40 When they had gathered on the Thursday, we unfurled the two standards we had brought with us, saddled the horse with the saddle meant for the king, dressed him in black, and placed a turban on his head. I brought out the letter of the caliph and said, “We are not permitted to remain seated during the reading of the letter.” He stood up, as did the chiefs in attendance. He was big and corpulent. I read the beginning of the letter, and, when I reached the phrase, “Peace be upon you! On your behalf, I praise God—there is no god but Him!” I said, “Return the greetings of the Commander of the Faithful.” They did so, without exception. The interpreter translated everything, word by word. When we had finished the letter, they shouted “God Almighty!” at the top of their voices. The ground under our feet shook.
41 I next read the letter of the vizier Ḥāmid ibn al-ʿAbbās. The king continued to stand. I told him to be seated, so he sat down for the reading of the letter of Nadhīr al-Ḥaramī. When I had finished, his companions showered him with many dirhams. Then I produced the gifts meant for him and his wife: unguents,34 clothes, and pearls. I presented one gift after another until I had handed over everything. Then, in front of his people, I presented a robe of honor to his wife, who was seated by his side. This is their customary practice. The womenfolk showered dirhams on her after I had presented the robe. Then we left.
42 An hour later, he sent for us, and we were shown into his tent. The kings were on his right. He ordered us to sit on his left. His sons were seated in front of him. He sat alone, on a throne draped in Byzantine silk. He called for the table. It was carried in, laden with roasted meat and nothing else. He picked up a knife, cut off a piece of meat, and ate it, then a second piece and a third, before anyone else. Then he cut off a piece and handed it to Sawsan, the envoy, who had a small table placed in front of him in order to receive it. Such is their custom. No one reaches for the food before the king hands him a portion and a table is provided for him to receive it—the moment he receives it, he gets a table. He handed me a piece next, and I was given a table. He handed a piece to the fourth king, and he was given a table.35 Then he handed some meat to his sons, and they were given tables. Each of us ate from the table intended for his sole use. No one took anything from any other table. When the king was done with the food, everyone took what remained on his own table back to his lodging.
43 After the meat, he called for the honey drink sujū, which he drinks night and day,36 and drank a cupful. Then he stood up and said, “Such is my joy in my patron the Commander of the Faithful, may God prolong his life!” The four kings and his sons stood up when he did. So did we. When he had done this three times, we were shown out.
44 Before I turned up, the phrase “Lord God, keep in piety the king Yilṭawār, king of the Bulghārs!”37 was proclaimed from the minbar during the Friday oration. I told the king, “God is the king, and He alone is to be accorded this title from the minbar. Great and glorious is He! Take your patron, the Commander of the Faithful. He is satisfied with the phrase, ‘Lord God, keep in piety the imam Jaʿfar al-Muqtadir bi-llāh, your humble servant, caliph, and Commander of the Faithful!’ This is proclaimed from his minbars east and west. His forefathers, the caliphs before him, did the same. The Prophet (God bless and cherish him!) said, ‘Do not exaggerate my importance the way the Christians exaggerate the importance of Jesus, the son of Mary, for I am simply ʿAbdallāh: God’s bondsman and His emissary.’”38 He asked me, “What proclamation can I rightly use for the Friday oration?” and I said, “Your name and that of your father.” “But my father was an unbeliever,” he said, “and I do not wish to have his name mentioned from the minbar. Indeed, I do not wish to have even my own name mentioned, because it was given me by an unbeliever. What is the name of my patron, the Commander of the Faithful?” “Jaʿfar,” I replied. “Am I permitted to take his name?” “Yes.” “Then I take Jaʿfar as my name, and ʿAbdallāh as the name of my father. Convey this to the preacher.” I did so. The proclamation during the Friday oration became, “Lord God, keep in piety Your bondsman Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbdallāh, the emir of the Bulghārs, whose patron is the Commander of the Faithful!”
