Around the year 750 two remarkable movements took shape at opposite ends of the western Eurasian landmass. This was a time of great change in the Middle East, where, after the achievements of the Umayyad caliphate in terms of conquest and of the spreading of the Arabic language and Islam, the Abbasids were now taking over, ushering in a glorious period in the history of Islam and the whole region. The caliphate now extended from the Iberian peninsula to India, across North Africa and into parts of Central Asia. In the north, Scandinavian peoples were increasingly mobilised to seek new pastures abroad. There were multiple factors at play: shortage of land, politics, and opportunities for fame and fortune abroad.
Both were relentless in their advances. In the case of the Caliphate, strategically and militarily as seen for example in their victories over the Byzantines and the Persians, and culturally as well with the advancement of learning and scholarship by the Abbasids. The northerners, having perfected the art of sailing both the shallow rivers and the big seas, stopped at nothing either. When the Viking Age petered out in the eleventh century, they had left signs of their presence in an area reaching from the eastern coast of North America, to the Caspian Sea, and from the Mediterranean Sea to the arctic. These two of the most influential social and economic mobilisers of the Middle Ages, if only because of the geographical scope of their activities, were bound to collide at some point.
While very little on the eastwards expansion of the Vikings is preserved in the Old Norse literature, some evidence is found in Byzantine, Latin and Old Slavonic writings. The earliest known reference is found in the Annals of St Bertin in the year 839, when a group of Swedish northmen, known as Rhos, came with a Byzantine embassy to the court of Emperor Louis the Pious at Ingelheim.[1] From Byzantium itself we have several descriptions, most importantly those of Patriarch Photios from the second half of the ninth century[2] and the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos from the tenth century. The Old Slavonic so-called Primary Chronicle preserves accounts of Vikings entering Russia in the ninth century, some of which are legendary in character.[3]
However, these sources do not compare in scope and detail provided with contemporary Arabic writers from the ninth and tenth centuries. Most of these works belong to the Islamic geographical tradition that took shape under the patronage of Caliph Ma’mun in the first half of the ninth century. It is indeed a fortuitous coincidence that Islamic geography was coming into its own more or less exactly at the time the Northmen made their presence felt in the south and east. After the Abbasids had replaced the Umayyads as rulers of the Caliphate there was a steady increase of interest in science and scholarship, a development particularly linked with the efforts and patronage of father-and-son Caliphs Harun ar-Rashid and Ma’mun over a fifty year period from the 780s to the 830s.
The geography that developed in the Muslim world was the fruit of a mixture of the classical heritage, preserved in Byzantium and translated from Greek to Arabic, and the emerging scholarly activity in the Caliphate. Data input was furthermore acquired with postal routes, tales of travellers and merchants, embassies, espionage etc. There were also political factors, such as the pressing need to map out and survey the vast Islamic caliphate as well as its neighbours’ territories.[4]
The earliest mention in these sources comes from Ibn Khurradadhbih, head of the postal service and intelligence in the Jibal region, in the 840s. There he describes the Rus (the name used by the Arabic writers to denote northmen) sailing the Caspian Sea and reaching as far as Baghdad, to where they carried their merchandise on camel-back. The author mentions that the Rus pretended to be Christian, which shows possibly that they had already some knowledge of local trading conventions, as this would have allowed them to pay lower customs as one of the ahl al-kitaab.[5]
In the late ninth century, Al-Ya'qubi, in Cairo, writes that the Rus are the same as the majus, or Vikings, who raided Seville in 844/5. This single sentence is important in that it tells us that Muslims were now further establishing the identity of these foreign peoples.[6]
