Element contents
Death Rituals
The Rūs and 'Vikings' in Arabic and Persian
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 September 2025
Summary
In the study of the early medieval Rūs and the Viking diaspora, Arabic geographical writings on the practice of funerary sacrifice loom large. Against growing uses of this body of source material as evidence on ritual, the treatment of women, and the global connections of the Rūs, critical issues in the use of and access to this source material necessitate a fresh analysis. This Element reevaluates geographical writings on Rūs death and sacrificial rituals, redirecting focus towards the textual transmission of ideas in both Arabic and Persian to offer a critical guide to geographical knowledge dissemination on Rūs funerary practices.
Information
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Online ISBN: 9781009613262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 09 October 2025
References
Primary Sources
al-Hamawī, Yāqūt . Muʿjam al-Buldān. MS Cod. Arab. 99. Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Aḥmad Ibn Lutfūllah, Müneccimbaşı. Jāmiʿ al-Duwal. MS Esad Efendi 02102. Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul.Google Scholar
al-Waṭwāṭ, Jamāl al-Dīn. Manāhij al-Fikar wa-Mabāhij al-ʿIbar. MS Köprülü I Fazil Ahmed Paşa 1170. Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul.Google Scholar
Secondary Sources
Adam of Bremen (2002) History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Ahmad, S. M. & Taeschner, F. (2012) D̲j̲ug̲h̲rāfiyā. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0194 (Accessed 4 April 2023).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ali, K. (2010) Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Amīn Aḥmad Rāzī (1972) Haft Iqlīm: The Geographical and Biographical Encyclopaedia of Amīn Aḥmad Rāzī. Samadi, S. B. (ed.). Vol. 5. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society.Google Scholar
Antrim, Z. (2012) Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Arkoun, M. (2012) ʿIs̲h̲ḳ. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_3623 (Accessed 18 January 2022).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auer, B. (2018) Kannauj. Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Available from: https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EI3O/COM-32983.xml (Accessed 29 September 2024).Google Scholar
al-Bakrī, A. ʿAbdallāh, ʿUbayd (2003) Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik. Tolba, J. (ed.). Vol. 1. Beirut: Dar al-Kotob al-Ilmiyah.Google Scholar
Balafrej, L. (2023) Instrumental Jawārī: On Gender, Slavery, and Technology in Medieval Arabic Sources. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 31, 96–126 (Accessed 8 January 2024).Google Scholar
Barker, H. (2016) Purchasing a Slave in Fourteenth-Century Cairo: Ibn Al-Akfānī’s Book of Observation and Inspection in the Examination of Slaves. Mamlūk Studies Review 19, 1–23.Google Scholar
Barker, H. (2019) That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260–1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Berthels, E. (2012) ‘Rāzī’. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. April. https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/razi-SIM_6269 (Accessed 22 January 2020).Google Scholar
Birkeland, H. (1954) Nordens Historie i Middelalderen Etter Arabiske Kilder: Oversettelse til Norsk av de Arabiske Kilder med Innledning, Forfatterbiografier, Bibliografi og Merknader. Oslo: Jacob Dybwad.Google Scholar
al-Biruni, (1910) Alberuni’s India: An Account of the Religion, Philosophy, Literature, Geography, Chronology, Astronomy, Customs, Laws and Astrology of India about AD 1030. Vol. 2. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.Google Scholar
Bray, J. (2017) Yaʿqūb b. al-Rabīʿ Read by al-Mutanabbī and al-Mubarrad: A Contribution to an Abbasid History of Emotions. Journal of Abbasid Studies 4(1), 1–34. https://brill.com/view/journals/jas/4/1/article-p1_1.xml (Accessed 4 January 2023).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brink, S. (2021a) Slavery in Medieval Scandinavia: Some Points of Departure. In Gruszczyński, J., Jankowiak, M., & Shepard, J. (eds.) Viking-Age Trade: Silver, Slaves and Gotland. London: Routledge, pp. 40–56.Google Scholar