45 Three days after I had read out the epistle and presented the gifts, he summoned me. He had learned of the four thousand dinars and of the subterfuge employed by the Christian in order to delay their payment.39 The dinars had been mentioned in the letter. When I was shown in, he commanded me to be seated. I sat down. He threw the letter from the Commander of the Faithful at me. “Who brought this letter?” “I did.” Then he threw the vizier’s letter at me. “And this one?” “I did,” I replied. “What has been done,” he asked, “with the money they refer to?” “It could not be collected. Time was short, and we were afraid of missing the crossing. We left the money behind, to follow later.” “You have all arrived,” he said. “My patron has given you this sum to be brought to to me, so I can use it to build a fort to protect myself against the Jews who have reduced me to slavery. My man could have brought me the gifts.” “Indeed he could have. We did our best.” Then he said to the interpreter, “Tell him that I do not acknowledge any of the others. I acknowledge only you. They are not Arabs. If my master (God give him support!) thought that they could have read the official letter as eloquently as you, he would not have sent you to keep it safe for me, read it, and hear my response. I do not expect to receive one single dirham from anyone but you. Produce the money. This would be the best thing for you to do.”40 I left the audience, dazed and in a state of terror. I was overawed by his demeanor. He was a big, corpulent man, and his voice seemed to come from inside a barrel. I left the audience, gathered my companions, and told them about our conversation. “I warned you about this,” I said.41
46 At the start of the prayer, his muezzin would repeat the phrases announcing the start of prayer twice.42 I said to him, “These phrases are announced only once in the realm of your patron the Commander of the Faithful.” So he told the muezzin, “Accept what he tells you and do not contravene him.” The muezzin performed the call to prayer as I had suggested for several days. During this time the king would interrogate me and argue about the money. I would try to persuade him to give up his hopes and explained our reasons. When he despaired of receiving the money, he instructed the muezzin to revert to a repeated announcement. The muezzin did so. The king meant it as a pretext for debate. When I heard the muezzin announce the start of prayer twice, I shouted to him to stop. The muezzin informed the king. The king summoned me and my companions.
47 He said to the interpreter, “Ask him (he meant me), what is his opinion on two muezzins, one of whom announces the call once, the other twice, both of whom lead the people in prayer? Is the prayer permissible or not?” “The prayer is permissible,” I said. “Is there any disagreement on this, or is there consensus?” “There is consensus,” I said. “Ask him, what is his opinion about someone who has given to one group of people a sum of money intended for another group of people, weak people, sorely beset and reduced to slavery, betrayed by the first group?” “This is impermissible,” I replied, “and they are wicked people.” “Is there any disagreement, or is there consensus?” “There is consensus,” I said. Then he said to the interpreter, “Ask him, do you think that if the caliph—God give him long life!—were to send an army against me he would be able to overpower me?” “No,” I answered. “What about the emir of Khurasan, then?” “No.” “Is it not because we are separated by vast distance and many infidel tribes?” he asked. “Of course,” I answered. “Tell him, by God—here I am, in this far-off land where we are now, you and I both, yet still I fear my patron the Commander of the Faithful. I fear his curse, should he learn anything displeasing about me. I would die on the spot, though his kingdom is a great distance away. Yet you who eat his bread, wear his clothes, and look on him constantly have betrayed him in the matter of a letter he commanded you to bring to me, to my weak people. You have betrayed the Muslims. I
shall accept no instruction from you on how to practice my religion until a sincere counselor arrives. I will accept instruction from such a man.” He had dumbfounded us—we had no answer. We left. Ibn Faḍlān said: From then on, he would show me favor and be affable towards me, addressing me as Abū Bakr the Veracious.43 But he was aloof from my companions.
