and al-Andalus and then divided into two groups’; that they are a ‘rabble without
leadership’ who inhabit the Atil between the Bulghar and the Saqaliba, and had formed
an alliance with the Petchenegs who had migrated to the lands between the Khazar and
Byzantium; that the Petchenegs were the military might of the Rus; and that (together)
they were those who, of old, raided al-Andalus and Bardhaa (on the Caspian). In his
discussion of al-Andalus, Ibn Hawqal continues in the same vein and notes that ‘often
vessels of the Rus, the Turk, and the Petchenegs, including, in their host, a force of
Saqaliba and Bulghar’ raided Islamic Spain (unsuccessfully) during the Umayyad
caliphate of Abd al-Rahman III (r. 912 – 61 ). His ultimate source here may be al-
Masudi’s The Treatise of Reference and Supervision, according to which furs are transported
via the river of the Khazar (the Volga) to the northern lands of the Saqaliba, and from
there to al-Ifranja (Francia) and al-Andalus, as these three territories are contiguous.
This may be an attempt by Ibn Hawqal to account for the identification of the pre-
Islamic inhabitants of al-Andalus as Saqaliba and for the two principal spheres of Rus
activity (as al-Majus and al-Rus), and may involve a confusion of the Petcheneg Turks
with the Oghuz Turks, Svyatoslav’s allies in the destruction of Khazaria in 965 , though
the text is very specific in its identification of the Turkic tribes. The Rus alliance with
the Petchenegs is elsewhere unattested (Minorsky’s emendations [see Golden, ‘Rus’,
623 ] are untenable, the term shawka for ‘military might’, and not ‘thorn’, being attested
of the Majus by Ibn al-Qutiyya, and of a tribe of the Saqaliba by Ibrahim b. Yaqub),
while the raids on Bardhaa are mentioned in several places. Rus raids on their trading
partners in Bulghar and Khazaran in the year 969 and on Samandar in Khazaria are also
mentioned.
Bibliography: A.B. Khalidov, Ebn Hawqal, EIr, vol. 8 : 27 – 8.[b] and/or [c] It is a paradox, from our present perspective, that al-Muqaddasi (d. c. 990 ),
the author of what is generally considered to be the definitive and most accomplished
work of classical Arabic geography, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Climes (the
summation and revision of the ‘Atlas of Islam’ project initiated by al-Balkhi) reveals but
a perfunctory interest in the Rus. This is completely in keeping with the insouciance he
displays towards non-Islamic lands. In his discussion of the town of Atil, subsumed
within the region of Daylam, according to his general schematisation of the kingdom of
Islam, he notes that the inhabitants of Atil had been raided by the caliph al-Mamun
from Gurganj and, without specifying a date, he adds that he had heard that ‘a military
force from al-Rum (Byzantium) known as al-Rus had raided and conquered their
territories’, presumably referring to the Rus destruction of Khazaria by Svyatoslav in
965 (though this is said to have been achieved by the Rus and their allies, the Oghuz
Turks).
Bibliography: Arabic text: Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Marifat al-Aqalim (Bibliotheca
Geographorum Arabicorum, vol. 3 ), M.J. de Goeje (ed.), Leiden: Brill, 1967 [ 1877 ];
English trans. by B.A. Collins, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions,
Reading: Garnet, 2001 ; A. Miquel, Al-Mukaddasi, EI 2 , vol. 7 : 492 – 3.[b] An example of writing on (birch-)bark is recorded in his Catalogue by the Baghdad
bibliophile Ibn al-Nadim (d. 990 ) where it is reproduced along with specimens of
–– chapter 40 : Arabic sources on the Vikings––