The Journey Of ibn Fadlan Book
translated & edited by Dahman Beroba

The opening of the book

Natheer al-Harami was his ambassador, so I was assigned to read the letter to him, deliver what was given to him, and supervise the jurists and teachers. He granted him the money transferred to him to build what we mentioned and to pay tribute to the jurists and teachers on the estate known as Arthakhashamathan in the land of Khawarizm, among the estates of Ibn al-Furat.

The messenger to Al-Muqtadir from the king of Slavs was a Khazarian man called Abdullah son of Bashto, and the messenger from the Sultan Sawsan Al-Rasiy was Mawla Natheer Al-Harami, Takin the Turkish and Baris the Slavian, and I was with them, so I delivered the gifts to the king, for him, his wife, his children, his brothers, and his commanders, with some medicines that he wrote to Natheer asking for.

The Non Arabs And The Turks

Then we walked until we came to Sawa, where we stayed for two days, and from there we walked to the city of Rey, where we stayed for eleven days, waiting for Ahmed son of Ali, Solok’s brother, because he was in another part of the city.

Then we traveled to another land in the city of Rey, where we stayed for three days, then we traveled to Semnan, and then from there to Damghan, where we encountered the son of Qarin, so we disguised ourselves in the caravan and marched hard until we reached Nishabur, and Laila, son of Numan, was killed, so we met there Hamawe Kusa, the commander of the Khurasanian army.

Then we traveled to Sarkhas, then to Merv, then to Qeshmahan, which is on the edge of Mafaza. We stayed there for three days, resting the camels to enter Mafaza. Then we crossed the path through Mafaza to Amal, then we crossed the Gihon and reached Afrir Ribat Taher bin Ali.

Then we went to Bikand, then we entered Bukhara, and we came to Al-Jihani, who is the clerk of the prince of Khorasan, and he is called the Brigadier General in Khorasan. He came forward to take a house for us and appointed a man for us to meet our needs and serve us in everything we wanted, and we stayed for days.

Then Ali Nasr son of Ahmed gave permission for us, so we entered to him. He was a young boy, so we greeted him politely, and he ordered us to sit. The first thing we started with was when he said, How did you leave my master, the Commander of the Faithful? May God prolong his life and his safety with his young men and his guardians. We said, “Fine.” He said, “May Allah increase the good.”
Then the letter was read to him by Arthakhashamathan from al-Fadl ibn Musa al-Nasrani, the agent of Ibn al-Furat, and he handed it over to Ahmad, son of Musa of Khawarizm. 

After handing the letter over to its owner in Khawarizm, he ordered us to keep the belongings to ourselves, and the letter was at the door of the Turks’ lands in Badharqatna, so we took the belongings to ourselves.

He said, “Where is Ahmed, son of Musa?” So we said, We left him in the city of peace so that he would join us in five days. He said, “We have listened and obeyed to my master, the Commander of the Faithful; may Allah prolong his life.”

The news reached al-Fadl son of Musa al-Nasrani, Ibn al-Furat’s agent, so he came up with a trick in the matter of Ahmad son of Musa and wrote to the assistant's workers of the Sarakhs soldiers on the Khorasan road in Bikind:

Let your eyes be on Ahmed, son of Musa of Khawarizm, in bars and observatories; his descriptions are such and such. Whoever finds him should arrest him until we respond to him with a letter. Then Ahmed, son of Musa, was arrested in Merv.

We stayed in Bukhara for twenty-eight days, and Al-Fadl son of Musa, Abdullah son of Bashto, and others of our companions said that if we stayed, winter would come and we would not complete our journey, and if Ahmed son of Musa came, he would join us.

Ibn Fadlan said, “I saw in Bukhara dirhams in different colors, including dirhams called Al-Ghatrifiya, which are made of yellow copper; they are taken without weight, one hundred of them for a silver dirham.” and the dowry of their women if they marry is one thousand dirhams.

The same applies to buying their property and buying their slaves, and they do not use other dirhams. They have other dirhams, forty of which are in exchange for a Danik, and they also have dirhams called Samarkandiyah, six of which are in exchange for a Danik.

When I heard the words of Abdullah, son of Bashto, and others warning me of the winter attack, we departed from Bukhara, returned to the river, and chartered a ship to Khawarizm. The distance to Khawarizm from the place from which we chartered the ship is more than two hundred leagues. We all walk part of the day, and it was not possible for us to walk all of it because of the cold until we came to Khawarizm. So we entered upon its prince, Muhammad son of Iraq, Khawarizm Shah, and he honored us, brought us near, and made us a home.

After three days, he brought us and discussed with us entering the Turkish country and said, I do not give you permission to do that, and it is not permissible for me to let you risk your lives. I know that it was a trick carried out by this boy, meaning Takin, because he was working with us as a blacksmith and he had stopped selling iron in the country of the infidels, and he was the one who deceived Natheer and made him follow the words of the Commander of the Faithful and deliver the letter of the King of the Slavs to him.

And the prince of Khurasan was foolish in calling for the Commander of the Faithful in that country, and on the way to this country that you mention, there are a thousand tribes of infidels. This is a lie against the Sultan, and I have advised you.

And we must send a letter to the prince so that he may ask the Sultan, may Allah help him, to review the correspondence, and you may wait until we receive a response.

So we departed from the prince that day, then we returned to him, and we continued to debate with him, saying:

This is the command of the Commander of the Faithful and his letter, so what is the reason for reviewing it? Until he gave us permission, we descended from Khawarizm to Jurjaniyah, and the distance between them in the water is fifty leagues.

And I saw fake dirhams in Khawarizm, and they call the dirham Tazeja, and its weight is four and a half daniks, and their money changer sells the daniks and dirhams.

They are the rudest people in terms of speech and character; their speech is somewhat similar to the cries of starlings. There was a village in Khawarizm called Ardaku; its people are called Al-Kardaliyya, and their speech is somewhat similar to the croaking of frogs, and they disavow the Commander of the Faithful, Ali son of Abi Talib—may Allah be pleased with him—at the end of every prayer.

We stayed in Jurjaniyah for several days, and the Gihon River froze from end to end. The thickness of the ice was seventeen spans, and horses, mules, donkeys, and calves passed over it as they passed on roads, and it was stable and did not crack. The river remained frozen for three months.