On the whole, however, these earliest works are not very informative about the Scandinavian involvement in the east, but this was about to change by the turn of the tenth century. Ibn Rustah, writing in the first decade of that century, provides us with an interesting account of the Rus where he relates their customs, appearance and funerary rituals to some extent. Some of this information rhymes well with what we know of Viking communities elsewhere, for instance that “...when a son is born to one of them, he presents the newborn with an unsheathed sword and puts it between its hands, saying: ‘I bequeath to you no wealth, and you will have nothing except what you gain yourself with this sword.’” It is unfortunate that the writer failed to comment on the whereabouts of these Rus, but from other evidence in his text it is possible that they resided somewhere in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea or the Caucasus.[7]
Ibn Fadlan's account of his journey from Baghdad to the King of the Volga Bulghars in 921-2 holds a unique place among the Arabic sources on the Rus because it is the most substantial and detailed description we possess of any Viking community from any place or time, as well as the best known and most frequently studied one. It is the only text from this period that provides an eye-witness account detailing various aspects of the Rus community. At the same time, it is a highly complex text which provides insights into intricate networks of peoples and places on the trade route between the Caliphate and the north. Ibn Fadlan met the Rus on the banks of the Volga, close to where today we find the city of Kazan in Russian Tatarstan, and tells us of their customs and appearance, which evokes mixed emotions. On one hand the Rus “...are the filthiest of all Allah’s creatures: they do not purify themselves after excreting or urinating or wash themselves when in a state of ritual impurity after coitus and do not even wash their hands after food,” and on the other hand Ibn Fadlan is quite impressed: “I have never seen more perfect physiques than theirs—they are like palm trees, are fair and reddish.” Ibn Fadlan further relates in great detail the funerary ceremony of one of their deceased chieftains, and this description has come to serve as a model for many of our ideas of what such a viking funeral may have looked like.[8]
The Middle Volga and the Caspian regions were in this period largely the realm of Turkic peoples, the most important of which were the Khazars, but where also the Volga Bulghars and the Ghuzz played a large role, the latter ultimately becoming an important part of the Seljuks who conquered parts of Anatolia, planting the seeds for the Ottoman Empire. All these peoples were also to a varying extent influenced by Islam (the Volga Bulghars adopted Islam as their official religion around 900) and political and economic contacts with the Caliphate, and also, to some extent, the Byzantine Empire. Numerous accounts of contacts between the Rus and these peoples have survived. To name a few, the aforementioned Ibn Khurradadhbih, writing in the 840s, tells us that the Rus pass through Khazaria to the Caspian Sea, where they sail to Jurjan with their merchandise, adding that they sometimes travel all the way to Baghdad on camelback. Ibn Rustah states that those who trade with the Volga Bulghars are the Khazars and the Rus, who also sell their slaves to them.[9]
Towards the middle of the tenth century we have the other most important writer to comment on the presence of Scandinavians in the east, the great historian and polymath Al-Mas'udi. In his monumental Muruj adh-dhahab (Meadows of Gold) there are numerous accounts of the Rus. According to Al-Mas‘udi the Rus live in Atil (or Itil), presumably the most important city of the Khazars at the time, which was probably located in the Volga estuary on the Caspian Sea, along with peoples of all religions. In complex legal matters, they are reported to confer with the Muslim judges, and we are told that they are soldiers or guards of the Khazar ruler. Elsewhere Al-Mas‘udi reports that what is probably the Sea of Azov belongs to the Rus, and that no one else sails on its waters but them. In yet another passage he claims that they live in the vicinity of the Caucasus. According to this same writer, they appear to be on good terms with the Khazar rulers, who in 912 allowed them to use the lower Volga to enter the Caspian Sea in order to raid peoples living on its coastline in return for half the spoils.[10]
Ibn Fadlan's description as well as evidence from other Arabic writers of the period indicate that the Rus maintained long-standing and close contacts with the Volga Bulghars and also with the Khazars to the south. This context is important not only for our reading of Ibn Fadlan's account of the Rus, but also for our understanding of the eastern chapter of the Viking age.
