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    Journals Css 38 3 Article-P289 3-Preview

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    This document provides a summary and analysis of Ibn Rustah's Book of Precious Things, an early 9th century Arabic source on the Rus people. Ibn Rustah was a Persianized Arab scholar who compiled a 7-volume encyclopedia drawing on accounts of Muslim travelers. Only the last volume survives, describing geographical areas, including the Rus who lived along the Volga, Don, and Dnieper Rivers. The document examines how Ibn Rustah's work compares to other Arabic geographical literature of the time, its descriptions of the Rus and their relationship with neighboring groups, and similarities with other early sources on the Rus people.

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    Journals Css 38 3 Article-P289 3-Preview

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    This document provides a summary and analysis of Ibn Rustah's Book of Precious Things, an early 9th century Arabic source on the Rus people. Ibn Rustah was a Persianized Arab scholar who compiled a 7-volume encyclopedia drawing on accounts of Muslim travelers. Only the last volume survives, describing geographical areas, including the Rus who lived along the Volga, Don, and Dnieper Rivers. The document examines how Ibn Rustah's work compares to other Arabic geographical literature of the time, its descriptions of the Rus and their relationship with neighboring groups, and similarities with other early sources on the Rus people.

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    Journals Css 38 3 Article-p289 3-Preview

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    This document provides a summary and analysis of Ibn Rustah's Book of Precious Things, an early 9th century Arabic source on the Rus people. Ibn Rustah was a Persianized Arab scholar who compiled a 7-volume encyclopedia drawing on accounts of Muslim travelers. Only the last volume survives, describing geographical areas, including the Rus who lived along the Volga, Don, and Dnieper Rivers. The document examines how Ibn Rustah's work compares to other Arabic geographical literature of the time, its descriptions of the Rus and their relationship with neighboring groups, and similarities with other early sources on the Rus people.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    38 views2 pages

    Journals Css 38 3 Article-P289 3-Preview

    Uploaded by

    meteayd
    This document provides a summary and analysis of Ibn Rustah's Book of Precious Things, an early 9th century Arabic source on the Rus people. Ibn Rustah was a Persianized Arab scholar who compiled a 7-volume encyclopedia drawing on accounts of Muslim travelers. Only the last volume survives, describing geographical areas, including the Rus who lived along the Volga, Don, and Dnieper Rivers. The document examines how Ibn Rustah's work compares to other Arabic geographical literature of the time, its descriptions of the Rus and their relationship with neighboring groups, and similarities with other early sources on the Rus people.

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    TRANSLATION/TRADUCTION

    WILLIAM E. WATSON, , translator and editor (Immaculata, PA, USA)

    IBN RUSTAH'S BOOK OF PRECIOUS THINGS:


    A REEXAMINATION AND TRANSLATION
    OF AN EARLY SOURCE ON THE RŪS

    Arabic geographical literature constitutes some of the oldest evidence on


    the Rus, early inhabitants o f the Volga, Don, and Dnepr River valleys who are
    ancestral to the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians. This literature was
    compiled by Muslim scholars in Islamic cities like Baghdad and Balkh from
    Arab, as well as Greek, Persian, and Indian sources and from first-hand travel
    accounts of Muslim merchants and missionaries. Many ninth- and tenth-
    century Arabic geographers referred to the Rus. Ibn Rustah, however, has the
    distinction of being one of the geographers about whom the least is known,
    despite the fact that his details are cited more commonly than the works of
    other, better-known Arab geographers.
    Ahmad Ibn 'Umar Ibn Rustah was born in Isfahan to an Abbasid-period
    Persianized Arab colonizing family. The date of his birth is not known. It is
    known, however, that he traveled in Hijaz circa 903. While there is no extant
    evidence that he visited other lands, it is probable that he was familiar with
    Mesopotamia (and therefore Baghdad), the area where Arab and Persian cul-
    tures coexisted and merged. Ibn Rustah probably utilized the work of al-
    Jayhani (fl. ca. 907), and Ibn Khurdadhbih (ca. 820-911), the earliest links in
    the so-called "Classical School of Arabic Geography." Given the structure
    and information contained in Ibn Rustah's extant work, volume 7 of his Kitab
    al-A'lak an-Nafisa (Book o f Precious Things), it has been assumed that he
    was familiar with the primary genre o f the Classical School, the Kitab al-
    Masalik wa 'I-Mamalik (Book o f Routes and K i n g d o m s1 _

