What Aerial battles, on his nights over the Volga, Ahmad ibn Fadlan witnessed in 950 AD?

The Peace of God to all that belong to the Light,
Dear Readers,

There is a movie filmed in 1999 called the 13th Warrior, with the protagonist role acted by Antonio Banderas. This is the story of an Exiled Arab courtier Ahmad Ibn Fadlan who joins a party of Vikings on a trip to the barbaric North in middle ages. Despite disapproving of their cold-blooded human sacrifices he finds himself joining them to battle creatures that make mincemeat of human flesh.

The Director of this production is John McTiernan with an extraordinary cast of stars like Antonio Banderas, Omar Sharif, Diane Venora, Dennis Storhoi, Vladimir Kulich.

Although the film is presented as based on a novel based on a legend, retelling the tale of Beowulf, the fact is that this Arab chronicler actually existed and his trip to medieval Russia is not fantasy, but part of History.

www.sky.com...

its Production and marketing costs reputedly reached $160 million,

en.wikipedia.org...

For a long time, only an incomplete version of the account was known, as transmitted in the geographical dictionary of Yāqūt (under the headings Atil, Bashgird, Bulghār, Khazar, Khwārizm, Rūs), published in 1823 by Christian Martin Frähn.

Only in 1923 was a manuscript discovered by the Turkic scholar of Bashkir origin Zeki Validi Togan in the Astane Quds Museum, Mashhad, Iran. The manuscript, Razawi Library MS 5229, dates from the 13th century (7th century Hijra) and consists of 420 pages (210 folia). Besides other geographical treatises, it contains a fuller version of Ibn Fadlan's text (pp. 390–420). Additional passages not preserved in MS 5229 are quoted in the work of the 16th century Persian geographer Amīn Rāzī called Haft Iqlīm ("Seven Climes").

Ahmad ibn Fadlān ibn al-Abbās ibn Rāšid ibn Hammād (Arabic: أحمد بن فضلان بن العباس بن راشد بن حماد‎) was a 10th-century Arab traveler, 4th century of Hijra, famous for his account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars.

His account is most known for providing a description of the Volga Vikings, the Varegians or Rus people, including an eyewitness account of a ship burial. He provided descriptions for various other peoples, most notably Turkic peoples such as the Oghuzes, Pechenegs, Bashkirs, and Khazars.

The people that Fadlan was commissioned to visit were the Muslim Bulgars in the Volga, a region in which they were surrounded by pagan peoples, like the Varagians, people converted to the Jewish religion , the Khazars and the first small Christian communities of the Slavic settlers in the Principality of Moscow.

Primary sources documents and historical texts reveal that Ahmad Ibn Fadlan was a “faqih”, an expert in Islamic jurisprudence and faith, in the court of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Muqtadir. It appears certain from his writing that prior to his departure on his historic mission, he had already been serving for some time in the court of al-Muqtadir. Other than the fact that he was both a traveler and a Islamic theologian in service of the Abbasid Caliphate, little is known about Ahmad Ibn Fadlan prior to 921 and his self-reported travels.

In other thread I have already described one of two intriguing close encounters with UFO that occurred to expeditionaries of the past, The first is when Christopher Columbus saw disc shaped lights emerging silently from the sea and flying off into the air. This occurred to Columbus in what is the Sargasso sea, in the present day Bermuda Triangle area. Columbus recorded these sightings into his ship log.

The second is occurred to this Arab traveller in his trip to the Volga region , today Russia. He witnessed a fight between two ufos in the skies, and was so terrified by what he saw, that he and his team fell down to the ground and cried to Allah to save them from those demons.

This was just the first of various sightings that Fadlan described in his records, how he and his fellow travelers witnessed ‘aerial battles’ between ‘shapes’ that moved through the clouds. Fleets of objects, flying in formations that resembled people and animals, engaged each other, merging and separating for a long period of time.

Now, his hosts , some recently converted to Islam Bulgar villagers from the Volga region, however laughed at Ahmad and told him that fights between these objects in the skies were very common occurrences there, and that they posed no danger to humans.

Scholars are intrigued by Fadlan's writing for another reason. He provides the first written record of how the Vikings that founded Russia lived on those times.

Here some links about this interesting explorer and his odyssey across Ruthenia, the European Russia.

en.wikipedia.org...

www.youtube.com...

www.rolfwaeber.com...



