Mission to the Volga

3 ideas

1. The Rus chieftain's ship burial on the Volga

   Ibn Fadlan watched the Rus bury a chieftain in 922: over about ten days they sewed clothes and brewed drink, and an enslaved girl who had agreed to die with him was ritually passed among the men, lifted to 'see' her dead kin, then killed by an old woman called the Angel of Death. The chieftain's nearest kinsman lit the ship with the bodies inside. Afterward a Rus man told Ibn Fadlan's interpreter that Arabs were fools for putting their dead in the earth to be eaten by worms, since fire sends the dead to paradise at once.

2. Conversion requests as bids for geopolitical alliance

   The Bulgar king Almish asked the caliph for religious teachers, a mosque and money for a fortress because he was paying tribute to the Khazars and needed a powerful patron against them. Islam was the currency of that alliance. When the promised 4,000 dinars failed to arrive, the king rebuked Ibn Fadlan sharply, which shows that his religious allegiance depended on the material support behind it.

3. Transactional devotion of the Rus merchants

   When Rus traders reached a market, they brought bread, meat, onions, milk and nabidh to a tall wooden idol. They named the number of slaves and furs they had to sell and asked the god to send a rich buyer who would not haggle. If sales went badly they returned with more offerings, and if sales went well they sacrificed animals in thanks. Their worship worked as a contract with a supernatural business partner, and the size of each offering was set by commercial results.

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