Brink, S. (2021b) Thraldom: A History of Slavery in the Viking Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Canard, M. (1958) La Relation du Voyage d’Ibn Fadlân chez les Bulgares de la Volga. Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales, 5, 41–45.Google Scholar
Chittick, W. C. (2010) Divine and Human Love in Islam. In Levin, J. & Post, S. G. (eds.) Divine Love: Perspectives from the World’s Religious Traditions. West Conshohocken: Templeton Press, pp. 163–200.Google Scholar
Cornevin, R. (2012) G̲h̲āna. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Available from: https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EIEO/SIM-2455.xml (Accessed 29 September 2024).Google Scholar
Danilenko, N. (2021) Picturing the Islamicate World: The Story of al-Iṣṭakhrī’s Book of Routes and Realms. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
al-Dimashqī, S. ad-Dīn A. A. M., Fraehn, C. M., & van Mehren, A. F. M. (1866) Cosmographie de Chems-ed-din Abou Abdallah Mohammed ed-Dimichqui texte arabe. St Petersburg: Académie Impériale des Sciences.Google Scholar
Ducène, J.-C. (2023) Other Arab Geographers’ Sources on the North: The ‘Anonymous Relation’ and al-Jayhani. In Shepard, J. & Treadwell, L. (eds.) Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age: Diplomacy and Islam in the World of Ibn Fadlan. London: I. B. Tauris, pp. 67–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duczko, W. (2004) Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe. Boston, MA: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunlop, D. M. 2012. ‘Al-Balk̲h̲ī’. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. April. https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_1157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faḫr-al-Mudabbir, M. & Ross, E. D. (1927) Ta’̮rikh-i Fakhru’d-Din Mubarakshah: Being the Historical Introduction to the Book of Genealogies of Fakhru’d-Din Mubarakshah Marvar-rudi Completed in A.D. 1206. The Muslim World 1100–1700: Early Sources on Middle East History, Geography and Travel 6. London: Royal Asiatic Society.Google Scholar
Fraehn, C. M. (1823) Ibn Foszlans und andere Araber Berichte über die Russen älterer Zeit. St Petersburg: Kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Franklin, S. & Shepard, J. (1996) The Emergence of Rus 750–1200. Longman History of Russia. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Frenkel, Y. (2015) The Turkic Peoples in Medieval Arabic Writings. Routledge Studies in the History of Iran and Turkey. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Frye, R. N. (1950) Notes to Islamic Sources on the Slavs and the Rūs. The Muslim World 40, 19–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardīzī, A.-S. ‘Abd-al-H., I.-D. I.-M. & Habibi, ‘ Abd-al-Haiy (1968) Zain al-Ahbar. Tehran: Intišārāt-i Bunyād-i Farhang-i Īrān.Google Scholar
Göckenjan, H. & Zimonyi, I. (2001) Orientalische Berichte über die Völker Osteuropas und Zentralasiens im Mittelalter: Die Ǧayhānī-Tradition (Ibn Rusta, Gardīzī, Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam, al-Bakrī und al-Marwazī). Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica 54. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Golden, P. B. (2012) Rūs. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0942 (Accessed 5 April 2023).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gräslund, A.-S. (1981) The Burial Customs: A Study of the Graves on Björkö. Birka. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.Google Scholar
Green, M. A. (2002) Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age & Roman Europe. Stroud: Tempus.Google Scholar
Gutas, D. (1998) Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries). London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hermes, N. (2012) The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture Ninth-Twelfth Century AD. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hraundal, T. J. (2013a) Integration and Disintegration: The ‘Norse’ in Descriptions of the Early Rus. In Burkhardt, S. & Foerster, T. (eds.) Norman Tradition and Transcultural Heritage: Exchange of Cultures in the ‘Norman’ Peripheries of Medieval Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 279–293.Google Scholar
