Library of Arabic Literature Blog: A Connected World: Exploring the Early Middle Ages with Ibn Faḍlān

The following is a short blogpost that I wrote on the Library of Arabic Literature’s blog about my experiences using Ibn Faḍlān’s Mission to the Volga to teach about travel in the medieval world. The following is a short excerpt, and the full blog can be read here: https://www.libraryofarabicliterature.org/2021/exploring-with-ibn-fadlan/

Travel was a central feature of the medieval world. Whether the motivation was exploration, piety, diplomacy, knowledge, survival, or profit, the act of travel involved the travelers in larger processes of interaction and exchange between cultures and contributed to the diffusion of ideas between Europe, Africa, and Asia. These travelers’ surviving writings and accounts illuminate the realities of the medieval world and provide windows into the travelers’ own worldviews, providing students with the tools to question assumptions about a “clash of civilizations” and the supposed uniformity of either Latin Christendom or the Islamic world during the Middle Ages.

For the Early Middle Ages, in particular, an emphasis on interconnectedness, mobility, and exchange undermines and problematizes antiquated notions of “the Dark Ages.” This endeavor to better understand medieval travelers and their world has been facilitated by the translation and publication of medieval texts over the past several years, which has contributed to the emergence of the field of the “Global Middle Ages.” One such text is Mission to the Volga by Ibn Faḍlān, translated by James E. Montgomery, which I have used in courses with my students at Stony Brook University over the past two years.

The Catalan Atlas, ca. 1375, produced by Abraham and Jehudà Cresques in late fourteenth-century Majorca, provides a vision of a highly connected medieval world characterized by ethnic, cultural, and political diversity woven together through a web of trade routes and mercantile networks. The full manuscript has been digitized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55002481n

A Fragment of the Lost History of al-Raqīq al-Qayrawānī (d. ca. 418/1028)?

Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. al-Qāsim al-Qayrawānī (d. ca. 418/1028), better known as Ibn al-Raqīq or al-Raqīq, was a high-ranking secretary and ambassador in the Zirid emirate (corresponding roughly to modern-day Tunisia, Libya and eastern Algeria), which ruled North Africa on behalf of the Fatimids following the latter’s conquest of Egypt. In addition to his influence within royal circles, he was also a celebrated poet and historian. His historical chronicle, Kitāb Tārīkh Ifrīqiyah wa al-Maghrib, had a profound influence on subsequent generations of Muslim historians, including Ibn al-Athīr (d. 630/1233), Ibn al-Abbār (d. 658/1260), Ibn ʿIdhārī (ca. 706/1306-7), al-Nuwayrī (d. 732/1331-2), Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406) and al-Maqrīzī (d. 846/1442). Ibn Khaldūn, in particular, considered him to be one of the foremost experts on North African history. Although his work is now lost, many of these historians quote him at length and rely upon his chronicle for their narrations of the early Islamic history of North Africa. His history is therefore among the main sources of information for later historians seeking to understand the various developments in North Africa between the 1^st/7^th and 5^th/11^th centuries.