History: Ibn Khurradādhbih on the Radhanites and the Rūs

The routes of the Jewish merchants whom we call al-Rādhāniyya run from west to east and from east to west, by both land and sea. Their routes link the western Mediterranean with India and China. From the western Mediterranean they export Slavic eunuchs [1]; Romance, Frankish and Lombard slaves [2]; young Romance and Andalusian girls and boys; brocade; beaver pelts, marten and other furs; and aromatics such as storax [3] and medicinal substances such as mastic [4]. From the sea-bed near the land of the Franks comes also a substance called busadh, commonly known as coral. They trade in swords as well. From the Far East they import musk, aloes-wood, camphor, cinnamon and other eastern goods. These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, Frankish [5], Andalusian [6] and Slavic [7].

The routes of the Rus merchants, whom we call al-Rūs and who are of the race of the Slavs [8], lead from the farthest reaches of the land of the Slavs to the eastern Mediterranean, where they sell the pelts of beaver and black fox, and swords as well. The Byzantine ruler levies a tithe — a tax of one-tenth — upon their goods. They return by sea by way of Samkarsh [9], the Jewish town, and from there make their way onward into Slavic territory.

They travel also by another route, sailing down the river Tanais [10], the river of the Slavs, passing the town of Khamlīj [11], the capital of the Khazars, where the ruler levies a tithe upon them. From there they descend to the Caspian Sea, making for a place known to them. This sea is five hundred farsakhs [12] in length. Sometimes they carry their goods on the backs of camels from the town of Jurjān [13] to Baghdad, where Slavic-speaking eunuchs serve as their interpreters. They pass themselves off as Christians, and like them pay the jizya — a head-tax [14].


Notes:

• [1] Castrated "guardians of the bedchamber," employed in the Arab world to guard women or an entire harem, but also serving as courtiers, singers, religious specialists, soldiers, and even royal guards.
• [2] The Lombards: a West Germanic people originally from the lower Elbe, who in the 6th century CE conquered northern Italy and founded their kingdom there.
• [3] Also styrax, a tree resin used to treat various ailments, but above all as incense in Greek Orthodox worship.
• [4] Also mastix, a gum resin from a shrub, used medicinally and, for example, as a natural chewing gum to cleanse the mouth and teeth.
• [5] Note: not the modern French language, but rather some form of the Old Germanic speech used by the merchants of the Frankish Empire.
• [6] Note: not modern Spanish, but some form of the Old Romance speech used by merchants in the southern part of the Frankish Empire, in Andalusia and the northern Mediterranean.
• [7] Note: not any modern national language, but an early (Old) Slavic form of speech used by merchants in the Slavic and Rus lands.
• [8] Ṣaqāliba — the Slavs. In the medieval Arabic sources "Slav" denotes the broad ethnic stock; the individual peoples (Veleti, Serbs, Croats, Rus and others) were all reckoned among them.
• [9] [in the source: Samkarsh] Phanagoria of the Byzantine chronicles, i.e. the present-day Russian town of Taman, on the eastern shore of the Kerch Strait.
• [10] The present-day river Don. The Don, however, flows not into the Caspian but into the Black Sea; so either the author was mistaken and meant the Volga, or he omitted the portage from the Don to the Volga.
• [11] [in the source: Khamlīj] A trading quarter in the capital of the Khazar Empire, the city of Itil, which — together with the empire itself — was destroyed around 969 by the Rus ruler Sviatoslav I Igorevich.
• [12] [in the source: farsakh] Also parasang, an ancient Persian measure of distance.
• [13] [in the source: Jurjān] The present-day town of Gorgan, about 30 km from the southern shore of the Caspian Sea.
• [14] [in the source: jizya] The annual head-tax on the non-Muslim population, the so-called dhimmī; it was a payment for their legal protection in a Muslim land under Muslim law, guaranteeing the protection of their customs and rights, with certain restrictions.

About the author of the original work:

Abū'l-Qāsim ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Khurradādhbih [c. 820 – 912] served for many years as director of the barīd, the Abbasid postal and intelligence service. A friend of the caliph al-Muʿtamid, who reigned from 870 to 892, he wrote works on music theory, literature and geography. His Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik ("The Book of Routes and Kingdoms") is among the earliest surviving works of descriptive geography in Arabic. Later Arab geographers expanded and improved upon it with observations from their own travels; from quotations in those later authors we know that what survives is only an abridged version of his great work.

On the sources: The passage is taken from Ibn Khurradādhbih's Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik ("The Book of Routes and Kingdoms"). The standard critical edition and French translation is M. J. de Goeje, Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik, Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum VI (Leiden, 1889). Names in square brackets give the scholarly transliteration; the body of the article follows the international (DIN 31635 / IJMES) convention.