Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Professor Carole Hillenbrand: List of Publications
- Preface
- 1 The Origin of Key Shi‘ite Thought Patterns in Islamic History
- 2 Additions to The New Islamic Dynasties
- 3 Al-Tha‘alibi's Adab al-muluk, a Local Mirror for Princes
- 4 Religious Identity, Dissimulation and Assimilation: the Ismaili Experience
- 5 Saladin's Pious Foundations in Damascus: Some New Hypotheses
- 6 The Coming of Islam to Bukhara
- 7 A Barmecide Feast: the Downfall of the Barmakids in Popular Imagination
- 8 The History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church as a Source for the History of the Seljuks of Anatolia
- 9 Genealogy and Exemplary Rulership in the Tarikh-i Chingiz Khan
- 10 Vikings and Rus in Arabic Sources
- 11 Qashani and Rashid al-Din on the Seljuqs of Iran
- 12 Exile and Return: Diasporas of the Secular and Sacred Mind
- 13 Clerical Perceptions of Sufi Practices in Late Seventeenth-Century Persia, II: Al-Hurr al-‘Amili (d. 1693) and the Debate on the Permissibility of Ghina
- 14 On Sunni Sectarianism
- 15 The Violence of the Abbasid Revolution
- 16 Nationalist Poetry, Conflict and Meta-linguistic Discourse
- Bibliography
- List of Contributors
- Index
10 - Vikings and Rus in Arabic Sources
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Professor Carole Hillenbrand: List of Publications
- Preface
- 1 The Origin of Key Shi‘ite Thought Patterns in Islamic History
- 2 Additions to The New Islamic Dynasties
- 3 Al-Tha‘alibi's Adab al-muluk, a Local Mirror for Princes
- 4 Religious Identity, Dissimulation and Assimilation: the Ismaili Experience
- 5 Saladin's Pious Foundations in Damascus: Some New Hypotheses
- 6 The Coming of Islam to Bukhara
- 7 A Barmecide Feast: the Downfall of the Barmakids in Popular Imagination
- 8 The History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church as a Source for the History of the Seljuks of Anatolia
- 9 Genealogy and Exemplary Rulership in the Tarikh-i Chingiz Khan
- 10 Vikings and Rus in Arabic Sources
- 11 Qashani and Rashid al-Din on the Seljuqs of Iran
- 12 Exile and Return: Diasporas of the Secular and Sacred Mind
- 13 Clerical Perceptions of Sufi Practices in Late Seventeenth-Century Persia, II: Al-Hurr al-‘Amili (d. 1693) and the Debate on the Permissibility of Ghina
- 14 On Sunni Sectarianism
- 15 The Violence of the Abbasid Revolution
- 16 Nationalist Poetry, Conflict and Meta-linguistic Discourse
- Bibliography
- List of Contributors
- Index
Summary
The title I have chosen is intentionally precise and imprecise, as a brief comparison with the titles of some recent treatments of this subject will reveal. Take, for example, the title of Wladyslaw Duczko's recent book (2004), Viking Rus; or the title of chapter 9 of Pavel Dolukhanov's The Early Slavs: ‘The Vikings and the Rus’, with its sub-headings, ‘The Vikings in Europe’, ‘The Scandinavians and the Slavs’ and ‘The Beginnings of Russian Statehood’ (1996: 173–7, T77–93 and 193–7 respectively). My title's precision is both instructive in that it rules out of consideration the other terms found in the Arabic sources for Norsemen, that is, Majus (Zoroastrians) and Warank (Varangians), and deceptive, as my avoidance of the definite article indicates – I want to avoid the universalising of these groups which the definite article imposes – to say nothing of its imprecision in my avoidance of a distinction between Scandinavians, Vikings or Varangians.
I want to suggest the possibility that in the Arabic written sources from the ninth to eleventh centuries, we might find evidence of (1) Vikings (broadly conceived), (2) of Rus, (3) of Viking Rus and/or (4) Rus Vikings. I also want to highlight the hegemony, in discussions of these and other ethnonyms, of an astonishing nominalism, an index of what Dolukhanov (1996: 6) has referred to as the ‘cultural-ethnic paradigm’. My title also acknowledges that written sources are highly unreliable and deceptive.
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- Living Islamic HistoryStudies in Honour of Professor Carole Hillenbrand, pp. 151 - 165Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010