The majority of Arabic accounts of the eastern vikings described them as traders, and in one case as a specialized professional military unit that served as guards for the Khazar ruler. From the early tenth century, however, there are several mentions of them as raiders, especially in and around the south-west Caspian Sea and the Caucasus region. Al-Mas'udi includes a relatively lengthy passage describing an early Rus raid on the southern coastline of the Caspian Sea. The writer does not inform us of their point of departure other than that they were coming from the Sea of Azov. They arrive via a gulf in the Black Sea and gain access to the Caspian Sea and obtain the Khazars’ permission to plunder by promising them half of what they amass. Several towns were targeted (Daylam, Gilan, Tabaristan and Abaskun near Jurjan) and the attacks were violent and brutal: “ the Rus shed blood, captured women and infants, seized properties, they invaded <the towns> and laid them to waste” (fa-safakat ar-Rus ad-dima’ wa istibahat an-niswan wa al-wildan wa ghanimat al-amwal wa shannat al-gharata wa akhrabat). The Rus carried on with their raids for some time and killed many Muslims. Finally, when the Rus returned to the Khazars to hand over the promised booty, Muslims in the service of the kaghan learned of their atrocities and took revenge. The few Rus that escaped their retaliation fled northwards to the lands of the Burtas and Bulghars, where they were killed. This happened, according to Al-Mas‘udi, at some point after the year 912/913. Miskawayh (932–1030) further tells us of a Rus siege of the city of Bardha in Azerbaijan in the 940s. The Rus may have been planning to settle there, but were ultimately driven out by the locals and an outbreak of disease in their files after eating bad fruit.[11]
Later attacks and militant behaviour are reported in several later sources up until the mid-eleventh century. By that time it seems that the Rus, as well as the Khazars, all but disappeared from the region in which they are most often documented by the Arabic writers. Faint and scattered memories of them are found in the following centuries but most appear to draw on and refer to works composed in the ninth and tenth centuries. A possible indication of their waning presence near the Caspian Sea is a passage in the Persian History of Sharvan and Darband where a small fleet of Rus—at least in comparison to earlier accounts of their raids on the Caspian coast—is said to come to the aid of a local emir Maymun in his internecine strife in the region of Shirvan in eastern Azerbaijan: “The amir Maymun secretly sought help from the Rus against the ‘chiefs ’ and in 987 the Rus arrived in eighteen ships. At first they sent one single ship to see whether the amir was eager to employ them. When they brought the amir out of (his confinement), the people of al-Bab [Darband – T.J.H] in a joint effort massacred the Rus to the last man and the remaining ships sailed on to Masqat and plundered it.”
There is an overall impression that the Rus in this account were not based too far away, particularly with regard to the single “probe” ship. Two years later it is reported that Maymun was under pressure from a preacher of the neighbouring Gilan region to surrender his Rus ghulams (here probably with the meaning of “hired soldier”), with the ultimatum that they would be converted to Islam or put to death. Perhaps these accounts reflect the presence of one of the last remaining pockets of those eastern Rus who are reported by Al-Mas‘udi to have served as guards to the Khazar kaghan, and resided in Atil.
The third, and final mention of the Rus which is contained in the History of Sharvan and Darband, dated to 1030, seems to refer to a different group of Rus, attacking Shirvan with thirty-eight ships but who were ultimately defeated on the river Kur. Here we are approaching the traditional dating of the expedition of Yngvarr to the east which is commemorated on several rune stones in Sweden.
The archaeological and numismatic material also furnishes important evidence to Viking activity in the east. Finds with Scandinavian artefacts have been unearthed throughout what is today Russia and Ukraine, well towards the lower Volga and the Caspian Sea. Arabic silver dirhams have also been unearthed in great quantities especially in Sweden (approx. 100.000) and Russia (approx. 400.000), and hoards have been found almost all over Europe. Some coins (approx 1500) also contain incisions or graffiti which sometimes convey interesting information in the shape of symbols and words, some even written using the Arabic alphabet.[12] An important factor in the diminishing presence of the Vikings in the east is that in the late tenth century the flow of silver coins came to a halt, and mines were depleted.
Other artefacts from Sweden also highlight the eastern chapter of the Viking Age. Numerous different objects have been found, especially on the western coast of Sweden and on the island of Gotland in the Baltic. These include utensils, weapons, mounts and clothing accessories of various origins: from the steppe nomads, Islamic, Byzantine, and others.[13] This is not surprising, as the Arabic sources tell of Scandinavians in regions where all these elements could be found. Mention should also be made of several runestones commemorating Vikings who ventured east, many of whom died there.
In sum, contacts between eastfaring Scandinavians and Muslims took place not only in the Caliphate proper, as described by Ibn Khurradadhbih, but also in places where Islam was being adopted or where Arabo-Islamic culture had an impact, such as the lands on either side of the Caspian Sea and further north in the realm of the Volga Bulghars, who had converted to Islam probably around 900. Thus, we may conservatively estimate that Vikings and Muslims were in direct and indirect contact for over two centuries, the evidence for which is lucidly displayed in both the written sources and the archaeological record.
