Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness

Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness PDF Author: Ibn Fadlan
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141975040
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation. Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab travellers such as Ibn Fadlan journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Their fascinating accounts describe how the numerous tribes and peoples they encountered traded furs, paid tribute and waged wars. This accessible new translation offers an illuminating insight into the world of the Arab geographers, and the medieval lands of the far north.

Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness

Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness PDF Author: Ibn Fadlan
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141975040
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation. Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab travellers such as Ibn Fadlan journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Their fascinating accounts describe how the numerous tribes and peoples they encountered traded furs, paid tribute and waged wars. This accessible new translation offers an illuminating insight into the world of the Arab geographers, and the medieval lands of the far north.

The Book of Marvels and Travels

The Book of Marvels and Travels PDF Author: Sir John Mandeville
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199600600
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and on into Asia, and the many wonderful and monstrous peoples and practices in the East. A captivating blend of fact and fantasy, Mandeville's Book is newly translated in an edition that brings us closer to Mandeville's worldview.

The Adventures of Ibn Battuta

The Adventures of Ibn Battuta PDF Author: Ross E. Dunn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520243854
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Ross Dunn's classic retelling of the travels of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim of the 14th century.

Mission to the Volga

Mission to the Volga PDF Author: Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479829757
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
The earliest surviving instance of sustained first-person travel narrative in Arabic Mission to the Volga is a pioneering text of peerless historical and literary value. In its pages, we move north on a diplomatic mission from Baghdad to the upper reaches of the Volga River in what is now central Russia. In this colorful documentary from the tenth century, the enigmatic Ibn Fadlan relates his experiences as part of an embassy sent by Caliph al-Muqtadir to deliver political and religious instruction to the recently-converted King of the Bulghars. During eleven months of grueling travel, Ibn Fadlan records the marvels he witnesses on his journey, including an aurora borealis and the white nights of the North. Crucially, he offers a description of the Viking Rus, including their customs, clothing, body painting, and a striking account of a ship funeral. Together, these anecdotes illuminate a vibrant world of diversity during the heyday of the Abbasid Empire, narrated with as much curiosity and zeal as they were perceived by its observant beholder. An English-only edition.

The Book of Contemplation

The Book of Contemplation PDF Author: Usama ibn Munqidh
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141919175
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
The volume comprises lightly annotated translation of a key medieval Arabic text that bears directly on the Crusades and Crusader society and the Muslim experience of them.

From the Meadows of Gold

From the Meadows of Gold PDF Author: Masʻūdī
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9780141025353
Category : Islamic Empire
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - and also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own.

Two Arabic Travel Books

Two Arabic Travel Books PDF Author: Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479803502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In its ports, we find a priceless cargo of information; here are the first foreign descriptions of tea and porcelain, a panorama of unusual social practices, cannibal islands, and Indian holy men--a marvelous, mundane world, contained in the compass of a novella. In Mission to the Volga, we move north on a diplomatic mission from Baghdad to the upper reaches of the Volga River in what is now central Russia. This colorful documentary by Ibn Fadlan relates the trials and tribulations of an embassy of diplomats and missionaries sent by caliph al-Muqtadir to deliver political and religious instruction to the recently-converted King of the Bulghars. During eleven months of grueling travel, Ibn Fadlan records the marvels he witnesses on his journey, including an aurora borealis and the white nights of the North. Crucially, he offers a description of the Viking Rus, including their customs, clothing, tattoos, and a striking account of a ship funeral.

Ancient Accounts of India and China

Ancient Accounts of India and China PDF Author: Abū Zayd Ḥasan ibn Yazīd Sīrāfī
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description


The Book of Margery Kempe

The Book of Margery Kempe PDF Author: Margery Kempe
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0140432515
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
The story of the eventful and controversial life of Margery Kempe - wife, mother, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary - is the earliest surviving autobiography in English. Here Kempe (c.1373-c.1440) recounts in vivid, unembarrassed detail the madness that followed the birth of the first of her fourteen children, the failure of her brewery business, her dramatic call to the spiritual life, her visions and uncontrollable tears, the struggle to convert her husband to a vow of chastity and her pilgrimages to Europe and the Holy Land. Margery Kempe could not read or write, and dictated her remarkable story late in life. It remains an extraordinary record of human faith and a portrait of a medieval woman of unforgettable character and courage.

A Nervous Splendor

A Nervous Splendor PDF Author: Frederic Morton
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014005667X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
A National Book Award Finalist A "riveting" (New York Times) look at one year of Viennese life during the twilight of an empire On January 30, 1889, at the champagne-splashed hight of the Viennese Carnival, the handsome and charming Crown Prince Rudolf fired a revolver at his teenaged mistress and then himself. The two shots that rang out at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods echo still. Frederic Morton, author of the bestselling Rothschilds, deftly tells the haunting story of the Prince and his city, where, in the span of only ten months, "the Western dream started to go wrong." In Rudolf's Vienna moved other young men with striking intellectual and artistic talents—and all as frustrated as the Prince. Among them were: young Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Theodor Herzl, Gustav Klimt, and the playwright Arthur Schnitzler, whose La Ronde was the great erotic drama of the fin de siecle. Morton studies these and other gifted young men, interweaving their fates with that of the doomed Prince and the entire city through to the eve of Easter, just after Rudolf's body is lowered into its permanent sarcophagus and a son named Adolf Hitler is born to Frau Klara Hitler.