Ibn Fadlan's Journey to the Volga (921): Meeting the Rus

Ibn Fadlan’s journey to the Volga was a diplomatic mission sent by the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir from Baghdad in June 921 to the king of the Volga Bulgars, in what is now central Russia. Ahmad ibn Fadlan, the embassy’s religious adviser, wrote a vivid account of the trip, describing the peoples of the steppe and, most famously, the Rus traders he met on the Volga. His report is one of the very few written eyewitness descriptions of the Rus in the Viking Age.

Background: an invitation from the north

The Volga Bulgars were a Turkic people living around the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers. Their territory was a busy trading hub where furs, slaves, wax and honey from the forests of the north were exchanged for silver coins from the Islamic world. Hoards of Islamic silver dirhams found across Russia and Scandinavia reflect this trade.

The Bulgar ruler, Almish, was already partly Muslim and paid tribute to the powerful Khazar khaganate to the south. He sent a request to Baghdad for religious teachers, for help in building a mosque and a fortress, and for recognition by the caliph. In return the Abbasid Caliphate hoped to extend its prestige and the reach of Islam.

The embassy and its route

The mission left Baghdad on 21 June 921. It was formally led by Susan al-Rassi, a eunuch of the court, while Ibn Fadlan was responsible for reading the caliph’s letter, presenting gifts and instructing the king in religious law. Little is known of Ibn Fadlan beyond what he tells us.

Rather than crossing Khazar territory, the embassy took a long eastern route. It travelled through Iran to Bukhara, capital of the Samanid rulers, and then to Khwarazm, south of the Aral Sea, where it spent the winter of 921–922 in bitter cold. In early spring it crossed the Ustyurt plateau and the steppes, meeting Oghuz Turks, Pechenegs and Bashkirs along the way.

The embassy reached the Bulgar king’s camp on 12 May 922, after a journey of roughly 4,000 kilometres that had taken almost eleven months.

At the court of the Bulgars

The caliph’s letter was read and gifts presented, and the Bulgar ruler took the title of emir in the caliph’s name. But one part of the mission had failed. The money intended to pay for the fortress, which was meant to come from estates in Central Asia, had not arrived, and the king was openly displeased. Ibn Fadlan records sharp exchanges about this and about details of religious practice.

Ibn Fadlan also described the natural world of the far north with wonder: the very short summer nights, the northern lights, which he interpreted in religious terms, and the intense cold.

The Rus

The most famous part of the account concerns the Rus, merchants who came to the Volga to trade. Ibn Fadlan describes them as tall, fair and physically impressive, armed with swords, axes and knives and wearing tattoos. He was also struck by what he regarded as their poor hygiene and by their religious practices, including offerings to wooden idols for success in trade.

Most historians identify these Rus as traders of largely Scandinavian origin, linked to the people who established the early Rus states along the rivers of Eastern Europe, such as the dynasty associated with Rurik.

The ship funeral

Ibn Fadlan’s best-known passage describes the funeral of a Rus chieftain. The dead man was placed in a ship drawn up on the riverbank, with goods, weapons and sacrificed animals, and the ship was then burned. The account also describes the killing of an enslaved young woman as part of the rite, a disturbing detail that historians discuss carefully as evidence of violence against the unfree in Viking-Age society.

Archaeology confirms that ship burials and cremations were practised in Scandinavia and among the Rus, as finds such as the Oseberg ship burial in Norway show. No grave exactly matching Ibn Fadlan’s description has been found, and scholars debate how far he understood what he saw.

The text and its rediscovery

Ibn Fadlan’s report, known as the Risala (“Letter” or “Account”), was quoted by the thirteenth-century geographer Yaqut. In 1923 the scholar Ahmed Zeki Validi Togan identified a fuller manuscript in Mashhad, Iran. Its ending is lost, so we do not know how or when the embassy returned to Baghdad.

The account inspired Henryk Siemiradzki’s painting of a Rus funeral in 1883 and, much later, Michael Crichton’s novel Eaters of the Dead (1976) and the film The 13th Warrior (1999).

Timeline

• 921, 21 June: The embassy leaves Baghdad.
• 921, autumn: It passes through Bukhara and reaches Khwarazm.
• 921–922, winter: The mission winters in Khwarazm.
• 922, March: The embassy sets out across the steppe.
• 922, 12 May: It reaches the Volga Bulgar ruler.
• 13th century: Yaqut quotes the account in his geographical dictionary.
• 1923: The Mashhad manuscript is identified by Ahmed Zeki Validi Togan.

Why it matters

Ibn Fadlan offers a rare outsider’s view of the peoples of Eastern Europe and the steppe in the tenth century, recorded by an observant traveller from the heart of the Islamic world. His description of the Rus remains a key source for historians of the Viking Age and of early Russia.