Download or read book Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age written by Jonathan Shepard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-21 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 922 saw a series of remarkable face-to-face encounters in the steppes between Bukhara and the Middle Volga. Ibn Fadlan was an intrepid member of a diplomatic and religious mission from the distant caliphate in Baghdad to the ruler of the Volga Bulgars. His account gives a vivid eyewitness description of the peoples he came upon (whose appearance, rituals and filthy habits both fascinate and appal) and a famous depiction of a Viking Rus ship burial. It is unique testimony to burgeoning exchanges between several different cultures, and to the emergence of new political structures on the steppes. Yet the account survives only as part of a later composite work, raising questions of meaning and historical interpretation. This pioneering interdisciplinary study of Ibn Fadlan's text and the world he surveyed draws on a variety of specialists to give readers both 'the bigger picture' of cultural and economic change in Eurasia, Byzantium and the Muslim world, and hard facts, in the form of archaeological and numismatic data.

Download or read book Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age written by Jonathan Shepard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-21 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the year 922 a remarkable encounter took place on the wide banks of the Middle Volga. The eyewitness account of Ibn Fadlan, an emissary to the leader of the Bulgars from the far-distant caliphate in Baghdad, vividly describes his meeting with the forest steppe peoples of the region, whom the 'Abbasid envoy famously called 'the Great Unwashed'. He recounts a ship burial involving Viking funerary rites. This innovative interdisciplinary volume explores the wider cultural and political contexts behind the unique testimony of Ibn Fadlan. We have no other detailed written evidence for the Bulgars and Viking Rus, and prominent contributors here demonstrate why the report of this intrepid Arab traveller is quite unparalleled and singularly valuable in assessing novel cross-cultural contact during the period. The book reveals the full extent to which different peoples (Arabs, Byzantines, Turks, Bulgars and Vikings) were now intersecting, and how new structures of power and trade were emerging. It reflects too on how this Islamic diplomatic and religious mission might have foreshadowed the later 'clash of civilizations'.

Download or read book Viking Age Trade written by Jacek Gruszczyński and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That there was an influx of silver dirhams from the Muslim world into eastern and northern Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries is well known, as is the fact that the largest concentration of hoards is on the Baltic island of Gotland. Recent discoveries have shown that dirhams were reaching the British Isles, too. What brought the dirhams to northern Europe in such large numbers? The fur trade has been proposed as one driver for transactions, but the slave trade offers another – complementary – explanation. This volume does not offer a comprehensive delineation of the hoard finds, or a full answer to the question of what brought the silver north. But it highlights the trade in slaves as driving exchanges on a trans-continental scale. By their very nature, the nexuses were complex, mutable and unclear even to contemporaries, and they have eluded modern scholarship. Contributions to this volume shed light on processes and key places: the mints of Central Asia; the chronology of the inflows of dirhams to Rus and northern Europe; the reasons why silver was deposited in the ground and why so much ended up on Gotland; the functioning of networks – perhaps comparable to the twenty-first-century drug trade; slave-trading in the British Isles; and the stimulus and additional networks that the Vikings brought into play. This combination of general surveys, presentations of fresh evidence and regional case studies sets Gotland and the early medieval slave trade in a firmer framework than has been available before.

Download or read book The Islamic World Russia and the Vikings 750 900 written by Thomas Schaub Noonan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1998 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of articles examines the origins and development of early medieval commerce through an analysis of the dirham hoards from European Russia and the Baltic - between 750-900 - when Viking and Rus' merchants took fur and slaves south through European Russia to the markets of Khazaria and the 'Abbasid caliphate. In exchange the merchants were provided with large quantities of silver coins or dirhams, which had a powerful influence on the merchants' home areas with little or no silver of their own. The trade precipitated the Vikings' penetration into the interior of European Russia, fostered the emergence of new towns, provided the original impetus for the formation of the Rus' and Volgar Bulgar states, and helped transform the Khazar economy and state.

