IBN fadlan and a by-passed remark on an imaginary geographical topos: some observations on the decreasing factual credibility regarding the caucasus area of the silk road
| Autor | Vicente Dobroruka |
| Cargo | PhD. Associate Professor, Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Ciências Humanas, Departamento de História, Brasília, DF, Brazil |
| Páginas | 39-58 |
Esboços, Florianópolis, v. 27, n. 44, p. 38-58, jan./abr. 2020.
ISSN 2175-7976 DOI https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2020.e66883 39/156
ABSTRACT
This article looks at some aspects of Ibn Fadlan’s journey to the steppe during the 10th Century to
ostensibly establish friendly relations between the Abbasid Caliphate and the Volga Bulgars. He left
a detailed account of his trip, which includes remarks on the mythical people of Gog and Magog,
traditionally considered the eschatological enemies of the civilized world. Ibn Fadlan was somewhat
incongruent regarding his portraits and opinions of the Slavic or Turkic people he found in the steppe.
The main contribution of this article relates to Gog/Magog and modern conceptions of the “Silk Roads”,
especially concerning their extension in the North paths and their permanence in the longue durée. In
this respect, some modern theses regarding these issues must be tackled, most remarkably, that of
Peter Frankopan and Barry Cunlie. Other Arabic travels to the North are also examined in order to
discuss cultural continuities and breaks between the steppe and the Mediterranean world. The main
objective of this article is to show that Ibn Fadlan, in spite of his alleged accuracy, also shared, even if
en passant, some of the literary topoi of his time and subsequent historians and geographers added to
the mythical apocalyptic theme nearly forgotten currently, namely the boundaries of civilized world and
Gog/Magog. This article concludes that Ibn Fadlan was probably the rst Arabic historian to believe and
thrive on the study of these people, whereas his successors overstated information about them, from
the 13th Century on.
KEYWORDS
Silk Road. Islamic geographers. Religious syncretism in the Middle Ages.
Esboços, Florianópolis, v. 27, n. 44, p. 38-58, jan./abr. 2020.
ISSN 2175-7976 DOI https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2020.e66883 40/156
Vicente Dobroruka
When working with ethnographical material, it is often the content that catches
the attention of scholars. This article is no exception, looking mostly at Asia
Minor, Parthia, Sassanid Persia and the likes, and having as the standard
reference the works of Herodotus, Ctesias and Strabo, just to quote a few. The study of
Ibn Fadlan1 can go further and has interesting peculiarities when observing legendary
regions and people. What the modern military call “humint”2 was applied by Ibn Fadlan
on his accounts of a number of people and regions on the so-called Silk Roads
(FOLTZ, 1999). However, a closer study of Ibn Fadlan indicates his peculiarities when
compared to other “typical” Arabic geographers-ethnographers. Perhaps surprisingly,
the successors of Ibn Fadlan were often more imaginative and less focused on concrete
evidence. This can be proved by observing that most of what Ibn Fadlan saw and
described in what is, in fact, an abregé of a larger work (“Meshed manuscript” – Msh.
ms. –, for it was found in the city of Meshed in 1923),3 rst edited by Togan (KAFADAR;
KARATEKE, 2011, p. 574), is factually correct in the whole and parts of his descriptions
and remains accurate to this day. But it was a simple sentence at the end of that
abregé, when concluding his remarks on the Khazars, which was odd even for the life
and times of Ibn Fadlan. His report can be seen as part of a long tradition that began
somewhere in Babylon, during the Jewish Exile and went on to our times.4
The essential novelty for most readers of Ibn Fadlan is what he has to say on
the rst Russians and, more importantly, on the Khazars. However, his report includes
the wonderful and fantastic people supposedly locked up by Alexander the Great in the
limits of the Earth.
1 His full name was Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāšid ibn Ḥammād, with Arabic variations
on longer and shorter vowels, plus dierent types of consonants, which western languages do not
have. For practical purpose, these traces will be omitted in this text; the reader will have no diculty
nding more information on his name and spelling. The edition on which this article is based is that of
Richard Frye ( 2005), whose full reference can be found in the bibliography together with an excellent
Brazilian translation that has an important peculiarity: before the Meshed ms., Ibn Fadlan was known,
second-hand wise by another Arab author who quoted him extensively: Yāqūt Albuldan, who wrote an
encyclopedia called Mu‘jam Albuldān around 1229CE. While travelling, he found in Merv a ms. of Ibn
Fadlan’s text, which he used extensively but did not quote in full. It should be noted that other Arabic
travelers/writers knew Ibn Fadlan’s work as well, namely Ibn Hayyān Alqurṭubī, Al-Masudi (examined in
this article) and the Persian Ibn Ḥurdāḏbih. Cf. the edition Ahmad Ibn Fadlan translation and comment
by Pedro M. Criado (2018).
2 Short for “human intelligence”, in the sense of information acquired by persons by comparison to
drones, satellites, aircraft, etc.
3 This ms., in turn, had two editions, both with adventurous stories which came out in 1939. One from
Zeki-Vedi Togan, a former Communist who tried to establish a Soviet republic in Bashkir, but was
arrested by the Soviets and escaped afterwards. His edition was based on his PhD, obtained in Bonn,
between 1931-1935 or, according to other sources, between 1935-1937 in Gottingen, between 1937-
1939. Later, in 1953, Togan became a professor of Turkic history in Istanbul. The other edition was
published almost simultaneously, in Russian, by Andrei P. Kovaleskii, who disappeared during the mass
executions in 1939 but was later found alive. This edition is of special interest since it has photos of the
Meshed manuscript.
4 The Islamic calendar starts with the Hijira, the journey of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to
Medina. For practical purpose, the non-Islamic Gregorian standard calendar will be used throughout
this article.
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