This article regards 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.

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 [#GE'/ %(F #DA/DF] (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'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 Bular (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.

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 behalf 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" [1'H3PJG]) 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 behavior 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.