IN NORTHERN MISTS 



on the Volga — they received information about the districts in 

 the north of Russia, and also about the Scandinavians, com- 

 monly called Rus, sometimes also Warank. (2) Through their 

 possessions in the western Mediterranean, especially in 

 Spain, they came in contact with the northern peoples of 

 western Europe, the Scandinavian vikings (" Magus ") in 

 particular, and in that way acquired information. 



" Magus " ^ means in the west the same northern people, 

 the Scandinavians, whom in the east the Arabs called Rus or 

 Warangs, which word they may. have got from the Greek 

 " Varangoi " (^Bapayyot ) and the Russian " Varyag." 



All that the Arab authors of the oldest period have 

 about the North, and that is not taken from the Greeks, they 

 got through their commercial connections with Russia; but it 

 is not until the ninth century and later that anything worth 

 mentioning appears, and even in the tenth and eleventh 

 centuries their ideas on the subject are very much tinged 

 with myth. Professor Alexander Seippel in his work " Rerum 

 Normannicarum fontes Arabici" (1896), printed in Arabic, has 

 collected the most important statements about the North in 

 mediaeval Arabic literature, and has been good enough to 

 translate parts of these, which I give in the following pages. I 

 have also made some additions from other sources. In an 

 earlier chapter (pp. 143 f.) several Arabic authors have 

 already been quoted on the connection with northern Russia. 



The imperfection of Arabic script and its common omission 

 of vowels easily give rise to all kinds of corruptions and mis- 

 understandings ; this is especially fatal to the reproduction of 

 foreign words and geographical names, which explains the 

 great uncertainty that prevails in their interpretation. 



In the oldest Arab writers, of the ninth century and later, 

 there is little or no knowledge of the North. We are only told 

 in some of their works that furs come from there, and that the 

 ocean in the north is entirely unknown. Abu'l-Qasim Ibn 

 Khordadbah (ob. 912), a Persian by descent and the Caliph's 



1 For the origin of the name see p. 55, note. 

 196 



