Y 3.8 [51] They consider the howling of a dog to be very auspicious, I observed. They say that a year of fertility, auspiciousness, and peace approaches. Snakes, I noticed, are so numerous that ten, maybe even more, could be coiled around just one branch of a tree. The Bulghārs do not kill them, and the snakes do them no harm. [53] The apples are dark. In fact, they are extremely dark and more acidic than wine vinegar. The female slaves eat them and get fat. Hazel trees grow in abundance. I saw hazel woods everywhere. One wood can measure forty by forty farsakhs. There is another tree that grows there, but I don’t know what it is. It is extremely tall, has a leafless trunk, and tops like the tops of palm trees, with slender fronds, but bunched together. The locals know where to make a hole in the trunk. They place a container underneath it. Sap, sweeter than honey, flows from the hole. If someone drinks too much sap, he gets as intoxicated as he would from drinking wine. [54] Their diet consists chiefly of millet and horse meat, though wheat and barley are plentiful. Crop-growers keep what they grow for themselves. The king has no right over the crops, but every year they pay him one ox skin per household. When he orders a raid on a given territory he takes a share of the booty they bring back. [55] They do not use olive oil, sesame oil, or any other vegetable oil. They use fish oil instead. This is why they are so greasy. [56] They wear peaked caps. The king rides out alone, unaccompanied by his men or anyone else. If he passes through the market, everyone stands, removes his cap from his head and places it under his arm. When the king has passed, they put their caps back on. The same is true of those who are given an audience with the king, the great and the lowly—even his sons and his brothers. The moment they are in his presence, they remove their caps and place them under their arms. Then they bow their heads, sit down, and stand up again until he commands them to be seated. Those who sit in his presence, do so in a kneeling position. They keep their hats under their arms until they have left. Then they put them back on again.
Y 3.9 [59] I observed more lightning there than anywhere else. They do not approach a household struck by lightning but let it be with all of its contents, people, and possessions—everything in fact—until time destroys it. They say, “This household has incurred divine wrath.” [61] If they notice that someone is clever and able, they say, “This man is fit for the service of our lord.” They take hold of him, place a rope around his neck, and hang him from a tree until he decomposes. [62] If one of them urinates on a march while still in full armor, everything he has with him, including his weapons, is removed as plunder. But they leave him alone if he undoes his weapons and puts them aside while urinating. This is one of their customs. [63] Men and women wash naked together in the river without covering themselves, and yet under no circumstance do they commit adultery. When they catch an adulterer, they set four rods in the ground and tie his hands and his feet to them, no matter who he may be. Then they take an axe, and cut him up, from neck to thigh. They treat the woman in the same manner. They hang the pieces from a tree. Ibn Faḍlān said: I spared no effort to exhort the women to cover themselves when swimming in the presence of men, but that proved impossible. They kill a thief in the same way they do an adulterer.
Y 3.10 Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān gives many more items of information about the Bulghār but we have confined ourselves to this.
KHAZAR73
Y 4.1 … Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān was the envoy of al-Muqtadir bi-llāh to the king of the Ṣaqālibah. In an epistle in which he gave an account of all his experiences in these regions he said:
Y 4.2 Khazar is the name of a clime containing a fortified town called Itil. Itil is the name of the river that flows to Khazar from al-Rūs and Bulghār. Itil is a city. Khazar is the name of the kingdom, not the name of a city. Itil has two parts. One part, the bigger of the two, is on the west bank of the Itil. The other is on the east. The king, called yilik and also bāk in their tongue, lives on the west bank. The western part of the city stretches for about a farsakh and is surrounded by a wall. The wall has a flat top for patrols. They use felt tents for buildings, apart from a few clay structures. They have markets and baths. Many Muslims live there—more than ten thousand, it is said—and there are around thirty mosques. The king’s palace, made of brick, is far from the river bank. This is their only brick building as the king will permit no one else to build with brick. The wall has four gates, one by the river, another by the steppe behind the city. The king is a Jew and, it is said, boasts a retinue of four thousand men. The Khazar population is Muslim and Christian with a number of idolaters. The Jews are the minority sect, though the king is a Jew. Muslims and Christians are the majority. The king and his elite are Jews. In their customs and practices, they live predominantly as the idolaters do—each bows down before the other in order to demonstrate reverence. The various customs of the Muslims, Jews, and Christians determine the rules that govern their township. The king’s army is made up of twelve thousand men. This number never decreases: a dead man is replaced immediately. They have no regular stipend, apart from a pittance that they receive, to cover long periods when they go to war or are mustered to deal with an emergency. The various kinds of wealth acquired by the Khazars derive from tolls and their custom of tithing the goods that arrive by road, river, and sea. They also impose a duty on the inhabitants of the neighboring trading emporia and surrounding areas. This duty can take any form, including food and drink and other requirements. The king has nine judges: Jews, Christians, Muslims, and idolaters. They rule on cases that need deciding, and they, not the litigants, communicate with the king. When the court is in session, the judges send their inquiries to the king via a representative. This is how they make contact with him. He delivers his verdict and they implement it.
