Risalat Ibn Fadlan = Rihlat Ibn Fadlan ila Bilad al-Turk wa al-Rus wa al-Saqaliba
- Author died
- 311 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Suwaydī
Risalat Ibn Fadlan (also titled Rihlat Ibn Fadlan ila Bilad al-Turk wa al-Rus wa al-Saqaliba, "The Epistle of Ibn Fadlan: Journey to the Lands of the Turks, Rus, and Slavs") is a 10th-century Arabic travel account and diplomatic report composed by Ahmad ibn Fadlan (d. after 310 AH / 922 CE) . It records the embassy dispatched by the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir bi-Llah from Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars (referred to in the text as the Saqaliba) .
Background and Purpose
The embassy was initiated after the king of the Volga Bulgars, Almish ibn Shilki (or Almish ibn Yaltawar), dispatched an envoy named Abd Allah ibn Bashtu al-Khazari to Baghdad in 309 AH / 921 CE . Having recently embraced Islam, the king requested scholars to instruct him and his people in Islamic jurisprudence and religious rituals, build a mosque and a minbar to establish the Caliph's suzerainty in his realm, and provide financial aid to construct a fortress for defense against rival kings, particularly the Khazars to the south .
Caliph al-Muqtadir granted the request and organized a delegation overseen by Nadhir al-Harami . The core mission consisted of four primary figures: the official envoy Susan al-Rassi, Takin al-Turki, Baris al-Saqlabi, and Ibn Fadlan, who was charged with reading the Caliph's letter, delivering diplomatic gifts, and supervising accompanying jurists and teachers .
Itinerary and Structure
The embassy departed Baghdad on Thursday, 11 Safar 309 AH (21 June 921 CE) . Traveling overland through Persian and Central Asian territories, the mission passed through al-Nahrawan, al-Daskara, Hulwan, Qirmisin, Hamadhan, Sawa, Rayy, Khuwar al-Rayy, Simnan, al-Damghan, Nishapur, Sarakhs, Marw, and across the desert to Amul . Crossing the Jayhun (Oxus) River, they arrived in Bukhara, where Ibn Fadlan met the Samanid vizier and geographer al-Jayhani in September 921 CE .
From Bukhara, the mission traveled through Khwarazm (al-Jurjaniyya) and across the Ustyurt Plateau, traversing the territories of nomadic Turkic peoples, including the Oghuz Turks, Pechenegs, and Bashkirs . The journey took eleven months outward, reaching the camp of the Volga king on Sunday, 12 Muharram 310 AH (or 18 Muharram 310 AH / 12 May 922 CE according to other passages) . The concluding portion of the text is lost, leaving the itinerary and date of the return journey to Baghdad unknown .
Content and Method
Unlike theoretical Arab geographical manuals, Ibn Fadlan's work functions as a direct, observational documentary account and anthropological record . Written in a fluid narrative style, it provides detailed ethnographic descriptions of the customs, diets, religious beliefs, legal conventions, and daily practices of northern and Central Asian peoples :
- Turkic Nomads: Records social habits, hospitality norms, and religious attitudes among the Oghuz, Pecheneg, and Bashkir tribes .
- Volga Bulgars (Saqaliba): Describes the diplomatic reception, court etiquette, conversion to Islam, religious observances, dietary staples, and royal ceremonial protocols .
- The Rus: Provides an eyewitness account of Scandinavian/Norse merchants trading along the Volga (Itil) River, noting their physical stature, dress, weapons, hygiene, social habits, and an elaborate ship burial ceremony featuring the ritual sacrifice of an enslaved girl .
- The Khazars: Summarizes the political structure, king (khagan), and customs of the Khazar state .
Reception and Manuscript Tradition
For several centuries, Risalat Ibn Fadlan was preserved solely through long excerpts cited by Yaqut al-Hamawi in Mu'jam al-Buldan and citations in Zakariyya al-Qazwini's Athar al-Bilad wa-Akhbar al-Ibad . In the 19th century, European scholars such as Christian Martin Fraehn, Rasmussen, Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, Baron Victor von Rosen, and Vasily Barthold drew on Yaqut's citations to study early Russian, Bulgar, and Turkic history .
In the 1920s, a manuscript copy was discovered by Turkish scholar Zeki Validi Togan in the Astan Quds library in Mashhad, Iran, cataloged under no. 2 as Akhbar al-Buldan . The manuscript is penned in Naskh script (19 lines per page across 212 folios) and is truncated at the end .
Togan prepared the first critical edition collated with Yaqut's excerpts, published alongside a German translation in 1939 . That same year, the Russian orientalist Ignaty Krachkovsky published a Russian translation accompanied by a facsimile edition of the Mashhad manuscript . In 1959, Dr. Sami al-Dahhan published a critical Arabic edition through the Arab Academy of Damascus, which was subsequently reprinted in 1977 and 1987 .
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