And we saw a country as if a door of bitter cold had opened upon us, and whenever snow falls in that country, strong winds blow with it. And if a man of that country wanted to honor his relative or friend, he would say to him, “Come to me so we can talk, for I have a good fire.” This is if he exaggerated his kindness.

However, Allah Almighty has been kind to them regarding firewood and made it cheaper for them. Carrying a cart of firewood for two of their dirhams would be approximately three thousand pounds.

And it is their custom that the poor should not stand at the door, but rather enters the house of someone and sits for an hour by the fire to warm himself, then says, “bakand” - meaning bread. If he gave him something, he would take it, otherwise he would leave.

Our stay in Jurjaniya was prolonged, as we stayed there for days of Rajab, Sha'ban, the month of Ramadan, and Shawwal, and our stay was long due to the cold and its severity.

And I have heard that two men drove twelve camels to load them with firewood from some branches, but they forgot to take a lighter and a burner with them, and they spent the night without fire, so by morning the men and the camels were dead due to the extreme cold.

I saw, due to the extreme cold of its air, that the market there and the streets were empty, and a man would roam the streets and markets, but did not find anyone to greet him. 

And when I go out of the bathroom and enter the house, I look at my beard and it is a single piece of ice, so I would bring it closer to the fire.

I used to sleep in a house with a Turkish felt dome, and I would cover myself with blankets and fur so that my cheeks would not stick to the pillow.

And I saw people there wearing robes made of sheepskin, but that was of no use, as I have seen in that land great valleys splitting open due to the extreme cold and great trees splitting in two halves because of the cold.

When the middle of the month of Shawwal came in the year three hundred and nine, times began to change, and the Gihon River melted, and we took what we needed from the travel equipment and bought Turkish camels, and we used boats made of camel skins to cross the rivers that we needed to cross in the country of the Turks, and we provided ourselves with bread, millets, and dried meat for three months.

And we were ordered by the people of the country whom we were friendly with to wear a lot of clothes, and they warned us of the extreme cold. When we saw what they told us about later, it was many times what they had described to us, so each man among us was wearing a cloak, two slippers, and a robe, from which only his eyes could be seen, and when one of us rides a camel, it would not be able to move because of the clothes we were wearing.

The jurist, the teacher, and the boys who had left with us from the city of Al-Salam lagged behind us, as they were afraid to enter that country. The Messenger, his predecessor, and the two boys, Tekin and Baris, and I walked away.

When it was the day that we decided to travel, I said to them, “O my people, with you is the king’s servant, and he has taken care of all your affairs, and you have the Sultan’s letters, and I have no doubt that they contain a mention of directing four thousand dinars to him, and that you will go to a non-Arab king and he will demand that of you.” They said, “No.” Don't you worry, that is not required of us. So I warned them and said, I know that he is demanding of you, but they did not accept my words.

The caravan was prepared, and we hired a guide, called Qalwas, from the people of Jurjaniya. Then we put our trust in Allah, the Almighty, and we delegated our matter to Him.

We departed from Jurjaniya on Monday for two nights before the month of Dhul-Qi'dah in the year three hundred and nine, so we camped in a land called Zamjan, which is at the Turk's Gate. Then we departed the next day and camped in a land called Jit, and we walked in the snow until the camels walked up to their knees in it, so we stayed in this place for two days.

Then we entered the country of the Turks, where there was no one, in a barren wilderness with no mountains. We walked there for ten days, and we faced hardship and effort, extreme cold, and continuous snow. Khwarizm's cold was like summer days compared to it, and we forgot everything that had passed us, and we were on the verge of losing souls.

On some days we were struck by a severe cold, and Tekin was walking with me, and next to him was a Turkish man speaking to him in Turkish. Tekin laughed and said, “This Turk is telling you, ‘What does our Lord want from us?’ He is killing us with cold, and if we had known what he wanted, we would have raised it up to him.”

 So I said to him, Tell him he wants you to say, There is no god but Allah. He laughed and said, If we had known, we would have done so.
Then we came to a place where there was a large amount of firewood, so we stopped there, and the caravan lit a fire, and they warmed themselves, and they took off their clothes and spread them out.

Then we left, and we continued to walk every night from midnight until noon or afternoon, as hard as possible, and then we would stop.
When we walked for fifteen nights, we came to a great mountain full of stones, and in it there were springs that ran through it, and there was a hole in which water settled. When we crossed it, we came to a tribe of Turks known as the Ghaziya. They were nomadic Bedouins; they had straw houses here and there, but they were in misery.

Despite that, they were like stray donkeys who did not owe a religion to Allah, did not use reason, and did not worship anything. Rather, they call their chiefs "Lords", and if one of them consulted his chief about something, he would say to him, O Lord, what should I do about  such and such?

And their affairs were consulted among themselves, but whenever they agreed on something and resolved to do so, the most base and meanest of them would come and cancel what they had agreed upon.
And I heard them saying, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah,” as an approach to those Muslims who passed by them, not out of belief in that. 

If one of them was wronged or something happened to him that he hated, he would raise his head to the sky and say, Bir Tengri, which in Turkish is the One God, because Bir in Turkish is one and Tengri is God in the Turkish language.

And they do not cleanse themselves from defecation or urine, nor do they bathe for impurity or anything else, and there is no use of water among them, especially in the winter, and their women do not cover themselves from their men or from others, and likewise, a woman does not cover any part of her body from any of the people.

One day we went down to a man of them, and we sat, and the man’s wife was with us, and while she was talking, she uncovered her private part and scratched it, and we were looking at her, covering our faces, and we said, “I ask forgiveness from Allah.” Her husband laughed and said to the interpreter, “Tell them, she uncovers it in your presence and lets you see it, but she protects it so that you do not reach it, which is better than covering it and letting men approach it.

And they do not know about adultery, but whoever commits it, they cut him in two as they gather the branches of two trees, then they tie him up with the branches, and they release the two trees open, and the one who was tied to them splits.

