In the year 921 the religious and political embassy left Bagdad, the capital of the Islamic world at that time, for the centre of Asia, the land of the Bulghars, on assignment for the Abbasid Khalif, Al-Muqtadir Billah, and upon request of the inhabitants in order to introduce Islam. The embassy consisted of different figures in the sphere of Jurisprudence, Politics and History. Ahmad ibn Fadland, the first Arabian ambassador in Russia, was at the head of the embassy. Since then, religious, cultural and historical links between peoples of those two states continued to strengthen.
Officially, a eunuch, Susan al-Rassi was the leader of the embassy; however, it was ibn Fadland who was ordered to become a secretary of the mission that meant nothing but his high status and universal respect: it was the secretary who was to have all the rough work and be responsible for business management and the final outcome of the mission.
Ibn Fadland was in charge of reading the Khalif’s letter to the head of Volga Bulgharia, giving presents to his confidants and telling about the religion, Islam, when they reached the destination.
The embassy left Bagdad on the 21st of June in 921. They travelled through Nizshapur towards Buhara, then back to the Amu Darya, down that river up to the capital of Khorezm, Kyat. Then there was wintering in Jurjanyah (Old Urgench) and moving towards the north, to the banks of Volga River that took 70 days.
On the 12th of May in 922 the embassy of the Khalif arrived in “the country of Slavs” where the state of Volga Bulgharians was situated.
The day before the caravan reached the destination, the embassy had met 4 princes who served Almush altabar, his brothers and sons. “They met us”, Ibn Fadland writes, “holding bread, meat, millet in their hands. They came together with us. The King, in his turn, greeted us in a distance of two parasangs (12 km) from his Headquarters. Seeing us, he got off his horse and fell down, worshiping and giving thanks to great and powerful Allah”.
The letter was the main aim of the entire long-term, exhausting and dangerous journey. Before it was read, two banners which they brought with, had been spread and the given horse had been saddled. Almush altabar was dressed in black clothes of supreme dignitaries among true believers and turban on his head. After that ibn Fadlan, who was in charge of the ceremony, got out the Khalif’s letter and began reading it: “The interpreter translated the letter word for word without ceasing. When we finished reading, they exclaimed in unison “Allahu akbar” so strongly that the ground began to shake”, ibn Fandland wrote in his notes. Exactly from that moment Volga Bulgharia together with all its inhabitants recognized Islam as the state religion, thereby becoming the part of the Islamic world.
When Ahmad ibn Fadlan had returned to his hometown, Bagdad, he wrote “The Notes” (“Risala”) in the form of guiding notes. It is one of the most important resources regarding the information about medieval history of the Volga Region, Zavolzhie and Central Asia. The final part of “The Notes” is lost, that is why nothing is known about the return route of the mission. In his work the traveler tried to describe everything he had found out and had seen in details beginning from the moment when his horse left Bagdad right up to the moment when he reached home. Among some geographical and historical reports there are also northern legendary stories including the story about the huge fish.
“The Notes” is a very bright monument of Arabian geographical literature that is a distinctive part of the Arab-Muslim culture. He reflected the history of ordinary people, their life and culture in his notes. At the same time, he hardly wrote anything about himself, except some small details that can be found in “The Notes”. Ibn Fadlan was the first who described the life of one of the trade routes, served as the main channel that disseminated culture and customs of different peoples and symbolized the unity of the East and the West. The richness of his ethnographic observations of the tribes and peoples, who lived a thousand years ago in the territory of modern Russia, in his “Notes, was second to none. One can say ibn Fadlan was a literary discoverer of lands that had been visited by Muslim merchants but remained on the whole unknown for the Arabian geography of the 10th century.
Nowadays, “Risala” (The Notes”) is one of the most important resources of the medieval history of peoples lived in the territory of the Volga Region, Zavolzhie and Central Asia. Ibn Fadlan, of course, was not a discoverer but the first traveler whose materials about the northern Caspian Sea and the Volga Region have remained till nowadays. It was him who gave the first correct list of rivers crossing the Caspian lowland. Ibn Fadlan provided us with their names that coincide or that are very close to the modern ones.
Unfortunately, the initial text of the book is lost. Some fragments of it were found in the book “The Dictionary of Countries” by an Arabian encyclopaedist of the 13th century, Yaqut al-Rumi. The work in that form was published for the first time in the year of 1823 in the German language by a Russian academician, Fran. The only famous list of “Notes” was found by an orientalist, Ahmet-Zeki Velidi Togan in 1923. It was discovered in the library at the shrine of the Imam, Ali al-Reza in the Iranian city, Mashhad.
In 1937 a photocopy of the document was donated by the Iranian Government to the USSR Academy of Sciences. A translation of the book was made on its basis and published in 1939 under the editorship of I.Y. Krachkovsky. A German translation by A. Z. V. Togan was published in the same year. The second revised edition of the book by Kovalevsky was published in 1956.
Ilmira Gafiyatullina