Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Supplementary materials for this Element are available here.
  • Show more authors
  • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
  • Select format
  • Publisher:
    Cambridge University Press
    Publication date:
    13 September 2025
    09 October 2025
    ISBN:
    9781009613262
    9781009613255
    9781009613224
    Dimensions:
    (229 x 152 mm)
    Weight & Pages:
    0.259kg, 84 Pages
    Dimensions:
    (229 x 152 mm)
    Weight & Pages:
    0.135kg, 84 Pages
  • Series:
    Elements in the Global Middle Ages
You may already have access via personal or institutional login
  • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Series:
    Elements in the Global Middle Ages

    Book description

    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.

    References

    Manuscripts

    al-Hamawī, Yāqūt . Muʿjam al-Buldān. MS Cod. Arab. 99. Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen.
    Aḥmad Ibn Lutfūllah, Müneccimbaşı. Jāmiʿ al-Duwal. MS Esad Efendi 02102. Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul.
    al-Waṭwāṭ, Jamāl al-Dīn. Manāhij al-Fikar wa-Mabāhij al-ʿIbar. MS Köprülü I Fazil Ahmed Paşa 1170. Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul.

    Literature

    Adam of Bremen (2002) History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen. New York: Columbia University Press.
    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).
    Ali, K. (2010) Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    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.
    Antrim, Z. (2012) Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    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).
    Auer, B. (2018) Kannauj. Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Available from: https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EI3O/COM-32983.xml (Accessed 29 September 2024).
    al-Bakrī, A. ʿAbdallāh, ʿUbayd (2003) Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik. Tolba, J. (ed.). Vol. 1. Beirut: Dar al-Kotob al-Ilmiyah.
    Balafrej, L. (2023) Instrumental Jawārī: On Gender, Slavery, and Technology in Medieval Arabic Sources. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 31, 96126 (Accessed 8 January 2024).
    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, 123.
    Barker, H. (2019) That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260–1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
    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).
    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.
    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.
    al-Bīrūnī, A. ʾl-R. M. b. A. (2008) Taʾrīkh al-Hind. Beirut: Alemü’l-Kütüb.
    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), 134. https://brill.com/view/journals/jas/4/1/article-p1_1.xml (Accessed 4 January 2023).
    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. 4056.
    Brink, S. (2021b) Thraldom: A History of Slavery in the Viking Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Canard, M. (1958) La Relation du Voyage d’Ibn Fadlân chez les Bulgares de la Volga. Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales, 5, 4145.
    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. 163200.
    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).
    Danilenko, N. (2021) Picturing the Islamicate World: The Story of al-Iṣṭakhrī’s Book of Routes and Realms. Leiden: Brill.
    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.
    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. 6781.
    Duczko, W. (2004) Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe. Boston, MA: Brill.
    Dunlop, D. M. 2012. ‘Al-Balk̲h̲ī’. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. April. https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_1157.
    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.
    Fraehn, C. M. (1823) Ibn Foszlans und andere Araber Berichte über die Russen älterer Zeit. St Petersburg: Kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften.
    Franklin, S. & Shepard, J. (1996) The Emergence of Rus 750–1200. Longman History of Russia. London: Longman.
    Frenkel, Y. (2015) The Turkic Peoples in Medieval Arabic Writings. Routledge Studies in the History of Iran and Turkey. New York: Routledge.
    Frye, R. N. (1950) Notes to Islamic Sources on the Slavs and the Rūs. The Muslim World 40, 1926.
    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.
    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.
    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).
    Gräslund, A.-S. (1981) The Burial Customs: A Study of the Graves on Björkö. Birka. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
    Green, M. A. (2002) Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age & Roman Europe. Stroud: Tempus.
    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.
    Hermes, N. (2012) The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture Ninth-Twelfth Century AD. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
    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. 279293.
    Hraundal, T. J. (2013b) The Rus in Arabic Sources: Cultural Contacts and Identity. PhD thesis. University of Bergen.
    Hraundal, T. J. (2014) New Perspectives on Eastern Vikings/Rus in Arabic Sources. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 10, 6597.
    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. 237251.
    Hultgård, A. (2022) The Sacrificial Festival at Uppsala: A Comparative Perspective. Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift (74), 600621.
    Hunwick, J. O. (2005) A Region of the Mind: Medieval Arab Views of African Geography and Ethnography and Their Legacy. Sudanic Africa 16, 103136.
    Ibn Faḍlān, A. (1939) Ibn Faḍlān’s Reisebericht. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 24. Togan, A. Zeki Validi (ed.). Leipzig: Brockhaus.
    Ibn Faḍlān, A. (2005) Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia: A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghad to the Volga River. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener.
    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.
    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. 163297.
    Ibn Faḍlān, A. (2017) Mission to the Volga. Montgomery, J. E. (trans.). New York: New York University Press.
    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. 173174.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    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. 126127.
    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.
    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.
    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. 153159.
    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.
    Jankowiak, M. (2017) What Does the Slave Trade in the Saqaliba Tell Us about Early Islamic Slavery? International Journal of Middle East Studies 49, 169172.
    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. 161181. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73291-2_12 (Accessed 19 November 2021).
    Jesch, J. (1991) Women in the Viking Age. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
    Karras, R. M. (1988) Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
    Katona, C. (2023) Vikings of the Steppe: Scandinavians, Rus’, and the Turkic World (c. 750–1050). Routledge Archaeologies of the Viking World. Abingdon: Routledge.
    Ḵẖān, M. S. (1981) Al-Masʿūdī and the Geography of India. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 131(1), 119136.
    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. 2738.