One day a man of them heard me reciting the Qur’an, and he liked it, so he said to the translator, “Say to him, ‘Do not go silent.’” And this man said to me one day through the translator, “Say to this Arab, ‘Does our Lord Almighty have a woman?’” So I found his words to be greatly bad, and I praised Allah and asked for His forgiveness, so he praised Allah and asked for his forgiveness as I did, and likewise, the Turks do that whenever they hear a Muslim praising and glorifying Allah, they do the same.

And the fee for their marriage is that one of them proposes to the other some of his harem, either his daughter, his sister, or someone who is in charge of her, on such and such of a Khwarazmi dress, and if he agrees with him, he carries her to him, and the dowry may be a camel, an animal, or something else. 

And no man of them has access to his wife before he has paid the dowry that her guardian has agreed upon, and if he pays it to him, he comes immodestly and enters the house where she is and takes her in the presence of her father, mother, and brothers, so they do not prevent him from doing so.

If a man dies and has a wife and children, the eldest of his children marries his wife if she is not his mother, and none of the merchants or anyone else is able to cleanse himself from impurity in their presence except at night so that they cannot see him, and that is because they get angry and say, “This man wants to bewitch us because he has stared in the water,” and they fine him money.

And no Muslim is able to pass through their country before he appoints a friend for him from among them, who will come down to him and carry for him from the country of Islam a dress, a veil for his wife, and some pepper, millets, raisins, and walnuts. When the Muslim comes to his friend, he makes a dome for him and carries to him as many sheep as he needs, and he lets the Muslim slaughter them, because the Turks do not slaughter, but rather they strike the head of the sheep until it dies.

And if a man of them wants to leave and has camels and animals or needs money, he leaves what he has with his Turkish friend, takes from his camels and animals and the money as much as he needs, and departs. When he returns from his trip, his friend pays him back his money and returns his camels and animals to him.

Likewise, if a person passes by a Turk who he does not know and then says, “I am your guest, and I want to borrow from your camels, your animals, and your money,” he would give him whatever he wants. 

If the merchant died while owing that debt and the caravan returned, the Turk would meet them and say, “Where is my guest?” If they say, “He is dead,” then he would stop the caravan and come to the most noble merchant he sees among them and take his possessions while he looks at him, so he would take from his dirhams equal to the money he gave to that merchant without adding a single dirham, and he also would take from his animals and camels, and he would say, That is your cousin, and you are more deserving to repay his debt, and if the merchant fled, he would also act the same.

And he would say to him, That merchant is a Muslim like you, so take this back from him. And if he does not meet his Muslim guest on the avenue, he would ask about his country, where he is, and if he is guided to him, he would go in search of him for a matter of days until he finds him and takes his money back from him, as well as what he gave him as a gift.

And this is the case with a Turk as well; if he enters Jurjaniya, he asks about his guest and goes down to him until he travels. And if the Turk dies with his Muslim friend and the caravan passes by with his Muslim friend in it, they kill him and say, “You killed him by imprisoning him, and if you had not imprisoned him, he would not have died.” Likewise, if he gave him wine to drink and he spilled off a wall, they would kill him with it. and if he was not in the caravan, they would attack those in it and kill him.

And the matter of sodomy among them is very serious, and a man from the people of Khwarizm came to the neighborhood of Kuzerkin - who was the successor to the king of the Turks - and stayed with a guest of his for a while to buy sheep. The Turk had a beautiful son, so the Khwarizmi man continued to caress him and sought to seduce him until the boy obeyed him as he wanted, and the Turk came and found them lying together, the Turk brought this to Kuzerkin and said to him, “Gather the Turks.”so He gathered them together, and when they gathered, he said to the Turk, “Do you like me to judge with truth or with falsehood?” He said, “With truth, he said, bring your son, so he brought him. He said, He and the merchant must both be killed. The Turk became upset about that and said, I will not hand over my son. So he said, The merchant should ransom himself, so he did, and he paid the Turk some sheep for sodomizing his son, paid Kuzerkin four hundred sheep, and departed from the country of the Turks.

The first of their kings and leaders that we met was Yanal, and he had converted to Islam. It was said to him, “If you convert to Islam, you will not rule us.” So he retracted his conversion to Islam. When we reached the place where he was, he said, “I will not let you pass by because this is something we have never heard of, nor did we think it would be.” So we were kind to him, and he was satisfied, and we offered him a piece of Jurjanian kaftan worth ten dirhams, a dress, some bread, a handful of raisins, and a hundred walnuts. When we handed this man over to him, he prostrated to us, and this is their pattern. If one of them honors another man, he prostrates to him.
Then Yanal said, “If my houses were not far from the road, I would have brought sheep and wheat to you.” and He turned away from us, and we set out.

The next day, we met one man from the Turks, of despised character, shabby in appearance, and vile in appearance, and a heavy rain had fallen upon us. He said, “Stop.” So the entire caravan stopped, which was about three thousand animals and five thousand men. Then he said, “None of you may pass by.” So we stood in obedience to his command, and we said to him, “We are friends of Kuzerkin,” and he started laughing and said, “Who is Kuzerkin?” I would shit on Kuzerkin's beard. Then he said, “Bakand,” which means bread in the Khorezm language. So I handed him some pieces of bread, and he took them and said, “Go, I have shown mercy to you.”

He said: If a man among them gets sick, and he has neighbors and slaves who serve him, and no one from his household approaches him, they set up a tent for him in one corner of the house, and he remains there until he dies or recovers, and if he is a slave or a poor person, they throw him into the desert and leave him.

And when a man among them dies, they dug a hole for him as large as a house and went to him and dressed him in a cloak, his girdle, and his bow, and they put a wooden cup in his hand containing wine, and they leave a wooden vessel in front of him with wine in it, and they bring all his money and put it with him in that house, then they make him sit in it, and they roof the house over it. And they make over it something like a dome of clay, and they go to his many animals, and they kill one hundred heads to two hundred heads to one head, and they eat their meat except the head, legs, skin, and tail to crucify them on wood, and they say, “These are his animals that he will ride to Paradise.”

And if he killed a person and was brave, they would carve pictures out of wood with the number of those he killed, put them on his grave, and say, These are his servants who will serve him in Paradise.

