Mission to the Volga

Ahmad ibn Fadlan · 921 CE – 922 CE · Earth

Carry the caliph’s letter, gifts, jurists and teachers to the king of the Volga Bulgars, with money for a fortress against the Khazars.

Historical context

In 921 Almish, king of the Volga Bulgars, newly Muslim and a reluctant tributary of the Khazars, asked the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir for teachers, a mosque and a fortress. The answer was an embassy, and one of its members, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, wrote its story. It survives in a manuscript found at Mashhad in 1923 and in quotations by the thirteenth-century geographer Yaqut, and its end is lost.

The voyage, step by step

1. Embassy from Baghdad

   21 June 921

   Caliph al-Muqtadir answers a letter from Almish, king of the Volga Bulgars, with an embassy. Ahmad ibn Fadlan is to read the caliph’s letter to the king, hand over the gifts and supervise the jurists and teachers.

2. Through Rayy

   921 CE

   The embassy follows the Khorasan road by Hulwan, Kermanshah, Hamadan and Sawa to Rayy, where it waits eleven days for Ahmad ibn Ali, the master of the city.

3. Merv and Bukhara

   921 CE

   By Nishapur, Sarakhs and Merv the embassy reaches the desert of Amul, crosses the Oxus and comes to Bukhara, capital of the Samanid amir Nasr ibn Ahmad.

4. Winter at Jurjaniya

   921 CE

   The Khwarazm Shah tries to stop the embassy; it goes on down the Oxus to Jurjaniya, where the frozen river holds it for three months.

5. Among the Oghuz

   922 CE

   After days of snow on the empty steppe and a great rocky mountain, the party enters the country of the Oghuz Turks, nomads who owed the caliph nothing.

6. Pechenegs and Bashkirs

   922 CE

   Ferrying men and baggage over river after river in folding boats of camel skin, the party stops at a Pecheneg camp, loses men in the Ural and crosses the land of the Bashkirs.

7. With the Bulgars and the Rus

   12 May 922

   On 12 May 922 the embassy reaches the camp of King Almish near the Volga. Ibn Fadlan reads him the caliph’s letter, describes the northern lights and records the Rus traders on the river and a chieftain’s ship burial.

Outcome

Reached King Almish’s camp on 12 May 922 and read him the caliph’s letter, but without the promised money; stayed until the nights grew long. The account of the return is lost.

Ahmad ibn Fadlan

Member of the Abbasid embassy of 921 to the king of the Volga Bulgars, whose account describes the Oghuz, Pechenegs, Bashkirs, Bulgars and Rus, with what he heard of the Khazars.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far NorthIbn Fadlan and others, translated with an introduction by Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone · Penguin Classics, London · 2012
• La relation du voyage d’Ibn Fadlân chez les Bulgares de la VolgaMarius Canard · Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales (Algiers), vol. 16, pp. 41–146 · 1958
• Ahmad ibn Fadlan — Wikipedia

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