    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. 1527.
    Levtzion, N. (1968) Ibn-Hawqal, the Cheque, and Awdaghost. Journal of African History 9(2), 223233.
    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.
    Lewis, B. (ed.) (1987) Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    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).
    Lumbard, J. E. B. (2007) From ‘Ḥubb’ to ‘ʿIshq’: The Development of Love in Early Sufism. Journal of Islamic Studies 18(3), 345385.
    Mägi, M. (2018) In Austrvegr: The Role of the Eastern Baltic in Viking Age Communication. Leiden: Brill.
    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.
    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. 185213.
    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. 106127.
    Martinez, A. P. (1982) Gardīzī’s Two Chapters on the Turks. Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2, 109217.
    al-Masʿūdī, A.-H. I. al-H. I.-’Ali (2010a) Murūj al-Dhahab wa Maʿādin al-Jawāhir. Vol. 1. Beirut: Dar Sader.
    al-Masʿūdī, A.-H. I. al-H. I.-’Ali (2010b) Murūj al-Dhahab wa Maʿādin al-Jawāhir. Vol. 2. Beirut: Dar Sader.
    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. 144146.
    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.
    McKeithen, J. E. (1979) The Risalah of Ibn Fadlan: An Annotated Translation with Introduction. PhD thesis. Indiana University.
    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. 4252.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    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. 147152.
    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. 161169.
    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), 597611.
    Montgomery, J. E. (2000) Ibn Faḍlān and the Rūsiyyah. Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 3, 125.
    Montgomery, J. E. (2001) Ibn Rusta’s Lack of ‘Eloquence’, the Rūs, and Samanid Cosmography. Edebiyât 12, 7393.
    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. 4389.
    Montgomery, J. E. (2008) Arabic Sources on the Vikings. In Brink, S. & Price, N. (eds.) The Viking World. London: Routledge, pp. 550561.
    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. 3140.
    al-Muqaddasi, M. ibn A. (2001) The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Region: Aḥsan al-Taqāsim fī Maʿrifat al-Aqālīm. Reading: Garnet.
    Mustawfī, . (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.
    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, 196225.
    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. 253276.
    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.
    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. 300323.
    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).
    Pinto, K. C. (2016) Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
    Pokhy, S. (2006) The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Price, N. (2008) Dying and the Dead: Viking Age Mortuary Behaviour. In Brink, S. & Price, N. (eds.) The Viking World. London: Routledge, pp. 257273.
    Price, N. (2010) Passing into Poetry: Viking-Age Mortuary Drama and the Origins of Norse Mythology. Medieval Archaeology 54(1), 123156.
    Price, N. (2022) Performing the Vikings: From Edda to Oseberg. Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift (74), 6388.
    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. 177197.
    Pritsak, O. (1977) The Origin of Rus’. Russian Review 36(3), 249273.
    Rasmussen, J. L. (1814) Om Arabernes og Persernes Handel og Bekiendtskab med Rusland og Skandinavien i Middelalderen. Copenhagen: P. D. Kiøpping.
    Ringstedt, N. (1997) The Birka Chamber-Graves: Economic and Social Aspects. An Analysis Based on Quantitative Methods. Stockholm: Department of Archaeology, Stockholm University.
    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.
    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. 7596.
    Roesdahl, E. (2022) Archaeology and Odin in Late Pagan Denmark: A Note. Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift (74), 385395.
    Rouighi, R. (2019) Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
    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. 4572.
    Rowson, E. K. (2008) The Traffic in Boys: Slavery and Homoerotic Liaisons in Elite ʿAbbāsid Society. Middle Eastern Literatures 11(2), 193204.
    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).
    Sass, T. & Warmind, M. L. (1989) Mission Saqaliba. Chaos 11, 3149.
    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), 298326.
    Schine, R. (2022) Translating Race in the Islamic Studies Classroom. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā. 30, 320383.
    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. 133148.
    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.
    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.
    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).
    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. 3161.
    Smith, M. (1930) Appendix: Translated Texts. In MaCartney, C. A., The Magyars in the Ninth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 189233.
    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. 92119.
    Stender-Petersen, A. (1953) The Varangian Problem in Varangica. Aarhus: Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, pp. 520.
    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.
    Taggart, D. (2022) Bonding over a Death: Signalling in the Funeral Episode of Ibn Faḍlān’s Risala. Early Medieval Europe 30(3), 437460.
    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. 145160. Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.5699282.17 (Accessed 1 October 2024).
    Treadwell, L. (2020) Who Compiled and Edited the Mashhad Miscellany? Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28, 4573.
    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. 4165.
    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), 72103.
    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. 115138.
    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.
    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. 2134.
    Upham, T. M. (2024b) ‘Out of Love for You’: Orienting Rūs Expressions of Emotion in Arabic Geography. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32, 437463.
    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. 121132.
    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. 187210.
    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. 131137.
    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), 289299.
    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.
    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. 145159.
    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.
    Zadeh, T. (2011) Mapping Frontiers across Medieval Islam: Geography, Translation and the Abbasid Empire. London: I. B. Tauris.
    Zimonyi, I. (1990) The Origins of the Volga Bulghars. Studio Uralo-Altaica 32. Szeged: Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila József Nominata.
    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.

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    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 book 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.

    Index navigation

    Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.

    Reading Order and 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.

    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.

    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.

    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.