And perhaps they neglect killing animals for a day or two, so an old man from among their elders urges them and says, “I saw so-and-so—meaning the dead person—in my sleep, and he said to me, ‘Look, you see me, and my companions preceded me, and my legs were torn as a result of me following them, and I am not catching up with them, and I am left alone.’ Then they go to his animals, kill them, and crucify them at his grave. Then, after a day or two, that old man comes to them and says, “I saw so-and-so.” He said, “My family and friends knew that I had caught up with those who came before me and had rested from my fatigue.”

He said, “The Turks all pluck their beards except their mustaches, and perhaps you see an old man among them who plucks his beard and leaves some of it under his chin. If a person sees him from afar, he would not doubt that it is a goat.”

And the king of the Turks of the Gaziya tribe is called Yabgu, which is the name of the prince, and everyone who kings this tribe is called by this name, and his successor is called Kuzerkin, and likewise, everyone who succeeds a leader among them is called Kuzerkin.

Then, after our journey, we encamped in the direction of those people with the commander of their army, and his name is Atrak, son of Al-Qatghan, so he set up Turkish domes for us, and we camped in them, and there was his family and entourage with large houses. The commander brought sheep and animals to us so that we could slaughter the sheep and ride the animals, and he invited a group of his family and his cousins and killed many sheep for them.

We had given him a gift of clothes, raisins, walnuts, pepper, and millets, and I saw his wife, who was his father’s wife, and she had taken meat and milk and some of what we had given him, and she went out of the houses into the desert and dug a hole and buried what was with her in it, and spoke some words, so I said to the translator, What does she say? He said, “This is a gift for the Qatghan, my father, Atrak, that the Arabs gave to him.”

When it was night, I and the translator entered to him while he was sitting in his dome, and we had a letter from Nazeer Al-Harami to him, in which he commanded him to convert to Islam and urged him to do so, and he addressed to him fifty dinars, including several Musaybiya dinars, three weights of musk, and leather skins and Mervian clothes, and we gave him two cloaks and a leather slipper and a brocade dress and five silk dresses, so we gave him his gift and gave him a mask and a ring to his wife.

And I read the letter to him, and he said to the translator, I will not tell you anything until you return, and I will write to the Sultan about what I am determined to do. He removed the brocade that was on him and put on a robe, and I saw that the cloak underneath was cut off and dirty, because their custom is that none of them should remove the garment that is on his body until it is completely scattered. He plucked his entire beard and mustache, and he looked like a servant. I heard the Turks mentioning that he was the best of them at hunting, and I saw him one day when he was riding with us on his horse when a goose passed by flying, so he stringed his bow and moved on his animal under it, then he shot the goose and brought it down.

Some days later, Atrak called the commanders who follow him, namely, Tarkan, Yanal, their nephew, and Ilghaz. Tarkan was the most noble and honorable of them, and he was lame, blind, and paralyzed. He said to them, “These are messengers of the King of the Arabs to my son-in-law, Almash, son of Shilki, and it was not good for me to release them except with your advice.”

Tarkan said, “This is something we have never seen nor heard of, nor has a Sultan’s messenger passed by us since we and our fathers were.” I only think that the Sultan has done the trick and directed these people to the Khazars to attack us, and the right thing to do is to cut these messengers in half and take what they have.

Another of them said, No, we will take what they have and leave them naked to return to where they came from. Another said, No, but we have captives with the king of the Khazars, so we will send them to redeem those. So they kept thinking about what to do for seven days, while we were in a state of death, until their opinion was unanimous that they would release us and we would move on. So we gave Tarkan two Mervian kaftans, some clothes, and each one of his companions a cloak, and likewise to Yanal, and we gave them pepper, millets, and loaves of bread, and then they departed from us.

And we traveled until we reached the Yagandi River, and the people took out their boats made of camel skins and spread them out, and they took the furniture from the Turkish camels because they were round, so they placed them on the boats so that they would stretch out, then they stuffed them with clothes and belongings. When they were full, a group of five, six, four, or less and more sat on each boat, and they took the Kadank wood in their hands to use it like oars, and they continued to row, and the water carried them as they rotated until we crossed. As for the animals and camels, they are shouted at to make them swim across, and a group of fighters had to cross with weapons before any of the caravan crosses, so that they would be a vanguard for the caravan for fear of the Bashgard lest they oppress the people as they crossed.

So we crossed Yagandi in this manner that we mentioned, then after that we crossed a river that is also called Jam in travel, then we crossed Vakhsh, then Adal, then Jordan, then Varsh, then Akti, then Vatva, and these are all major rivers.

Then we came to the Bajnak, and we beheld them descending on unflowing water similar to the sea, and they were very dark-skinned, shaved, and poor, unlike the Gaziya. Because I saw someone of the Gaziya who owned ten thousand animals and a hundred thousand heads of sheep, and most of the sheep grazed among the snow, searching with their hooves for grass, and if they did not find it, they gnawed the snow and became very fat.If it is summer and the sheep would eat the grass and become emaciated.

And we went down to the Bajnak for one day, then we set off and went to the Jikh River, which was the largest river we had seen, the greatest, and the most flowing. I saw a boat overturn, drowning whoever was on it, and many men were lost, and several camels and animals drowned, and we could not cross it except with effort.Then we walked for days, crossing the Jaka River, then after it the Aras River, then Bajag, then Samur, then Kanal, then the Sukh River, then the Kanglu River.

We stopped in the country of a people of the Turks called the Bashgard, so we were cautious of them with the utmost caution, because they are the worst of the Turks, the filthiest, and the most willing to kill. A man of them would meet another, slit his head's top, take it, and leave him. And they shave their beards and eat lice, and one of them traces the seam of his cloak and bites the lice off with his teeth.

There was with us one of them who had converted to Islam, and he was serving us. I saw him finding lice on his dress, so he cut it off with his fingernail, then licked it, and said when he saw me, “Good.” And each one of them carves a piece of wood and hangs it on him, and when he wants to travel or meet an enemy, he kisses it and prostrates to it. And he said, “O Lord, do such-and-such to me.” So I said to the translator, “Ask some of them why they do this, and why did he make it his Lord?” He said, “Because I came out of someone like him, I do not know for myself any creator other than him.”