    1. The most comprehensive discussion of the genre of the Kitab al-Masalik wa '7-Mamalik is
    Andre Miquel, Ga geographie humaine du monde musulman jusquau milieu du l l e siecle
    (Paris: L4 Haye, Mouton, 1980), vol. 1, ch. 8. This literature is commonly divided into the works
    of the 'Iraqi School and those of the Balkhi School, although there was a great deal of material
    used in common by authors of both traditions. See S. Maqbul Ahmad, "Djughrafiya," in Ency-
    clopaedia of Islam (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1960), pp. 579-82. Also useful are: Johannes H. Kramers,
    "La question Balhi-Istakhri-Ibn Hauqal et 1'Atlas de l'lslam," Acta Orientalia, 10, no. 1 (193 1),
    ),
    Ibn Rustah's Kitab al-A'lak an-Nafasa is actually more comprehensive
    than the descriptions of peoples, places, and trade routes typically included in
    the genre of the h'itab al-Masalik bva 'Z-Mamalik. Ibn Rustah's work was
    originally a seven-volume encyclopedia, written circa 903-913, but only the
    last volume has survived. The extant volume includes information of a geo-
    graphical nature similar to the kind o f material typically found in the Kitab al-
    Masalik wa 'T-Mamalik, but his work goes beyond that genre's usually narrow
    limits. Volume 7 includes his information on the wonders of the world; the
    seas and rivers of the world; the seven climes o f the world (he utilizes the
    Greek rather than the Persian system of divisions); the itineraries of some lo-
    cations; a description of Constantinople; the non-Arab groups located to the
    north of the Abbasid Empire (including the Khazars, Bulghars, Saqaliba, and
    Rus); astronomical data (the zodiac, the planets, the characteristics of the
    Earth, including its sphericity and conjectures on its size); categories of Mus-
    l i m n a m e s ; M u s l i m r e l i g i o u s g r o u p s a n d s c h i s m s . 22

    In his notices on the Rus and the Saqaliba, he is thought to have shared a
    common corpus of material with the later writers al-Muqaddasi (fl. ca. 985)
    and Gardizi (fl. ca.1050).3 Their common descriptive elements include the
    mention that the Rus lived on a jazira (island or peninsula). The ultimate
    source of this record is lost, although it may have come from a non-extant
    Muslim traveler to the northern lands of the Rus.
    Only two Arabic traveler tales to these northern lands are known - Ibn
    Fadlan, Abbasid ambassador to the Volga Bulghars in 921 (who met al-
    Jayhani while en route), and al-Tartushi, a Cordoban Jewish merchant who
    visited Hedeby in 950 (but whose work never entered the corpus o f the Clas-
    sical School).
    A similarity exists between Ibn Rustah's description o f the relationship of
    the Rus and the Saqaliba and the anonymous Hudud al-'Alam (ca. 982): espe-
    cially the exploitation o f Saqaliba (Slavs) by the Rus; the use of grave goods
    by the Rus; rule of a Khagan Rus in Rus lands (usually taken to be a khan, a
    title borrowed by the Rus from the Turkic Khazars); the quarrelsome and war-

    9-31; Vladimir Minorsky, "A False Jayhani," Bulletin of the School o f Oriental and African
    Studies, 13 (1949), 89; Daniil A. Khvol'son, Isvestiia o Khazarakh, Burtasakh, Bolgarakh,
    Madiarakh, Slavanakh i Russakh Abu-Ali Akhmeda Ben Omar Ibn-Dasta (St. Petersburg:
    Akademiia nauk, 1869).
    2. See in particular the comments of S. Maqbul Ahmad, "Ibn Rustah," in Encyclopaedia o f
    Islam (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1960), pp. 920-21.1.
    3. Peter B. Golden has discussed this connection in "The Question of the Rus Qaganate,"
    Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 2 (1982), 77-97. Al-Muqaddasi, Kitab Ahsan at-Taqasim f i
    Ma'rifat al-Aqalim, in Alexander Seippel, Rerum Normannicarum fontes Arabici (Oslo: A. W.
    Brogger, 1876-1928), p. 76. Gardizi has been examined by Vasili V. Barthold, "Otchet o poez-
    dke v sredniuiu aziiu s nauchnoi tsel'iu 1893-1894 gg," in Zapiski Imperatorskoi Akademii
    nauk, ser. VIII, t. 1, no. 4 (St. Petersburg: Akademiia nauk, 1897), pp. 100-O1.
    I.

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