142 CHAPTER 2
case it is obviously not so. In the above-cited account the Danubian Bulgarians
(Al-Burgar) are distinguished from Burjan. V. Petrukhin presumes that the
Bulgars in question are the Black ones.77 Al-Masudi probably did not always
associate Burjan with the Danubian Bulgarians. In his work Tidings of Time
Al-Masudi describes in detail the Burjan people (this is the only description of
them in Eastern literature):
Burjan are the descendants of Yunan, son of Japheth. The kingdom is
large and extensive. They make war on the Byzantines, the Slavs, Khazars
and the Turks. The Byzantines are their worst enemies. Between
Al-Qunstantiniyah (Constantinople) and the land of Burjan (the distance
is) 15 days of travel [.. .] The Burjan worship fire. They do not have their
own (sacred) book [.. .] The Burjan have neither dinars nor dirhams, they
do commerce with cows and sheep. If a truce is reached between them
and the Byzantines, the Burjan pay by bringing slaves from the Slavs and
others like them.78Most scholars believe that Al-Masudi is referring to the Danubian Bulgarians,
but his account could, with equal certainty, be about the Black (and more spe-
cifically the Inner) Bulgars. Probably not all accounts of the Burjan people refer
to the Danubian Bulgarians. For example, the excerpt about the Inner Bulgars,
found in the work of Al-Balkhi, corresponds to an older tradition in Eastern
literature, related to the description of peoples from the outskirts of inhab-
ited lands or from one end of the world to the other, as well as to the descrip-
tion of peoples that inhabited the seventh climate. Al-Farghani (who died in
865) gives the following two descriptions: “the seventh climate begins to the
east of the northern parts of the land of Yajuj, then passes through the land of
the Turks, goes along the coast of the Sea of Jurjan, on its northern side, then
crosses the Sea of Rum, passes the land of Burjan and Slavonia (As-Saqaliba)
and reaches the Western Sea [.. .] the end of the inhabited areas [.. .] it begins
to the east of the land of Yajuj, then passes through the Tagazgaz land of the
Turks, then the land of the Alans [.. .] through Burjan and then—through
Slavonia and reaches the Western Sea”.79 And Al-Balkhi’s second depiction is
as follows: after the land of Yajuj it continues “along the upper part of Slavonia,
crosses the land of the Inner Bulgars and Slavonia and passes through the land
77 Petrukhin 2005, 83.
78 Zaimova 2000, 36.
79 Garkavi 1870, 25; Kalinina 1988, 130.