Hraundal, T. J. (2013b) The Rus in Arabic Sources: Cultural Contacts and Identity. PhD thesis. University of Bergen.Google Scholar
Hraundal, T. J. (2014) New Perspectives on Eastern Vikings/Rus in Arabic Sources. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 10, 65–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hraundal, T. J. (2023) Identities, Ethnicities, Cultures: Ibn Fadlan and the Rus on the Middle Volga. In Shepard, J. & Treadwell, L. (eds.) Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age: Diplomacy and Islam in the World of Ibn Fadlan. London: I. B. Tauris, pp. 237–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hultgård, A. (2022) The Sacrificial Festival at Uppsala: A Comparative Perspective. Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift (74), 600–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunwick, J. O. (2005) A Region of the Mind: Medieval Arab Views of African Geography and Ethnography and Their Legacy. Sudanic Africa 16, 103–136.Google Scholar
Ibn Faḍlān, A. (1939) Ibn Faḍlān’s Reisebericht. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 24. Togan, A. Zeki Validi (ed.). Leipzig: Brockhaus.Google Scholar
Ibn Faḍlān, A. (2005) Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia: A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghad to the Volga River. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener.Google Scholar
Ibn Faḍlān, A. (2012) Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. Lunde, P. and Stone, C. (trans.). London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Ibn Faḍlān, A. (2014) Mission to the Volga. In Mackintosh-Smith, T. & Montgomery, J. E. (eds.) Two Arabic Travel Books: Accounts of China and India and Mission to the Volga. New York: New York University Press, pp. 163–297.Google Scholar
Ibn Faḍlān, A. (2017) Mission to the Volga. Montgomery, J. E. (trans.). New York: New York University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ibn Ḥawqal (2012) Ibn Hawqal on the Trade in Eunuchs 988. In Lunde, P. & Stone, C. (eds.) Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. London: Penguin Books, pp. 173–174.Google Scholar
Ibn Ḥawqal, A. l-Qāsim (1873) Kitāb Ṣūrat al-Arḍ by Abū l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 1. de Goeje, M. J. (ed.). Vol. II. Leiden: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Ibn Ḥawqal, A. l-Qāsim (2014) Ibn Ḥawqal’s Kitāb Ṣūrat al-arḍ: Opus geographicum / Abu al-Kasim Ibn Haukal al-Nasibi. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum II–1. II. Kramers, J. H. (ed.). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Ibn, Khurradādhbih, ‘Ubayd Allah ibn ‘Abd Allah, and Qudamah ibn Ja’far (2014) Ibn Khurradādhbih’s Kitāb al-Masālik wa’l-Mamālik and Part of the Kitāb al-Kharāj by Qudōma ibn Jaʿfar. Liber viarum et regnorum / auctore Abu al-Kasim Obaidallah ibn Abdallah ibn Khordadhbeh; et excerpta e Kitab al-karrag auctore Kodama ibn Dja’far. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum I–6. de Goeje, M. J. (ed.). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Rusta, Ibn (2012) Ibn Rusta on the Rūs 903–913. In Lunde, P. & Stone, C. (eds.) Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. London: Penguin Books, pp. 126–127.Google Scholar
Ibn Rusta, A. A. A. ibn O. (1892) Ibn Rusta’s Kitāb al-Aʿlāq al-Nafīsa and Kitāb al-Buldān by al-Yaʿqūbī. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum VII. 2nd edition. de Goeje, M. J. (ed.). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
al-Idrīsī, A. ʻAbd, A. M. ʻAbd A., ibn M. al-Ḥammūdī al-Ḥasanī, ibn I. (1978) Opus Geographicum, sive ‘Liber ad Eorum Delectationem qui Terras Peragrare Studeant’. Cerulli, E., Gabrieli, F., G. Vida, Levi Della, et al. (eds.). Vol. 8. Naples: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
al-Iṣṭakhrī, . 2012. Istakhrī on the Khazars and Their Neighbours c. 951. In Lunde, P. & Stone, C. (eds.) Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. London: Penguin Books, pp. 153–159.Google Scholar