And among them are those who claim that they worship twelve lords: a lord for the winter, a lord for the summer, a lord for the rain, a lord for the wind, a lord for the trees, a lord for the people, a lord for the animals, a lord for the evening, a lord for the night, a lord for the day, a lord for death, a lord for the earth, and the Lord who is in the sky is the greatest of them all, except that He is the greatest of them all. He meets with these false gods by agreement, and each one of them is satisfied with what his partner does, but Allah is greatly exalted above what the wrongdoers claim.

We saw a group of them worshiping snakes, a group worshiping fish, and a group worshiping cranes. They informed me that they were fighting some of their enemies and defeated them, and that the cranes shouted at them, so they were terrified and defeated, so they worshiped the cranes for that reason. They said, This is our Lord, and these are His actions. He defeated our enemies, so they worship them for that.

He said, “We walked from the country of those people, and we crossed the Girimsan River, then the Uran River, then the Urem River, then the Baynak River, then the Wutig River, then the Niasna River, then the Jawshiz River, and the distance between one river and the other from what we mentioned was two, three, and four days, and less than that and more.

The Slavs (The Vikings)

When we were a day and a night’s journey away  from the king of the Slavs, and he was the one we were heading to, he directed to receive us the four kings who were under his command, as well as his brothers and sons. They received us, bringing with them bread, meat, and millets, and they walked with us.

When we were two leagues away from him, he met us himself, and when he saw us, he fell down and prostrated in thanks to Allah Almighty. He had dirhams on his sleeve, so he divided them among us and set up domes for us, so we went down into them.

And we arrived there on a Sunday after twelve nights of the month of Muharram in the year three hundred and ten, so the distance from Jurjaniya to his town was seventy days, so we stayed on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in the domes that were set up for us, and then the king of the Slavs gathered the kings, commanders, and the people of his country to hear the reading of the book.

When it was Thursday and they had gathered, we deployed the two banners that were with us, and we saddled the animal and dressed it in black and turbaned it. I took out the Caliph’s letter and said to him, “It is not permissible for us to sit while the letter is being read.” So he and the notables of the people of his kingdom who were present rose to their feet, and the king was a fat big-bellied man.

I began reading the front of the letter, and when I reached, “Peace be upon you, I praise Allah for you, to whom there is no god but He.” I said, “Return the greeting to the Commander of the Faithful,” so he did, and all of them did, and the translator continued translating for us, letter by letter, so when we finished reading it, they said, “Allahu Akbar,” with a heavy voice that trembled the earth.

Then I read the letter of the Minister Hamid, son of Al-Abbas, while he was standing. I then ordered him to sit, and he sat while reading the letter of Nazeer Al-Harami. When I finished it, his companions scattered a lot of dirhams on him. Then I brought out gifts of perfume, clothes, and pearls for him and his wife. I continued offering them gifts until I finished. Then I put on his wife the robe of honor in the presence of people, and she was sitting next to him, and this is their tradition and pattern, so when I put the robe on her, the women scattered dirhams on her, and we left.

An hour later, he sent for us, and we went to him when he was in his dome, and the kings were on his right, and he ordered us to sit on his left, and his children were sitting in front of him, and he was alone on a bed covered with Roman brocade, so he called for the table, and it was served, and on it was the roasted meat alone.

So he began, and he took a knife and cut a morsel and ate it, and a second, and a third, then he took a piece and gave it to Sawsan the Messenger, and when he ate it, a small table was served to him and was placed in his hands, and this is their custom; no one extends his hand to eat until the king hands him a morsel, so the time he eats it, a table is served to him. Then he handed a morsel to me, and a table was served to me. Then he cut off a piece and gave it to a king on his right, and a table was served to him. Then he handed some morsels to his children, and their tables were served to them.We each ate from his own table without anyone sharing it with him or eating anything from anyone else’s table. When we finished eating, each one of us took what was left on his table home.

When we ate, he called for a drink of honey, and they call it the Saju, so he drank a cup, then he stood up and said, “This is my toast to my master, the Commander of the Faithful—may Allah prolong his life.” The four kings and his sons rose when they saw him rise, and we also rose, and he did that three times, then we departed from him.

A man was giving a sermon to him on his pulpit before I arrived, saying, Oh God, guide the King Yaltawar, the King of Bulgarians, so I said to him, Allah is the King, and no one should be called on the pulpit by the name "king" other than Him, the Almighty, and this is what Your Master, the Commander of the Faithful, has agreed to be said on his pulpits in the East and the West. Oh Allah, guide your servant and successor, Jafar, the Imam, Al-Muqtadir Billah, Commander of the Faithful, as well as those who were before him among his forefathers, the caliphs. And the Prophet, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, said, “Do not praise me as the Christians praised Isa, son of Maryam, for I am only a man, so call me the servant of Allah and His Messenger.”

He said to me, How is it permissible to give a sermon to me? I said, in your name and your father's name. He said, “My father was an infidel, and I do not like to mention his name on the pulpit, and I also do not like for my name to be mentioned, since the one who named me with it was an infidel, but what is the name of my master, the Commander of the Faithful?” So I said, Jaafar. He said, Is it permissible for me to make it my name? I said yes, and he said, I have made my name Jaafar and my father's name Abu Abdullah.

Then the preacher came forward to give a sermon to him and said, Oh Allah, guide your servant Jaafar, son of Abdullah, Prince of Bulgarians, Master of the Believers.

Three days later, after reading the book and delivering the gifts, he sent me a message because he knew about the four thousand dinars matter and the Christian man's trick to delay it, and its news was in the letter.

When I entered, he ordered me to sit down, so I sat down, and he threw the letter of the Commander of the Faithful to me and said, “Who brought this letter?” I said, “I am.” Then he threw the minister’s letter to me and said, “And who brought this too?” I said, “I am.” He said, “So what was done with the money he mentioned in the letters?” I said it was not possible to collect it; time was running out, and we were afraid of missing entry, so we left him so that he would join us later.

