Ibn Fadlan, Ahmad Ibn Abbas
Ibn Fadlan, Ahmad Ibn Abbas
Arab traveler and au-thor in the first half of the tenth century.
In 921–922, as secretary of the embassy of the Abbasid caliph Muktadir (ruled 908–932), ibn Fadlan journeyed through Bukhara and Khorezm to the king of the Volga Buigars. Ibn Fadlan’s vivid descriptions of the embassy’s travels, and also of Khorezm and the Ghuzz Turks, Bashkirs, Bulgars, Rus, and other peoples are notable for their wealth of factual folklore and ethnographic material. The book was written in the form of a story. The original text of the book is lost. An abridged edition, used as far back as the 13th century by the Arab scholar Yaqut, was discovered in Meshed in 1923.
WORKS
Kovalevskii, A. P. Kniga Akhmeda Ibn-Fadlana o ego puteshestvii na Volgu v 921–922 gg. Kharkov, 1956. (Arabic text of ibn Fadlan’s work and Russian translation.)Puteshestvie Ibn-Fadlana na Volgu. Moscow-Leningrad, 1939.
REFERENCES
Krachkovskii, I. lu. Arabskaia geograficheskaia literatura. Izbr. soch., vol. 4. Moscow-Leningrad, 1957. Pages 184–86 and others. (See Index.)Beilys, V. M. “P’iat’ vydan’ Knyhy Ybn-Fadlana.” Ukrains’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, 1965, no. 3.
Canard, M. “La Relation du voyage d’lbn Fadlân chez les Bulgares de la Volga.” Annales de I’Institut d’études orientales, vol. 16. Algiers, 1958.