48 I lost count of the number of marvels I witnessed in his realm. For example, on our first night in his territory, at what I reckoned was about an hour before sunset,44 I saw the horizon turn a bright red. The air was filled with a mighty uproar, and I heard the din of many voices. I looked up and was surprised to see fiery-red clouds close by. Loud voices came from the clouds, where there were shapes that looked like soldiers and horses. These shapes brandished swords and spears. I could form a clear image of them in my mind. Then another group, similar to the first, appeared. I could make out men, animals, and weapons. This second group charged the first, one squadron attacking the other. We were scared and began to pray to God and entreat Him. The locals were astonished at our reaction and laughed at us. Ibn Faḍlān said: We watched as one unit charged the other, engaged in combat for an hour and then separated. After an hour they disappeared. We asked the king about this, and he told us that his forebears used to say, “These are two groups of jinn, believers and unbelievers, who do battle every evening.” He added that this spectacle had occurred every night for as long as they could remember.
49 Ibn Faḍlān said: I went into my yurt with the king’s tailor, a man from Baghdad who had ended up there. We were chatting but did not chat for long—less time than it takes you to read halfway through one seventh of the Qurʾan.45 It was beginning to grow dark, and we were waiting for the call to prayer at nightfall. When we heard it we went outside the yurt and noticed that the morning sun had already arisen. So I said to the muezzin, “Which prayer did you call?” “The daybreak prayer.” “And what about the last call, the night call?” “We perform that along with the sunset prayer.” So I said, “And what of the night?” “The nights are as short as you observed. They have been even shorter but now they have started to grow long.” He said that he had not slept for a month, afraid he would miss the morning prayer. You can put a cooking-pot on the fire at the time of the sunset prayer, and by the time you have performed the morning prayer, the pot will not have started to boil. Daylight was very long. I observed that, for part of the year, the days were long and the nights short. Later on I observed the nights grow long and the days short.46
50 On our second night, I sat down outside the yurt and watched the sky. I could make out only a few constellations, I think about fifteen. I noticed that the red glow that precedes sunset did not disappear—night was hardly dark at all. In fact you could identify another person at more than a bow-shot away. The moon did not reach the middle of the sky. It would rise in one part of the sky for an hour, then dawn would break, and the moon would set. The king told me that a tribe called the Wīsū lived three months from his territory, where night lasted less than an hour. Ibn Faḍlān said: I noticed that, at sunrise, the whole country, the ground, the mountains, anything you cared to look at, grew red. The sun rose like a giant cloud. The red persisted until the sun was at its zenith. The inhabitants of Bulghār informed me, “In winter, night is as long as day is now and day is as short as night. If we set out at sunrise for a place called Itil less than a farsakh away, we will not get there before nightfall, when all the constellations have risen and cover the sky.” When we left Bulghār territory, night had grown long and day short.47
51 They consider the howling of dogs to be very auspicious, I observed. They rejoice and say, “A year of fertility, auspiciousness, and peace.” Snakes, I noticed, are so numerous that ten, maybe even more, could be coiled around just one branch of a tree. The Bulghārs do not kill them, and the snakes do not harm them. There was one place where I saw a felled tree more than one hundred cubits in length. I noticed that it had a very thick trunk, so I stopped to examine it. All of a sudden it moved. I was terrified. When I looked closely, I noticed a snake of almost the same length and bulk lying on top of it. When it saw me, it slid off the trunk and disappeared among the trees. I left in a state of alarm and told the king and his companions, but they were unimpressed. The king said, “Have no fear. It will do you no harm.”
52 When we were traveling in the company of the king, we halted at a place where my comrades Takīn, Sawsan, Bārs, one of the King’s companions, and I entered a copse. We saw a small piece of dark wood, slender as the staff of a spindle, though a bit longer, with a dark shoot. A broad leaf from the top of the shoot spread on the ground. What looked like berry-bearing calyxes were scattered on it. You could easily mistake the taste of these berries for sweet seedless pomegranates. We ate them, and they were delicious. We spent the rest of our time there looking for them and eating them.