He said, “You have brought all of you, and my master has spent on you what he spent to bring this money to me, so that I can build a fortress with it to protect me from the Jews who have enslaved me. As for the gift, my servant would have done well to bring it.” I said, “It is like that, but we have tried hard to do so.” The translator said, “Tell him, ‘I do not know these people. I only know you.’ And that is because these people are foreigners. And if the Master—may Allah help him—knew that they would accomplish what you have accomplished, he would not have sent you so that you would keep my money, read my letter, and hear my answer, and I would not demand a dirham from anyone else, so it is better for you to bring out the money.

So I left his presence, terrified and distressed. He was a man with a majestic appearance, plump and broad, as if he were speaking out of hiding. So I left him and gathered my companions and informed them of what had happened between me and him, and I said to them: This is what I was warned about.

And his muezzin used to repeat the iqama when he made the call to prayer, so I told him, “Your master, the Commander of the Faithful, makes the iqama only once.” So he said to the muezzin, “Accept what he tells you and do not contradict him.”

The muezzin kept asking me about the money for days and debating with me about it while I kept agreeing with him to make him get over it. When he despaired of it, he approached the muezzin and ordered him to repeat the iqama, and he did so, intending to make it a way to debate with me. When I heard him repeat the iqama, I forbade him and shouted at him. The king knew that, so he brought me and my companions.

When we gathered, he said to the translator, “Tell him—meaning me—what does he think about two muezzins, one of whom made iqama once and another who made iqama twice? Then each one of them prayed with a group of people. Is their prayer permissible or not?” I said, Their prayer is permissible. He said, with difference or unanimity? I said, with unanimity, he said, Tell him, what does he think about a man who gave money to a people who were weak, besieged, and enslaved, but they betrayed him?

I said, “This is not permissible, and these are bad people.” He said, with difference or unanility? I said, with unanimity, and he said to the translator, Tell him, do you know that if the Caliph—may Allah prolong his life—had sent me an army, he would have been able to defeat me? I said no. He said, How about the Prince of Khorasan? I said no. He said, Is it not because of the distance and the large number of infidel tribes between us? I said yes.

He said, Tell him, by Allah, I am in my place far away as you see me, but I am afraid of my master, the Commander of the Faithful, and that is because I fear that he hears something that he hates about me and supplicate against me, and I will perish in my place while he is in his kingdom, and between me and him are vast countries.

And even though you ate his bread and wore his clothes, and you have been with him all the time, you have betrayed him with the letter he sent to me and to weak people, and you have betrayed the Muslims. I will not hear anything from you until someone comes to me and advises me on what he says. If a person comes to me in this manner, I will accept it from him, and he made us shut up, and we left him. He said, “After he finished his statement, he preferred me, brought me closer to him, pushed my companions aside, and called me Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq.”

And I saw many wonders in his country that I cannot count. The first night that we spent in his country, I saw, at a record hour before sunset, the horizon of the sky, and it turned intensely red, and I heard in the air loud noises and a loud hum. So I raised my head and saw a red cloud like fire close to me, and those hummings and sounds came from it, and in it were the likes of people and animals, and in it were ghosts who resemble people, and in their hands were spears and swords that I can recognize and imagine, and there was another piece like it, in which I also saw men, animals, and weapons. Then this piece came forward against the other one as a battalion attacked another. So we were terrified by this and began to supplicate, while the Slavs laughed at us and were amazed at our actions.

He said, “We were looking at the two pieces attacking each other, and they would all mix in a fight for an hour and then separate. The matter continued like that for an hour into the night, then they disappeared.” So we asked the king about this, and he claimed that his ancestors used to say that these are among the believers and the disbelievers of the jinn, and they fight each other every night, and that they have not quit this ever since they were every night.

He said, and I and a tailor who belonged to the king among the people of Baghdad talked for some time while we were waiting for the call to prayer (Azan) in the dark until we heard it. So we left the dome, and dawn had come, and I said to the muezzin, “What Azan did you make?” He said, “The Azan of Fajr (dawn).” I said, What about the Isha prayer? He said, We perform it with Maghrib. I said, Let's do it at night. He said, Okay, as you see.

And he said, The night was shorter, but it was getting longer. He mentioned that he had not slept for a month for fear of missing the Fajr prayer. This is because one puts the pot on the fire at sunset, then prays the Fajr prayer, and the pot is still not cooked.

He said, “I saw that their day was very long, and it lengthens for a year and their night shortens, then the night becomes longer and the day shortens. When the second night came, I sat outside the dome and watched the sky, and I did not see any planets except a small number, which I thought was about fifteen separate planets.” And the red twilight before sunset never set, and the night was not very dark, and a man would recognize another man at night from a distance greater than an arrow shot.

He said, “I saw the moon was not in the middle of the sky, but rather it rose in the sky's parts for an hour, then dawn came and the moon set. The king told me that behind his country, at a distance of three months’ journey, there were a people called Wisu; their night was less than an hour.”

He said, “I saw in their country that when the sun rose, everything in it would become red, including the land, the mountains, and everything a person looks at when the sun rises, as if it were a large cloud, and the redness remains that way until the sky darkens.”

And the people of the country informed me that when winter comes, the night turns in the length of the day, and the day turns in the shortness of the night, to the point that a man of us goes out at dawn to a river called Volga, and between us and the river there is less than a league journey, but the man does not reach it until the night comes, and all the stars rise all over the sky, and we did not leave the country until the night lengthened and the day shortened.

And I saw them seeking blessings from the howling of dogs, rejoicing in it, and saying, “This is a year of fertility, blessings, and safety.”

And I saw there were so many snakes that a branch of a tree could be wrapped around with ten snakes or more, and they did not kill or harm them. In some places, I even saw a tall tree, more than a hundred cubits tall, and it fell, and its body was very large. I stood looking at it when it moved, and that frightened me. I looked at it and found on it a snake, close to it in thickness and length. When the snake saw me, it left the fallen tree and disappeared among the trees, so I came in fear, so I spoke to the king and those who were in his council, but they did not care about that. He said, “Do not panic; it would not harm you.”

And we stayed with the king for some time. Then I and my companions, Takin, Sawsan, Baris, and a man from the king’s companions, went through the trees, and we saw a small green stick, as thin as a spindle but longer, with a green petiole on it. On top of the petiole was a wide leaf spread out on the ground like a sprout, containing seeds. Whoever eats it will never doubt that it is pomegranate, so we ate from it, and it was very delicious, and we continued to walk around it and eat from it.