Download or read book The Viking Age written by Robert Ferguson and published by Font Forlag AS. This book was released on 2012-06-16 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE VIKING AGE (ca 800-1050), generic term for a period when traders, warriors, emigrants and discoverers from southern Scandinavia spread to the coasts of England and France, through Eastern Europe to Constantinople, and westwards to Iceland, Greenland and North America. NORWEGIAN HERITAGE is a series of books about our most important and best-known national icons. The respective titles introduce major personalities from the worlds of art and literature, science and sports, but also the many natural wonders of the country, as well as significant historical periods and cultural expressions. Each book offers an updated introduction to readers who wish to familiarize themselves with a given subject.

Download or read book The Vikings Reimagined written by Tom Birkett and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vikings Reimagined explores the changing perception of Norse and Viking cultures across different cultural forms, and the complex legacy of the Vikings in the present day. Bringing together experts in literature, history and heritage engagement, this highly interdisciplinary collection aims to reconsider the impact of the discipline of Old Norse Viking Studies outside the academy and to broaden our understanding of the ways in which the material and textual remains of the Viking Age are given new meanings in the present. The diverse collection draws attention to the many roles that the Vikings play across contemporary culture: from the importance of Viking tourism, to the role of Norse sub-cultures in the formation of local and international identities. Together these collected essays challenge the academy to rethink its engagement with popular reiterations of the Vikings and to reassess the position afforded to ‘reception’ within the discipline.

Download or read book The Vikings written by Neil Price and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-12 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vikings provides a concise but comprehensive introduction to the complex world of the early medieval Scandinavians. In the space of less than 300 years, from the mid-eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries CE, people from what are now Norway, Sweden, and Denmark left their homelands in unprecedented numbers to travel across the Eurasian world. Over the last half-century, archaeology and its related disciplines have radically altered our understanding of this period. The Vikings explores why we now perceive them as a cosmopolitan mix of traders and warriors, craftsworkers and poets, explorers, and settlers. It details how, over the course of the Viking Age, their small-scale rural, tribal societies gradually became urbanised monarchies firmly emplaced on the stage of literate, Christian Europe. In the process, they transformed the cultures of the North, created the modern Nordic nation-states, and left a far-flung diaspora with legacies that still resonate today. Written by leading experts in the period and exploring the society, economy, identity and world-views of the early medieval Scandinavian peoples, and their unique religious beliefs that are still of enduring interest a millennium later, this book presents students with an unrivalled guide through this widely studied and fascinating subject, revealing the fundamental impacts of the Vikings in shaping the later course of European history.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology written by Bethany Walker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 1024 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born from the fields of Islamic art and architectural history, the archaeological study of the Islamic societies is a relatively young discipline. With its roots in the colonial periods of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its rapid development since the 1980s warrants a reevaluation of where the field stands today. This Handbook represents for the first time a survey of Islamic archaeology on a global scale, describing its disciplinary development and offering candid critiques of the state of the field today in the Central Islamic Lands, the Islamic West, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The international contributors to the volume address such themes as the timing and process of Islamization, the problems of periodization and regionalism in material culture, cities and countryside, cultural hybridity, cultural and religious diversity, natural resource management, international trade in the later historical periods, and migration. Critical assessments of the ways in which archaeologists today engage with Islamic cultural heritage and local communities closes the volume, highlighting the ethical issues related to studying living cultures and religions. Richly illustrated, with extensive citations, it is the reference work on the debates that drive the field today.

Download or read book Children of Ash and Elm written by Neil Price and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of the Vikings -- from arts and culture to politics and cosmology -- by a distinguished archaeologist with decades of expertise The Viking Age -- from 750 to 1050 -- saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture. Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology and religion, their material world. Known today for a stereotype of maritime violence, the Vikings exported new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and practices to the lands they discovered and the peoples they encountered, and in the process were themselves changed. From Eirík Bloodaxe, who fought his way to a kingdom, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most traveled woman in the world, Children of Ash and Elm is the definitive history of the Vikings and their time.

