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 duree. In this respect, some modern theses regarding these issues must be tackled, most remarkably, that of Peter Frankopan and Barry Cunliffe. 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 first Arabic historian to believe and thrive on the study of these people, whereas his successors overstated information about them, from the 13th Century on.
Highlights
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
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)
Ibn Fadlan was a shrewd informant when reporting about the people he met, their habits and characteristics of interest, the rivers he crossed, the temperature he found along the way
Summary
When working with ethnographical material, it is often the content that catches the attention of scholars. 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, an abregé of a larger work 574), is factually correct in the whole and parts of his descriptions and remains accurate to this day 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.
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