The thread is of course opened to the discussion of the topic, and to whoever know or want to know more about the strange UFO sighting episode of the trip of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan that possibly is the eldest one ever reported to have occurred in Russia.

Thanks

The Angel of Lightness

Wow ...great thread my friend. I had no idea Antonios character was based on a real person. I need to dig some....thank you, this is splendid and what originally brought me to ats many many years ago under another account. The political dialectics sucked me in however back then...I need to keep my promise and just focus on neat info like this!

reply to: The angel of light

Sounds like a really interesting topic....
One i`ve never heard of. Although I`ve read of similar tales of aerial fights in days of old.
Just about to check your links !

Perhaps auroras? how much would a 10 century tropic inhabitant would know about auroras when he move towards north, local would have certainly see them before and not fear them, but for someone that never heard of that before?

The norse mythology says the auroras are:

The Valkyrior are warlike virgins, mounted upon horses and armed with helmets and spears. /.../ When they ride forth on their errand, their armour sheds a strange flickering light, which flashes up over the northern skies, making what Men call the "aurora borealis", or "Northern Lights".

Perhaps when he first saw them some local told him those are the lights of the valkyri going to fight?

a reply to: The angel of light

I have never seen the Northern Lights, but I have seen countless high resolution images, videos aplenty, documentaries, and even seen video of the effect when observed from space. I have never seen a single shot that could have made me think "oh look, a bunch of floating people, beating the hell out of one another.".

But of course, I am not a person from ancient times. They are accused, are the ancients, of a great deal of enthusiastic over imagination, considering the harsh realities of the lives they lived back then. I wonder if they truly were as incapable of just accepting that things they see were not meant to be understood all at once, if they really did HAVE to invent nonsense just to explain what they saw, or if we do them too little credit, and are too willing to dismiss certain elements of their descriptions of events.

a reply to: TrueBrit

i just read a little bit about auroras in ancient times, and the first "modern" records are from 3k years ago in china, they though they were dragons.

who knows what someone thinks when he see something new without someone else telling you what it is.

I'm a modern man, i know they are due to electromagnetism, never i have done anything to prove it, i just know what i been told without questioning, 1k years ago i may have though they were dragons or valkyries depending on where i was, and i would have thought the same without questioning it.

a reply to: Indigent
Dear Readers,

I appreciate all your interesting replies to this thread. Concerning the possibility that the battle in the sky that this Arab traveler in Russia at middle age watched in the sky may have been an Aurora borealis, there are elements that contradict such Hypothesis.

First, there were no Viking myths associated with this natural phenomenon, as a matter of fact this Norse people seemed to understand that was a natural thing, not demons or deities.

www.vikinganswerlady.com...

Second, among all the different mythologies of the so diverse peoples that live in areas where the Aurora is visible only one native America Nation, the Fox Indians of Wisconsin, considered it as an omen of war or pestilence , all the rest around the world associated this event with spiritual aspects, some even with joyous ones and not related with violence or conflict.

www.ewebtribe.com...

Now, what Fadlan registered in his chronicles of trip was that they saw objects in the sky, and that in my opinion refers to something that at least in appearance had some material form. I think his comment on the spirits possibly was moved by the fact that the Arabs and Persians believed a lot in genie, a kind of spirit that however has a body, something that is really visible at simple sight.

Thanks,

The Angel of Lightness

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: The angel of light


But of course, I am not a person from ancient times. They are accused, are the ancients, of a great deal of enthusiastic over imagination, considering the harsh realities of the lives they lived back then. I wonder if they truly were as incapable of just accepting that things they see were not meant to be understood all at once, if they really did HAVE to invent nonsense just to explain what they saw, or if we do them too little credit, and are too willing to dismiss certain elements of their descriptions of events.

Bold above they did, they are called god(s)

a reply to: The angel of light

First, there were no Viking myths associated with this natural phenomenon, as a matter of fact this Norse people seemed to understand that was a natural thing, not demons or deities.

This sentence have no relation to your source, did you read it? your source claims there was no auroras during the viking ages, how can you understand something as natural if its was not even present to be observe in the first place?

Perhaps the best would be to contact some of the responsible of Norse studies at

english.hi.is...

a reply to: Indigent

Dear Indigent,

I believe you have misunderstood what It is commented there, please check again, they have claimed that there is no mention of the auroras in the entire Viking literature and mythology, but no body is claiming that they didn't see this phenomenon in ancient times.

Thanks,

The Angel of Lightness