Jonathan Shepard was Lecturer in Russian History in the University of Cambridge, UK. His books include The Emergence of Rus (1996, with S. Franklin) and (co-edited) Byzantium and the Viking World (2016) and Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World (2021).Luke Treadwell is the Samir Shamma Lecturer in Islamic Numismatics and Curator of Islamic Coins at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK. He is the author of Craftsmen and Coins: Signed Dies in the Iranian World (2011) and Buyid Coinage: A Die Corpus (322–445 AH) (2001).

• List of mapsList of illustrationsList of tables and appendicesPreface and acknowledgementsList of abbreviations List of contributors MapsPlatesPART ONE: OVERVIEW1. Editors' introduction 2. Ibn Fadlan’s Kitab: text and afterlifeViacheslav S. Kuleshov with Jonathan Shepard PART TWO: TEXT AND CONTEXT3. Where is the real Ibn Fadlan? Editing and translating the KitabJames E. Montgomery4. From Kitab to Risala: the long shadow of Yaqut’s version of Ibn Fadlan’s accountLuke Treadwell 5. Other Arab geographers’ sources on the North: al-Jayhani and the ‘Anonymous Relation’ Jean-Charles Ducène6. Other ethnographies of the steppeWalter Pohl7. Other travellers’ talesIan WoodPART THREE: BACKGROUND TO THE JOURNEY8. The Abbasid backgroundHugh Kennedy9. Ibn Fadlan and the Khazars: the hidden centreNick Evans10. Beyond the Gate of the Turks: archaeology around the Aral Sea Irina Arzhantseva and Heinrich Härke, with a contribution by Ekaterina A. ArmarchukPART FOUR: VIKING-AGE RUS 11. Ibn Fadlan and the rituals of the Rus: Vikings on the Volga?Neil Price12. Viking-Age markets and emporiaSøren M. Sindbæk13. Rus, routes and sitesVeronika Murasheva14. Identities, ethnicities, cultures: Ibn Fadlan and the Rus on the Middle VolgaÞórir Jónsson Hraundal15. Rus and other Northmen under non-Arabic eyesJonathan ShepardPART FIVE: VOLGA BULGARIA16. What was Volga Bulgaria?Leonard Nedashkovsky17. Ninth- and tenth-century Volga Bulgar tradeEvgeniy P. Kazakov18. Volga Bulgar imitative coinageMarek JankowiakPART SIX: CONCLUSION19. ‘Failure of a mission’? Jonathan ShepardList of Reign DatesList of Alternative Place NamesGlossaryIndex

In sum, this volume is a work of notable scholarship and a landmark in Ibn Fadl?an studies.