Y 4.3 There are no villages in the countryside around the city. The fields produce their crops without being regularly tended. In the summer they travel about twenty farsakhs out into the fields and work the land. They harvest the crops when the crops reach the river and the steppes and transport them by cart and boat. Their staples are rice and fish and other foodstuffs exported to them from al-Rūs, Bulghār, and Kūyābah. The eastern half of the Khazar city is inhabited largely by merchants and Muslims. This is where trading takes place. The language of the Khazars is not similar to Turkic and Persian. It is unique among spoken languages. The Khazars do not resemble the Turks. They have black hair and are of two kinds. One kind, called the Qarākhazar,74 is brown. They get their name from their deep brown, almost black, coloration and look like Indians. The other kind is fair-skinned, beautiful, and comely. Slavery is practiced among the Khazars, but only the idolaters engage in it, as they permit the buying and selling of their children and enslaving one another. It is contrary to the religious beliefs of the Jews and the Christians, as it is of the Muslims, to enslave a co-religionist. No product is exported from the Khazar realm. Anything acquired there (flour, honey, wax, silk, or skins, for example) is imported.
Y 4.4 [90] The title of the king of the Khazars is khāqān. He only appears in public once every four months, at a distance. He is called the Great Khāqān. His deputy is called Khāqān Bih, who leads and commands the army, manages and conducts the affairs of the kingdom, appears in public and leads the raids. The neighboring kings obey him. He enters75 the presence of the Great Khāqān every day, abasing himself in a show of humility and meekness. He must enter his presence barefoot, with a piece of firewood in his hand. When he greets him, he lights the firewood in front of him, and then sits on the couch with the king at his right hand. He is represented by a man called Kundur Khāqān, who in turn is represented by a man called Jāwashīghar.76 According to custom, the Great Khāqān does not sit before the people or speak to them. Only those functionaries we have mentioned are admitted into his presence. Executive power, the meting out of punishment, and the general management of the kingdom are the responsibility of the deputy, Khāqān Bih. It is the custom that, when the Great Khāqān dies, a large dwellin
g is constructed for him. It houses twenty tents,77 in each of which a grave is dug. Stones are pound to a kohl-like powder and spread on the ground. Lime is thrown on top. A second river flows under both the dwelling and the river—a fast, powerful river. They78 construct the grave above the river, saying, “This way no devil, man, worm, or vermin can reach him!” Those who bury him in his grave are beheaded, so no one knows which tent houses his grave. His grave is called the Garden, and they say, “He has entered the Garden.” All of the tents are carpeted with silk woven with gold. It is the custom of the king of the Khazars to possess twenty-five women, daughters of the neighboring kings, taken either with their compliance or by force.79 He has sixty concubines, slaves beautiful beyond compare. The freeborn women and the concubines live in a separate palace. Each has a chamber with a vault of teak paneling and surrounded by a pavilion. Each concubine is served by a eunuch as her chamberlain. When the king wants to have intercourse, he sends for the eunuch who places the woman in the king’s bed in the blink of an eye. The eunuch stands by the door of the king’s yurt. When the king is done with her, the eunuch takes her by the hand and departs. He does not leave her there for one minute longer. When this great king goes out riding, the entire army rides with him. There is a mile between him and his retinue. When his subjects see him, they lie down on their faces and remain prostrate before him. They do not lift their heads until he has passed. His kingship lasts forty years. When it is just one day past forty he is put to death by his subjects, including the elite, who say, “His mind is defective and his judgment is impaired.” No squadron he dispatches will turn back or retreat, no matter what. Those who come back after a defeat are killed. If his generals and the deputy are defeated, he has them brought into his presence, along with their women and children, and gives the women and children to another man before their very eyes. He does the same with their horses, belongings, weapons, and residences. Sometimes he cuts them in two and gibbets them. Sometimes he hangs them by the neck from a tree. Sometimes he makes them stable-hands—if he means to be kind to them, that is.
Y 4.5 The king of the Khazars has a mighty city on both banks of the Itil. The Muslims are on one bank, the king and his retinue on the other. One of the king’s men, a Muslim whose title is Khaz, is in charge of the Muslims. The legal rulings of all the Muslims, both those who reside in the realm of the Khazars and those who go there regularly to trade, are referred to this Muslim retainer. No one else looks into their affairs or judges among them. The Muslims have a congregational mosque in this city. This is where they perform the prayer and gather on Friday, the day of congregation. It has a tall minaret and a number of muezzins. In the year 310 [922–23],80 the king of the Khazars was informed that the Muslims had razed the synagogue in Dār al-Bābūnj. He gave orders for the minaret to be razed and for the muezzins to be killed. He said: “I would not have razed the mosque, were I not afraid that every synagogue in the territory of Islam would be razed!” The Khazars and their king are Jews. The Ṣaqālibah and those who live on the Khazar border are under his rule. He addresses them as slaves and they owe him their obedience. Some claim that the Khazars are the tribes of Gog and Magog.
