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...