Download or read book The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe written by Felix Biermann and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first comprehensive study of the material imprint of slavery in early medieval Europe. While written sources attest to the ubiquity of slavery and slave trade in early medieval British Isles, Scandinavia and Slavic lands, it is still difficult to find material traces of this reality, other than the hundreds of thousands of Islamic coins paid in exchange for the northern European slaves. This volume offers the first structured reflection on how to bridge this gap. It reviews the types of material evidence that can be associated with the institution of slavery and the slave trade in early medieval northern Europe, from individual objects (such as e.g. shackles) to more comprehensive landscape approaches. The book is divided into four sections. The first presents the analytical tools developed in Africa and prehistoric Europe to identify and describe social phenomena associated with slavery and the slave trade. The following three section review the three main cultural zones of early medieval northern Europe: the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Slavic central Europe. The contributions offer methodological reflections on the concept of the archaeology of slavery. They emphasize that the material record, by its nature, admits multiple interpretations. More broadly, this book comes at a time when the history of slavery is being integrated into academic syllabi in most western countries. The collection of studies contributes to a more nuanced perspective on this important and controversial topic. This volume appeals to multiple audiences interested in comparative and global studies of slavery, and will constitute the point of reference for future debates.

Download or read book Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness written by Ibn Fadlan and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation. Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab travellers such as Ibn Fadlan journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Their fascinating accounts describe how the numerous tribes and peoples they encountered traded furs, paid tribute and waged wars. This accessible new translation offers an illuminating insight into the world of the Arab geographers, and the medieval lands of the far north.

Download or read book One Thousand and One Inventions written by Elizabeth Woodcock and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Two Arabic Travel Books written by Abū Zayd al-Sīrāfī and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-12-08 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its ports, we find a priceless cargo of information; here are the first foreign descriptions of tea and porcelain, a panorama of unusual social practices, cannibal islands, and Indian holy men--a marvelous, mundane world, contained in the compass of a novella. In Mission to the Volga, we move north on a diplomatic mission from Baghdad to the upper reaches of the Volga River in what is now central Russia. This colorful documentary by Ibn Fadlan relates the trials and tribulations of an embassy of diplomats and missionaries sent by caliph al-Muqtadir to deliver political and religious instruction to the recently-converted King of the Bulghars. During eleven months of grueling travel, Ibn Fadlan records the marvels he witnesses on his journey, including an aurora borealis and the white nights of the North. Crucially, he offers a description of the Viking Rus, including their customs, clothing, tattoos, and a striking account of a ship funeral.

Download or read book Vikings in the South written by Ann Christys and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the ninth century, Vikings carried out raids on the Christian north and Muslim south of the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal), going on to attack North Africa, southern Francia and Italy and perhaps sailing as far as Byzantium. A century later, Vikings killed a bishop of Santiago de Compostela and harried the coasts of al-Andalus. Most of the raids after this date were small in scale, but several heroes of the Old Norse sagas were said to have raided in the peninsula. These Vikings have been only a footnote to the history of the Viking Age. Many stories about their activities survive only in elaborate versions written centuries after the event, and in Arabic. This book reconsiders the Arabic material as part of a dossier that also includes Latin chronicles and charters as well as archaeological and place-name evidence. Arabic authors and their Latin contemporaries remembered Vikings in Iberia in surprisingly similar ways. How they did so sheds light on contemporary responses to Vikings throughout the medieval world.

Download or read book Eaters of the Dead written by Michael Crichton and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-05-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes an epic tale of unspeakable horror. It is 922 A.D. The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices. As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape of the North—where the day’s length does not equal the night’s, where after sunset the sky burns in streaks of color—Fadlan soon discovers that he has been unwillingly enlisted to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings, the monsters of the mist that devour human flesh. But just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea.

Download or read book Vikings written by Tristan Mueller-Vollmer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For three centuries, the Vikings changed the political world of northern and western Europe. This encyclopedia explores exactly how they did it in a highly readable and informative resource volume. How did the Vikings know when to strike? What were their military strengths? Who were their leaders? What was the impact of their raids? These and many more questions are answered in this volume, which will benefit students and general readers alike. The only encyclopedia devoted specifically to the topic of conflict, invasions, and raids in the Viking Age, this book presents detailed coverage of the Vikings, who are infamous for their violent marauding across Europe during the early Middle Ages. Featuring extracts of poetry and prose from the Viking Age, the book provides cultural context in addition to an in-depth analysis of Viking military practices.

Download or read book A History of the Vikings written by Gwyn Jones and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the ancient Scandinavian peoples.