al-Iṣṭakhrī, A. I. I. b. M. (1870) Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-Mamālik. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 1. de Goeje, Michael Jan (ed.). Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Jankowiak, M. (2017) What Does the Slave Trade in the Saqaliba Tell Us about Early Islamic Slavery? International Journal of Middle East Studies 49, 169–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jankowiak, M. (2021) Tracing the Saqaliba: Slave Trade and the Archaeology of the Slavic Lands in the Tenth Century. In Biermann, F. & Jankowiak, M. (eds.) The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe: The Invisible Commodity. Themes in Contemporary Archaeology. Cham: Springer International, pp. 161–181. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73291-2_12 (Accessed 19 November 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karras, R. M. (1988) Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Katona, C. (2023) Vikings of the Steppe: Scandinavians, Rus’, and the Turkic World (c. 750–1050). Routledge Archaeologies of the Viking World. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ḵẖān, M. S. (1981) Al-Masʿūdī and the Geography of India. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 131(1), 119–136.Google Scholar
Klejn, L. S. (2013) The Russian Controversy over the Varangians. In Bjerg, L., Lind, J. H., & Sindbæk, S. M. (eds.) From Goths to Varangians: Communication and Cultural Exchange between the Baltic and the Black Sea. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, pp. 27–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuleshov, V. S. (2023) Ibn Fadlan’s Kitab: Text and Afterlife. In Shepard, J. & Treadwell, L. (eds.) Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age: Diplomacy and Islam in the World of Ibn Fadlan. London: I. B. Tauris, pp. 15–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levtzion, N. (1968) Ibn-Hawqal, the Cheque, and Awdaghost. Journal of African History 9(2), 223–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levtzion, N. & Hopkins, J. F. P. (eds.). (1981) Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Hopkins, J. F. P. (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, B. (ed.) (1987) Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Longworth Dames, M. & Burton-Page, J. (2012) Kanawd̲j̲ or Kannawd̲j̲. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Available from: https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EIEO/SIM-3854.xml (Accessed 29 September 2024).Google Scholar
Lumbard, J. E. B. (2007) From ‘Ḥubb’ to ‘ʿIshq’: The Development of Love in Early Sufism. Journal of Islamic Studies 18(3), 345–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mägi, M. (2018) In Austrvegr: The Role of the Eastern Baltic in Viking Age Communication. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Maqdisī, M. ibn Ṭāhir (1907) Le Livre de la Création et de l’Histoire de Moṭahhar ben Ṭāhir el-Maqdisī: Attribué a Abou-Zéïd Aḥmed ben Sahl el-Balkhī publié et traduit d’après le manuscrit de Constantinople. Vol. 4. Paris: Ernest Leroux.Google Scholar
Marmon, S. (2021) Intersections of Gender, Sex, and Slavery: Female Sexual Slavery. In Perry, C., Eltis, D., Engerman, S. L., & Richardson, D. (eds.) The Cambridge World History of Slavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 185–213.Google Scholar
Marsham, A. (2015) Attitudes to the Use of Fire in Executions in Late Antiquity and Early Islam: The Burning of Heretics and Rebels in Late Umayyad Iraq. In Kristó-Nagy, I. & Gleave, R. (eds.) Violence in Islamic Thought from the Qurʾān to the Mongols. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 106–127.Google Scholar
Martinez, A. P. (1982) Gardīzī’s Two Chapters on the Turks. Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2, 109–217.Google Scholar
al-Masʿūdī, A.-H. I. al-H. I.-’Ali (2010a) Murūj al-Dhahab wa Maʿādin al-Jawāhir. Vol. 1. Beirut: Dar Sader.Google Scholar
al-Masʿūdī, A.-H. I. al-H. I.-’Ali (2010b) Murūj al-Dhahab wa Maʿādin al-Jawāhir. Vol. 2. Beirut: Dar Sader.Google Scholar
