent, Fadlan’s 922 A.D. journey to Rūs.

Michael Crichton incorporated much of Fadlan’s account into his own fictionalized Eaters of the Dead; so much so, he should have given Fadlan co-author credit. Plagiarism, really.

But Fadlan does provide a creditable account of a Viking funeral, and Beowulf both opens and closes with the same event. (Xref notes on importance of Viking funeral in Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings?). He appears to accurately describe - aghast! - the hygiene and eating habits he encounters.

Though unrelated (at the time), Fadlan’s journey happened within a hundred years or so of the writing of Beowulf.

And for me and night time photography of the stars, I loved Fadlan’s account of having seen the Northern Lights.

And it’s just fascinating to read what Fadlan (and in this Penguin classic, other early travelers) encountered on their journeys. Very much in keeping with the human desire to know what lies beyond the next hill.

And TIL the Croatian currency the kuna had its roots in the Slavic word for “marten fur” the form for tribute the Rus imposed on a far ranging population.

*who wrote, concerning a different matter, “Where they make a desert they call it peace.”… (meer)