Ahmad ibn Fadlan
Ahmad ibn Fadlan (Aḩmad ibn Faḑlān أحمد ابن فضلان) was a tenth-century Arab diplomat and writer of a description of a people he called the Rūs روس or Rūsiyyah. These people are frequently identified with the Rus&prime or Varangians, which would make Ibn Fadlan's account one of the earliest portrayals of Vikings. At the same time, the anti-Normanist scholar Pavel Dolukhanov claims that the description presents the mixture of Scandinavian and Khazarian traits, indicating either Ibn Fadlan's confusion of the two peoples or fluid intermixture of them occurring at the described time.Ibn Fadlan was sent from Baghdad in 921 to serve as ambassador from the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir to the king of the Volga Bulgars, Almış. His work Kitāb ilÃÂá malik al-Saqālibah (كتاب إلى ملك السقالبة) is an account of this trip.
Ibn Fadlan describes the hygiene of the Rūsiyyah as disgusting (while also noting with some astonishment that they comb their hair every day) and considers them vulgar and unsophisticated. In that, his impressions contradict to those of Ibn Rustah. He also describes at some length the funeral of one of their chieftains and their physical characteristics.
The novel Eaters of the Dead, by Michael Crichton, presents itself as a lost manuscript by Ibn Fadlan, in which he returns with the Vikings to their homeland and becomes involved in a series of events which, the novel implies, inspired the epic poem Beowulf. The novel was filmed as The 13th Warrior, with Antonio Banderas playing the role of Ahmad ibn Fadlan.
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