al-Masʿūdī, A.-H. I. al-H. I.-’Ali (2012) Masʿūdī on a Viking Raid on the Caspian c. 913. In Lunde, P. & Stone, C. (eds.) Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. London: Penguin Books, pp. 144–146.Google Scholar
al-Masʿūdī, A.-H. I. al-H. I.-’Ali & Barbier de Meynard, C. A. (1861) Les Prairies d’Or: Texte et Traduction. Vol. 1. Paris: Société Asiatique.Google Scholar
McKeithen, J. E. (1979) The Risalah of Ibn Fadlan: An Annotated Translation with Introduction. PhD thesis. Indiana University.Google Scholar
Melnikova, E. (2013) The ‘Varangian Problem’: Science in the Grip of Ideology and Politics. In Taras, R. (ed.) Russia’s Identity in International Relations: Images, Perceptions, Misperceptions. London: Routledge, pp. 42–52.Google Scholar
Meskawayh, A. I. (2018) Tajārib al-ʾUmam wa Taʿāqub al-Himam. 2nd edition. Hassan, Sayyed Kesrawi (ed.). Vol. 5. Beirut: Dar al-Kotob al-Ilmiyah.Google Scholar
Minorsky, V. (ed.) (1937) Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam: ‘The Regions of the World’. A Persian Geography 372 A.H.–982 A.D. London: Messrs. Luzac & Co.Google Scholar
Miquel, A. (1973) Géographie et Géographie Humaine dans la Litterature Arabe des Origenes à 1050. Civilisations et Sociétés 7. 2nd edition. Vol. 1. Mouton: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Miskawayh (2012) Miskawayh on the Rūs Raid on Bardhaʿa, 943. In Lunde, P. & Stone, C. (eds.) Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. London: Penguin Books, pp. 147–152.Google Scholar
Moen, M. (2023) Women and Sacrifice: Roles and Connections. In Gardeła, L., Bønding, S., & Pentz, P. (eds.) The Norse Sorceress: Mind and Materiality in the Viking World. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 161–169.Google Scholar
Moen, M. & Walsh, M. J. (2021) Agents of Death: Reassessing Social Agency and Gendered Narratives of Human Sacrifice in the Viking Age. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 31(4), 597–611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, J. E. (2000) Ibn Faḍlān and the Rūsiyyah. Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 3, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, J. E. (2001) Ibn Rusta’s Lack of ‘Eloquence’, the Rūs, and Samanid Cosmography. Edebiyât 12, 73–93.Google Scholar
Montgomery, J. E. (2004) Pyrrhic Scepticism and the Conquest of Disorder: Prolegomenon to the Study of Ibn Faḍlān. In Maróth, M. (ed.) Problems in Arabic Literature. Piliscsaba: Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, pp. 43–89.Google Scholar
Montgomery, J. E. (2008) Arabic Sources on the Vikings. In Brink, S. & Price, N. (eds.) The Viking World. London: Routledge, pp. 550–561.Google Scholar
Montgomery, J. E. (2023) Where Is the Real Ibn Fadlan? Editing and Translating the Kitab. In Shepard, J. & Treadwell, L. (eds.) Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age: Diplomacy and Islam in the World of Ibn Fadlan. London: I. B. Tauris, pp. 31–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
al-Muqaddasi, M. ibn A. (2001) The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Region: Aḥsan al-Taqāsim fī Maʿrifat al-Aqālīm. Reading: Garnet.Google Scholar
Mustawfī, Ḥ. (1919) The Geographical Part of the Nuzhat al-Qulūb Composed by Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī of Qazwīn in 740 (1340). G. le Strange (trans.). Leiden: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Myrne, P. (2019) Slaves for Pleasure in Arabic Sex and Slave Purchase Manuals from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries. Journal of Global Slavery 4, 196–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuriev, A. B. & Wordsworth, P. (2020) The Medieval City of Bardha‘a. In Hoyland, R. (ed.) From Albania to Arrān: The East Caucasus between the Ancient and Islamic Worlds (ca. 330 BCE–1000 BCE). Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, pp. 253–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuwayrī, S. ʿAbd al-W., al-D. A. b (1949) Nihāyat al-Arab fī Funūn al-Adab. Vol. 15. Cairo: Maṭba‘at Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīyah.Google Scholar
