Ibn Fadlan, though it is not even remotely indebted to Ibn Fadlan’s account: Ibn Fadlan
does not make the observation concerning conjugal disparity in the matter of cremation.
It explains the nature of the cultic marriage which Ibn Fadlan describes (the detail
concerning Paradise is very telling), confirms his identification of the Rus with the
Saqaliba in a very precise manner and explains why the Rus should have a Khaqan-like
king. It strongly suggests, therefore, that Ibn Fadlan’s Rus in Volga Bulgharia were
slave-soldiers or mercenaries who originated from Khazaria and not from Gorodische
or Ladoga or anywhere further to the north.
[a = b] Finally, al-Masudi conjectures that the people who raided al-Andalus before
912 – 13 and whom the inhabitants identified as the Majus, because of a chiliastic
prophecy which claimed that the Majus would raid them from the Atlantic every 200
years, were in fact the Rus because they are the only people to sail the seas which are
connected with the Qyans (i.e. the Greek Okeanos, also known as the Encircling Sea)
(MG).
Bibliography: Arabic text (MG): Muruj al-Dhahab wa-Maadin al-Jawhar, Ch. Pellat
(ed.), Beirut: Manshurat al-Jamia al-Lubnaniyya, 1966 ; French trans. by B. de
Maynard, P. de Courteille and Ch. Pellat, Les prairies d’or, Paris: Société Asiatique,
1965 ; Arabic text (RS): Kitab al-Tanbih wa-l-Ishraf (Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabi-
corum, vol. 8 ), M.J. de Goeje (ed.), Leiden: Brill, 1967 [ 1894 ]; French trans. by
C. de Vaux, Le livre de l’avertissement et de la révision, Paris: Société Asiatique, 1897 ;
A. Shboul, Al-Masudi and his World, London: Ithaca Press, 1979.[a] Ibn al-Qutiyya (whose name indicates that his mother was a Goth), philologist
and historian, died in Cordoba in 977. His Chronology of the Conquest of al-Andalus, a
celebration of the Muslim presence in Islamic Spain, gives an account of the raids of
al-Majus in 844 during the Umayyad emirate of Abd al-Rahman II (r. 822 – 52 ) and
the measures taken to repulse them. After their retreat from Seville, the Majus are said
by this source to betake themselves to Byzantium and to settle in Alexandria for four-
teen years, when in 858 they launched an unsuccessful raid on Seville, on their way back
from Alexandria (as the chronicle seems to suggest).
Bibliography: Arabic text with Spanish trans.: Colección de obras arábigas de historia y
geografía que publica la Real Academia de la Historia. Historia de la Conquista de España,
vol. 2 , Madrid: Revista de Archvos, 1926 ; J. Bosch-Vila, Ibn al-Kutiyya, EI 2 ,
vol. 3 : 844.[c] In one of a series of panegyrics in honour of his patron the Hamdanid Sayf al-Dawla,
emir of Aleppo, al-Mutanabbi (d. 965 ) (‘the Shakespeare of the Arabs’) celebrated his
patron’s victories over the Byzantine Domesticus Bardas Phocas at al-Hadath (in 953
and 954 ), taunting the Rum and the Rus with their despair at ever destroying the
fortress.
Bibliography: R. Blachère and Ch. Pellat, al-Mutannabi, EI 2 , vol. 7 : 769 – 72 ; Th.
Bianquis, Sayf al-Dawla, EI 2 , vol. 9 : 103 – 110.–– chapter 40 : Arabic sources on the Vikings––