53 The apples, I noticed, are dark. In fact, they are extremely dark and more acidic than wine vinegar. The female slaves eat them, and they get their name from them.48 Hazel trees grow in abundance. I saw hazel woods everywhere. One wood can measure forty by forty farsakhs. There is another tree that grows there, but I don’t know what it is. It is extremely tall, has a leafless trunk, and tops like the tops of palm trees, with slender fronds, but bunched together. The locals know where to make a hole in the trunk. They place a container underneath it. Sap, sweeter than honey, flows from the hole. If someone drinks too much sap, he gets as intoxicated as he would from drinking wine.
54 Their diet consists chiefly of millet and horse meat, though wheat and barley are plentiful. Crop-growers keep what they grow for themselves. The king has no right to the crops, but every year they pay him one sable skin per household. When he orders a raid on a given territory, he takes a share of the booty they bring back. For every wedding feast or banquet the king is given a jug of honey wine, some wheat (of very poor quality, because the soil is black and so foul-smelling), and a gift of food. The amount of food depends on the size of the banquet.
55 They have nowhere to store their food, so they dig holes in the ground as deep as wells to store it. It only takes a few days for it to rot and give off such an odor that it becomes inedible. They do not use olive oil, sesame oil, or any other vegetable oil. They use fish oil instead. Everything they prepare in it is unwholesome and greasy. They make a broth from barley and give it to slaves of both sexes. Sometimes they cook the barley with some meat. The owners eat the meat, and feed the female slaves the barley, unless the broth is made with the head of a goat, in which case the female slaves are given the meat.
56 They wear peaked caps. The king rides out alone, unaccompanied by his men or anyone else. If he passes through the market, everyone stands, removes his cap from his head, and places it under his arm. When the king has passed, they put their caps back on. The same is true of those who are given an audience with the king, the great and the lowly—even his sons and his brothers. The moment they are in his presence, they remove their caps and place them under their arms. Then they bow their heads, sit down, and stand up again, until he commands them to be seated. Those who sit in his presence, do so in a kneeling position. They keep their hats under their arms until they have left. Then they put them back on again.
57 They live in yurts. The king’s yurt is enormous and can hold more than a thousand people. It is carpeted with Armenian rugs. In the middle the king has a throne bedecked with Byzantine silk.
58 One of their customs is for the grandfather, rather than the father, to pick up a new-born boy and declare, “It is my right to care for him and raise him to manhood. It is not the father’s right to do so.” The brother, not the son, inherits the estate of a deceased man. I told the king that this was impermissible, and I taught him clearly how the inheritance laws work. He understood them.
59 I observed more lightning there than anywhere else. They do not approach a household struck by li
ghtning but let it be, with all of its contents, people, and possessions—everything, in fact—until time destroys it. They say, “This household has incurred divine wrath.”
60 They impose capital punishment upon anyone who kills on purpose. For manslaughter, they make a box out of khadhank, put the perpetrator inside and nail it fast. They give him three loaves of bread and a flagon of water, erect three pieces of wood in the shape of the frame of a camel saddle and suspend him inside, saying, “We set him between heaven and earth, exposed to the rain and the sun. Perhaps God will have pity on him.” He remains there until his body rots over time and is scattered to the winds.
61 If they notice that someone is clever and able, they say, “This man is fit for the service of our lord.” They take hold of him, place a rope around his neck and hang him from a tree until he decomposes. The king’s interpreter told me that a man from Sind turned up once and served him for a while. This man was clever and able. A group of Bulghārs decided to go on one of their journeys. The man from Sind asked the king’s permission to accompany them, but he refused. The man persisted until the king relented and gave his permission. So the man set sail with them. They noticed that he was quick-witted and clever and conspired as follows: “This man is fit for the service of our lord. Let us send him to him.” Their route took them past a forest, so they took hold of the man, placed a rope around his neck, tied it to the top of a big tree, and left him there. Then they went on their way.
62 If one of them urinates on a march while still in full armor, everything he has with him, weapons and clothes, is removed as plunder. This is one of their customs. But they leave him alone if he undoes his weapons and puts them aside while urinating.
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