Obiedat, A. Z. (2017) The Semantic Field of Love in Classical Arabic: Understanding the Subconscious Meaning Preserved in the Ḥubb Synonyms and Antonyms through Their Etymologies. In Korangy, A., al-Samman, H., & Beard, M. (eds.) The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures: The Culture of Love and Languishing. London: I. B. Tauris, pp. 300–323.Google Scholar
Pellat, C. (2012) al-Masʿūdī, . Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0704 (Accessed 22 November 2022).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinto, K. C. (2016) Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pokhy, S. (2006) The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, N. (2008) Dying and the Dead: Viking Age Mortuary Behaviour. In Brink, S. & Price, N. (eds.) The Viking World. London: Routledge, pp. 257–273.Google Scholar
Price, N. (2010) Passing into Poetry: Viking-Age Mortuary Drama and the Origins of Norse Mythology. Medieval Archaeology 54(1), 123–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, N. (2022) Performing the Vikings: From Edda to Oseberg. Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift (74), 63–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, N. (2023) Ibn Fadlan and the Rituals of the Rus: Vikings on the Volga? In Shepard, J. & Treadwell, L. (eds.) Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age: Diplomacy and Islam in the World of Ibn Fadlan. London: I. B. Tauris, pp. 177–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rasmussen, J. L. (1814) Om Arabernes og Persernes Handel og Bekiendtskab med Rusland og Skandinavien i Middelalderen. Copenhagen: P. D. Kiøpping.Google Scholar
Ringstedt, N. (1997) The Birka Chamber-Graves: Economic and Social Aspects. An Analysis Based on Quantitative Methods. Stockholm: Department of Archaeology, Stockholm University.Google Scholar
Rio, A. (2024) Slaving and the Funding of Elite Status in Early Medieval Europe (ca. 800–1000 AD). Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Series 21. Bonn: EB Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roach, A. P. & Marshall, A. (2021) The Dynamics of the Drug Trade: A Model for the Study of the Medieval Trade in Slaves? In Gruszczyński, J., Jankowiak, M., & Shepard, J. (eds.) Viking-Age Trade: Silver, Slaves and Gotland. London: Routledge, pp. 75–96.Google Scholar
Roesdahl, E. (2022) Archaeology and Odin in Late Pagan Denmark: A Note. Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift (74), 385–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rouighi, R. (2019) Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowson, E. K. (2003) Gender Irregularity as Entertainment: Institutionalized Transvestism at the Caliphal Court in Medieval Baghdad. In Farmer, S. A. & Pasternack, C. Braun (eds.) Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages. Medieval Cultures. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 45–72.Google Scholar
Rowson, E. K. (2008) The Traffic in Boys: Slavery and Homoerotic Liaisons in Elite ʿAbbāsid Society. Middle Eastern Literatures 11(2), 193–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samarrai, A. I. (1959) Arabic Sources on the Norse: English Translation and Notes Based on the Texts Edited by Alexander Seippel in Rerum Normannicarum Fontes Arabici. Thesis thesis. University of Wisconsin. Available from: https://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/21462 (Accessed 9 January 2020).Google Scholar
Schine, R. (2017) Conceiving the Pre-modern Black-Arab Hero: On the Gendered Production of Racial Difference in Sīrat al-amīrah dhāt al-himmah. Journal of Arabic Literature 48(3), 298–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schine, R. (2022) Translating Race in the Islamic Studies Classroom. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā. 30, 320–383.Google Scholar
Schjødt, J. P. (2007) Ibn Fadlan’s Account of a Rus Funeral: To What Degree Does It Teflect Nordic Myths? In Hermann, P., Schjødt, J. P., & Kristensen, R. T. (eds.) Reflections on Old Norse Myths. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 133–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seippel, A. (1928) Rerum Normannicarum fontes Arabici: E libris quum typis expressis tum manu scriptis collegit et sumptibus universitatis osloensis edidit. Oslo: A W Brøgger.Google Scholar