I saw that they had very green apples that were more acidic than wine vinegar, and the slave girls became fat because they ate them. I saw in their country many hazelnut trees in water ponds, and each water pond was the size of forty leagues.

And I saw a tree in their country that I did not know what it was. It was very tall; its stem was devoid of leaves; and its top was like the palm tree's, with delicate fronds. However, they were gathered together. The people would come to a place they knew by its stem, and they would make a hole in it, and they would place a vessel under it, and water would flow into it from that hole, which tastes better than honey. And just as with wine, if one drinks too much of it, he will be intoxicated by it.

And most of their food is millets and animal meat, although wheat and barley are plentiful on their land, and everyone who sows something takes it for himself. The king has no right to it except that they give him a beaver skin every year from every house, and if he orders a company to raid some country and it takes spoils, he gets a share with them. And everyone who celebrates or invites the king to a feast serves honey-wine, and bad wheat because their land is dark and stinking.

And they do not have places where they collect their food, but they dig wells in the ground and put their food in them. After only a few days, the food spoils, stinks, and becomes of no use.

And they do not have olive oil, sesame oil, or fat at all. Instead, they use fish fat as a substitute for these oils. So everything they use in it is fatty, and they make barley soup for the slave girls and boys. Perhaps they cook barley with meat, so they serve meat to the gentlemen and barley to the slave girls.

And they all wear caps, so when the king rides, he rides alone, without a servant, and with no one to be with him. When he passes through the market, everyone stands up, takes his cap off his head, and places it under his armpit. When he passes them, they put their caps back on their heads. Likewise, everyone who comes before the king, young and old, even his children and brothers, should take their caps off and put them under their armpits, then bow down to him with their heads and sit down, then get up until he permits them to sit again, and everyone who sits before him should sit on his knees and not take off his cap or show it until he goes out of the presence of the king and then put it back on.

And they all dwell in domes, except that the king’s dome is very large, can accommodate a thousand people or more, and is furnished with Armenian carpets, and in the middle of it there is a bed covered with Roman brocade.

One of their customs is that if a man’s son is born a child, his grandfather takes him instead of his father and says, “I have more right to embrace him than his father until the child becomes a man,” and if the man among them dies, his brother inherits from him instead of his son. So I taught the king that this was not permissible, and I explained to him what inheritance was until he understood it.

And there were many lightning strikes in their country, and if the lightning strikes a house, they do not approach it, and they leave it in its state and all those in it—men, money, and other things—until its ruins are erased through time, and they say, This is a cursed house.

And if one killed a man of them intentionally, they would retaliate against him, and if he killed him accidentally, they would make a box for him from the wood, put him inside, nail it, and put three loaves of bread and a jug of water with him, and they set up three logs for him like scarecrows and hung him between them, and they say, “We have put him between the sky and the earth, under the rain and the sun; may God have mercy on him. And he remains hung up until there is no trace left of him.

And if they notice a person who has knowledge, they say, This man had better serve our Lord. So they take him, put a rope around his neck, and hang him from a tree until the rope is cut off.

The king's translator told me that a Sindhi had come to that country and stayed with the king for a period of time, serving him. He was of sharp understanding, and a group of them wanted to go out to do business for themselves. So the Sindhi man asked the king for permission to go out with them, but he forbade him from doing so, but the Sindhi man insisted on the king until he gave him permission, so he went out with them on a ship, and they found that man to be smart, so they conspired among themselves and said, “This man is fit to serve our Lord, so let us send him to the Lord." On their way, they decided to stop by some area, so they took the man off the ship and onto the land. They put a rope around his neck and tied it to the top of a tall tree, and they left him and went on.

And if they are walking on a road, then one of them urinates with his weapon on him. They go to him and take his weapon, his clothes, and everything he had with him. This is their custom, and if anyone of them takes his weapon off him and puts it aside, then urinates, they do nothing with him.

And their men and women go down to the river and bathe, all of them naked, before each other, and they do not commit adultery for whatever reason. And whoever of them commits adultery, they set for him four bars, tie his hands and feet to them, and cut him off with an ax from his neck to his thighs, and they do the same to the woman as well; then every part of him or her would be hanged on a tree.

And I tried hard to make their women cover themselves from men when swimming, but that has not worked for me, and these people kill the thief just as they kill the adulterer.

And in their lands, there is a lot of honey in the dwellings of bees, which they know where they are, and they go out seeking them. Perhaps some of their enemies would attack them and kill them. Among them are many merchants who go to the land of the Turks and bring sheep, and to a country called Wisu, and they bring beavers and black foxes.

And we found among them a family of five thousand men and women who had all converted to Islam, known as The Barnjars. They had built a wooden mosque for themselves in which they prayed, but they did not know how to recite in Arabic during the prayer, so I taught a group what to say in the prayer. 

And a man called Talut converted to Islam at my hands, so I called him Abdullah. He said, “I want you to call me by your name, Muhammad,” so I did. His wife, his mother, and his children converted to Islam as well, so they were all named Muhammad, and I taught him, “The Surah of Al-Fatiha and the Surah of Ikhlas.’” So his joy in these two surahs was greater than his joy if he were the king of the Slavs.

When we met the king, we found him at a place called Khalja, which had three lakes, of which two were large and one was small, but all of them were not deep, and there was about a league between this place and a great river of theirs that flows into the country of the Khazars, which was called the Volga River. This river is the site of a market that takes place every year, and many valuable goods are sold there.

Tekin had told me that in the king’s country there was a man of very good character. When I arrived in the town, I asked the king about him. He said, Yes, he was in our country and died, and he was not of the town nor of the people either. His news was that a group of merchants went out to the Volga River. It is a river that we go for a whole-day journey to reach, and this river has extended and its waters have overflowed, so one day a group of merchants came to me and said, O king, a man has stood on the river, and if he is of a nation that is close to us, then there is no place for us in this land, and we have no choice but to change our direction.

So I rode with them to the river until we reached it, and I saw a man; his arm was twelve cubits long, his head was like a large pot, his nose was more than a span, and he had huge eyes and fingers that were more than a span. His looks terrified us, and we were afraid of him. We started talking to him, and he did not talk to us but rather looked at us.