KHWĀRAZM81
Y 5.1 I read the following in the epistle that Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāshid ibn Ḥammād wrote. He was the envoy of al-Muqtadir bi-llāh to the king of the Ṣaqālibah, and his patron was Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān. In this work he gives an account of all his experiences from his departure from Baghdad until his return. After his arrival in Bukhara, he said:
Y 5.2 We arrived in Bukhara and then left for Khwārazm. We travelled downriver from Khwārazm to al-Jurjāniyyah. The distance, by water, is fifty farsakhs.
Y 5.3 I say: These are his very words but I do not know what exactly he means by Khwārazm, because Khwārazm is incontrovertibly the name of the region.
Y 5.4 Ibn Faḍlān said: [9] I noticed that, in Khwārazm, the dirhams are adulterated and should not be accepted, because they are made of lead and brass. They call their dirham a ṭāzijah. It weighs four and a half dānaqs. The money changers trade in sheep bones, spinning tops, and dirhams. They are the strangest of people in the way they talk and behave. When they talk, they sound just like frogs croaking. At the end of the prayer they disavow the Commander of the Faithful, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, God be pleased with him. [10] We stayed several days in al-Jurjāniyyah. The River Jayḥūn froze over completely, from beginning to end. The ice was nineteen spans thick.
Y 5.5 God’s poor servant ʿAbdallāh82 said: This is false. The river freezes to an extent of five spans, no more—and even this is a rare occurrence. Normally it is two or three spans thick. I speak from first hand experience. I quizzed the locals about it too. Maybe Ibn Faḍlān thinks that the whole river freezes over, but this is not so. The surface freezes over while the water flows underneath. The people of Khwārazm make a hole in the ice and draw their drinking water from it. This hole is very rarely more than three spans deep.
Y 5.6 Ibn Faḍlān said: [10] Horses, mules, donkeys, and carts used the river like a road and it did not move—it did not even budge. It stayed like this for three months. We thought the country we were visiting was an «infernally cold»83 portal to the depths of Hell. When snow fell, it was accompanied by a wild, howling blizzard.
Y 5.7 I said: This is also false. If the winter winds did not abate, people could not live there.
Y 5.8 [11] When people here want to honor each other and be generous they say, “Come to my house so we can talk, for I have a good fire burning.” This is when they want to express genuine generosity and affability. However, God the exalted has been kind to them by making firewood plentiful and very cheap: a cart load of ṭāgh wood (which is the tamarisk) costs only two local dirhams, and their carts can hold about three thousand raṭls.
Y 5.9 I said: Once again this is false. From my experience of transporting some cotton bales, the maximum load their carts can carry is one thousand raṭls. The carts they use are drawn by a single animal, be it an ox, a donkey, or a horse. Of course, it is possible that firewood was this cheap during the author’s lifetime, but, when I was there, one hundred mann cost three ruknī dinars.
Y 5.10 [11] Normally, their beggars do not stand outside at the door but go into the house, sit for a while and get warm by the fire. Then they say, “Pakand” meaning “bread.” They leave, whether they are given some or not.
Y 5.11 I said: I actually observed this custom, though it occurs in the countryside and not the town. Then Ibn Faḍlān describes the severe cold, which I too experienced. The mud on the roads would freeze, and the dust would rise into the air when the roads were used. When the rains came and the temperature rose a little, the roads would revert to mud and the animals would sink into it up to their knees. I once tried to write something down but was unable to because the ink in the pot was frozen, and I had to hold it close to the fire and thaw it. Cups would stick to my lips because they were frozen. Blowing on them to warm them up would do no good. And yet for all this, Khwārazm is a pleasant region. Its people are scholars and legal experts, clever men, and wealthy. It is possible to make a living there, and it is possible for them to cultivate the soil and grow crops.
RŪS84
Y 6.1 I read the following in the epistle of Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāshid ibn Ḥammād. He was the envoy of al-Muqtadir to the king of the Ṣaqālibah, and his patron was Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān. In the work, he gave an account of everything he witnessed, from his departure from Baghdad until his return. I find his account so astonishing that I quote it as I found it. Ibn Faḍlān said:
Y 6.2 [74] I also saw the Rūsiyyah. They had come to trade and had disembarked at the Itil River. I have never seen bodies as nearly perfect as theirs. As tall as palm trees, fair, and reddish, they wear neither tunics nor caftans. Every man wears a cloak with which he covers
half of his body and leaves one arm uncovered. They carry swords, daggers, and axes and always have them to hand. They use Frankish swords with broad, ridged blades. They are dark, from the tips of their toes right up to their necks—trees, pictures, and the like. [75] Every woman wears a small box made of iron, brass, silver, or gold, depending on her husband’s financial worth and social standing, tied at her breasts. The box has a ring to which a knife is attached, also tied at her breasts. The women wear neck rings of gold and silver. When a man has amassed ten thousand dirhams, he has a neck ring made for his wife. When he has amassed twenty thousand dirhams, he has two neck rings made. For every subsequent ten thousand, he gives a neck ring to his wife. This means a woman can wear many neck rings. The jewelry they prize the most is the dark ceramic beads they have aboard their boats and which they value very highly. They purchase beads for one dirham each and string them together as necklaces for their wives.
Mission to the Volga Page 9