Shepard, J. & Treadwell, L. (eds.) (2023) Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age: Diplomacy and Islam in the World of Ibn Fadlan. London: I. B. Tauris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, A. (2020) Geography in Arabic. Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_27405 (Accessed 16 April 2025).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
al-Sīrāfī, A. Z. (2014) Accounts of China and India. In Mackintosh-Smith, T. & Montgomery, J. E. (eds.) Two Arabic Travel Books: Accounts of China and India and Mission to the Volga. New York: New York University Press, pp. 3–161.Google Scholar
Smith, M. (1930) Appendix: Translated Texts. In MaCartney, C. A., The Magyars in the Ninth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 189–233.Google Scholar
Smyser, H. M. (1965) Ibn Faḍlān’s Account of the Rūs with Some Commentary and Some Allusions to Beowulf. In Bessinger, J. B. & Creed, R. P. (eds.) Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. New York: New York University Press, pp. 92–119.Google Scholar
Stender-Petersen, A. (1953) The Varangian Problem in Varangica. Aarhus: Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, pp. 5–20.Google Scholar
Sutūda, M. (1962) Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam min al-Mašriq ilā ’-l-Maġrib: ki ba-sāl-i 372 hiǧra qamarī tā’līf šuda. Intišārāt-i Dānišgāh-i Tihrān. Tehran: Dānišgāh-i Tihrān.Google Scholar
Taggart, D. (2022) Bonding over a Death: Signalling in the Funeral Episode of Ibn Faḍlān’s Risala. Early Medieval Europe 30(3), 437–460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toplak, M. S. (2023) Ritualised Executions and Human Sacrifices in the Viking World. In Gardeła, L., Bønding, S., & Pentz, P. (eds.) The Norse Sorceress: Mind and Materiality in the Viking World. Oxford: Oxbow Books. pp. 145–160. Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.5699282.17 (Accessed 1 October 2024).Google Scholar
Treadwell, L. (2020) Who Compiled and Edited the Mashhad Miscellany? Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28, 45–73.Google Scholar
Treadwell, L. (2023) From Kitab to Risala: The Long Shadow of Yaqut’s Version of Ibn Fadlan’s Account. In Shepard, J. & Treadwell, L. (eds.) Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age: Diplomacy and Islam in the World of Ibn Fadlan. London: I. B. Tauris, pp. 41–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Upham, T. M. (2022) Keeping Abreast of Foreign Fashions: Rationalizing Rūs Brooches in a Sixteenth-Century Persian Version of Ibn Faḍlān’s Risāla. Medieval Encounters 28(1), 72–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Upham, T. M. (2023a) ‘Here I Am, in This Far-Off Land Where We Are Now’: Encountering and Observing Rūs Women in Ibn Faḍlān’s Risala. In Price, B. Arnould, Bonsall, J., & Khoury, M. (eds.) Medieval Mobilities: Gendered Bodies, Spaces, and Movements in the Middle Ages. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 115–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Upham, T. M. (2023b) Rūs Gender in Islamicate Sources: The Transmission of Geographical and Historical Ideas on the North in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish between the Third and Eleventh Centuries AH/Ninth and Seventeenth Centuries AD. PhD thesis. Aarhus: Aarhus University.Google Scholar
Upham, T. M. (2024a) Rus’ Women in Islamicate Geography? Approaching a Study of Gender. In Jakobsson, S., T. J. Hraundel, & D. Segal (eds.) The Making of the Eastern Vikings: Rus’ and Varangians in the Middle Ages. Medieval Identities: Socio-cultural Spaces. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 21–34.Google Scholar
Upham, T. M. (2024b) ‘Out of Love for You’: Orienting Rūs Expressions of Emotion in Arabic Geography. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32, 437–463.Google Scholar
Vukovich, A. (2023a) The Ethnic Process. In Anderson, B. & Ivanova, M. (eds.) Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 121–132.Google Scholar