So I carried him to my place, and I wrote to the people of Wisu, who were three months away from us, asking them about him. They wrote to me informing me that this man was of Gog and Magog, who were three months away from them, and they live naked, and the sea was between us because they were on its shore, and they have sex with each other like animals. Every day,God Almighty brings forth a fish from the sea for them, and each one of them comes with a knife and cuts out as much of the fish as is sufficient for him and his dependents. If he takes more than what satisfies him, his stomach hurts, and his dependents stomachs hurt as well, and perhaps they all die, so when they take what they need from it, it overturns and falls back into the sea, and every day they do the same thing.

And between us and them is the sea on one side and the mountains surrounding them on the other. The dam also prevented them from entering the door through which they were leaving. So when God Almighty wills to let them out into the people and the buildings, He will allow them to open the dam, cause the sea to dry up, and stop providing them with the fish.

He said, so I asked him about the man, and he said, He stayed with me for a while, and every boy who looked at him died, and every pregnant woman who looked at him dropped her baby, and if he caught any person, he would squeeze him with his hands until he killed him, and when I saw what he did, I hung him on a high tree until he died. If you want to take a look at his bones and his head, I will go with you to help you find them and look at them. 

I said, “By Allah, I would like to do that.” So he rode with me to a large place in which there were great tall trees, and he led me to a tree under which the man's bones and head fell. I saw his head; it was like a large hive, and his ribs were larger than the stalks of palm trees, as were the bones of his arms and legs, so I marveled at him and left.

He said, The king traveled from the lakes called Khalja to a river called Jawshiz, where he stayed for two months. Then he wanted to leave, so he sent to a people called Sawaz, ordering them to leave with him, but they refused, and they separated into two groups, one with Khatna, and he reigned over them, and his name was Werg. So the king sent to them and said, “Allah Almighty has bestowed upon me Islam and the state of the Commander of the Faithful. I am his servant, and this nation has appointed me to rule. Whoever disobeys me, I will strike him with the sword. The other group was with a king of some tribe known as the king of Askal, and he was in obedience to the king, except that he did not embrace Islam.

When the king addressed this message to them, they were afraid of him, so they all departed with him to the Jawshiz River, which is a small river; its width is five cubits, and its water reaches to the navel and even to the collarbone or more, and around it are many trees and other things.

And near the river there is a wide desert, in which they mention that there is an animal that is smaller than a camel and bigger than a bull. Its head is the head of a camel, its tail is the tail of a bull, its body is the body of a mule, and its hooves are like the hooves of a bull. It has in the middle of its head a single, thick, round horn that increases in fineness along its length, and its top is like the point of a spear. This animal is five to three cubits long, or more or less, and feeds on tree leaves.

And if the animal sees a horseman, it goes towards him, and if the man was riding a horse, he would escape from it with effort, and if it caught up with him, it would take him from the back of his animal by its horn, then throw him into the air and stick its horn in him, and the animal would continue like that until it killed the horseman. The animal does not appear for any reason, and the people search for him in the desert and the woods until they kill him, and they climb the tall trees where the animal is, and for this purpose, a number of archers gather with poisoned arrows, and if it gets in the middle of them, they keep shooting it until it is dead.

I saw with the king three large dishes resembling Yemeni onyx. I knew that they were made of the horn of this animal, and some of the townspeople mentioned that it was a rhinoceros.

He said, “I saw that most of them were sick, and most of them might die from colon, which affects even their babies. And if a Muslim dies among them or the husband of a Khwarezmian woman, they wash him as Muslims do, then they carry him on a wheel that pulls him, with a halberd in his hands, until they come to the place in which they bury him, and when they reach it, they take him off the wheel and place him on the ground, then they draw a line around his body, then they dug his grave within that line, and bury him, and this is what they do with their dead.

And women do not cry over the dead, but rather the men cry over him. They come on the day he died, stand at the door of his dome, and cry the ugliest and most desolate cry possible.

That's for the free people, and when their crying has ended, the slaves come with their braided skins and start crying and beating their sides and every naked part on their bodies with those thongs, until their bodies become like they were beaten with a whip, then they set up a halberd at the door of his dome, bring his weapons, and place them around his grave and not stop crying for two years.

When the two years have passed, they put down the halberd, take off some of their hairs, and call upon the relatives of the deceased with a call to let them know that they have come out of grief, and if the dead has a wife and is one of the leaders, his wife becomes allowed to get married. As for the common people, they do some of this with their dead.

And he king of Slavs must pay a tax to the king of the Khazars from every house in his kingdom, which is a beaver skin.

And if a ship comes from the country of the Khazars to the country of the Slavs, the king would board it, count what was on it, and take a tenth from all of that. If the Russians or other races come with slaves, the king has the right to take one out of every ten.

And the son of the king of the Slavs was a hostage to the king of the Khazars, who had contacted the king of the Slavs about his daughter and proposed to her, but he rejected him and turned him down. So he took her by force, and he was a Jew, and she was a Muslim. She died with him, and then he asked for another daughter of his. At the moment, the king of the Slavs knew about the Jew man's intention; he married his daughter to the king of Askal for fear that he would take her by force as he had done to her sister, and the king of the Slavs wrote to the sultan and asked him to build him a fortress for fear of the Khazar king.

He said, “One day I asked him and said to him, ‘Your kingdom is vast, your wealth is planty, and your tax is large. So why did you ask the Sultan to build a fortress with his own money?’” He said the Islamic state was coming, and their money was being taken from it, so I sought that for this reason. If I had wanted to build a fortress with my money, whether silver or gold, it would not have been impossible for me to do so. But I sought the blessing of the money of the Commander of the Faithful, so I asked him for that.

The Russians

He said, “I saw the Russians arriving to trade, and they landed on the Volga River, and their bodies were perfect as if they were palm trees, blond and red, and they did not wear Kurtas or slippers, but they wore cloaks with a slit in them to stick one of their hands out, and with each one of them was an axe, a sword, and a knife.” and they always take these things on them. They have Frankish-scratchy swords, and they have on their skin pictures of green trees and other things, from the toe to the neck.

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