Vukovich, A. (2023b) ‘Northmen’ and Rus in Light of Numismatic Evidence. In Byrne, P. and Ellis, C. (eds.) Maritime Exchange and the Making of Norman Worlds. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 187–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warmind, M. L. (1995) Ibn Fadlan in the Context of His Age. In Crumlin-Pedersen, O. & Thye, B. Munch (eds.) The Ship as Symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia: Papers from an International Research Seminar at the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen, 5th–7th May 1994. Copenhagen: Publications from the National Museum, pp. 131–137.Google Scholar
Watson, W. E. (2004) Ibn Rustah’s Book of Precious Things: A Reexamination and Translation of an Early Source on the Rūs. Canadian-American Slavic Studies 38(3), 289–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
al-Waṭwāṭ, J. al-Dīn (1990) Manāhij al-Fikar wa-Mabāhij al-ʿIbar: Encyclopaedia of Four Natural Sciences. Sezgin, F. & Amawi, M. (eds.). Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.Google Scholar
Wordsworth, P. (2018) Approaches to Understanding Provincial Structure in the Early Islamic Caucasus: Historic Landscape Characterisation in the Kura Plain. In Anderson, W., Hopper, K., & Robinson, A. (eds.) Landscape Archaeology in Southern Caucasia: Finding Common Ground in Diverse Environments. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, pp. 145–159.Google Scholar
al-Ḥamawī, Yāqūt (1866) Jacut’s Geographisches Wörterbuch: Aus den Handschriften zu Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London und Oxford. Wüstenfeld, F. (ed.). Vol. 1. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus.Google Scholar
Zadeh, T. (2011) Mapping Frontiers across Medieval Islam: Geography, Translation and the Abbasid Empire. London: I. B. Tauris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimonyi, I. (1990) The Origins of the Volga Bulghars. Studio Uralo-Altaica 32. Szeged: Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila József Nominata.Google Scholar
Zimonyi, I. (2016) Muslim Sources on the Magyars in the Second Half of the 9th Century: The Magyar Chapter of the Jayhānī Tradition. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AA
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
The PDF of this Element
complies with version 2.1 of the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG), covering newer accessibility requirements and improved
user experiences and achieves the intermediate
(AA)
level of WCAG compliance, covering a wider range of accessibility requirements.
Content Navigation
Table of contents navigation
Allows you to navigate directly to chapters, sections, or non‐text items through a linked table of contents, reducing the need for extensive scrolling.
Allows you to navigate directly to chapters, sections, or non‐text items through a linked table of contents, reducing the need for extensive scrolling.
Index navigation
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Reading Order & Textual Equivalents
Single logical reading order
You will encounter all content (including footnotes, captions, etc.) in a clear, sequential flow, making it easier to follow with assistive tools like screen readers.
You will encounter all content (including footnotes, captions, etc.) in a clear, sequential flow, making it easier to follow with assistive tools like screen readers.
Short alternative textual descriptions
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
Visual Accessibility
Use of colour is not sole means of conveying information
You will still understand key ideas or prompts without relying solely on colour, which is especially helpful if you have colour vision deficiencies.
You will still understand key ideas or prompts without relying solely on colour, which is especially helpful if you have colour vision deficiencies.
Structural and Technical Features
ARIA roles provided
You gain clarity from ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles and attributes, as they help assistive technologies interpret how each part of the content functions.
You gain clarity from ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles and attributes, as they help assistive technologies interpret how each part of the content functions.
Supplementary materials for this Element are available here.