In the 10th century, the Arab traveller Ahmad Ibn Fadlān joined an expedition that left Baghdad, today in Iraq, and arrived in Bolgar, a current Russian city. Over a year, he travelled four thousand kilometres and collected unusual stories about the many people he encountered on this long journey, such as the Vikings settled on the banks of the Volga River.
In the account of his adventures, published in the book Voyage to the Volga — Report of a Caliph’s Envoy to the King of the Slavs, the costumes, customs, cultural practices, and even the spectacles of nature do not pass unscathed. The fauna, flora, severe cold, rivers, and the red dawn.
The Northern Lights simulated war in the clouds. The traveller saw people, horses, and weapons in a brutal battle between two heavenly armies. According to Arab folklore, they were jinn (geniuses) who always scratched the sky at nightfall.
I know that we cannot consider the diaries of ancient travellers accurate portraits of reality, leaving room for memory revisionism, fictional literature, or the author’s interpretations. Nevertheless, even if askance, the look of Ibn Fadlān guided, for centuries, the imagery narrative of the world about Nordic cultures.
Among the many curious cases, the descriptions of deaths and murders observed among certain Slavs caught my attention. According to the traveller, for such, people who know many things, having a fast and smart mind, “will serve the Lord well” and should be sent to Him immediately! They are therefore hanged from trees. Their bodies remain there until they wither away.
Ibn Fadlān records, as an example, a story of a skilled and intelligent man who placed himself in the service of the king’s interpreter. The man decided to accompany a group on a commercial venture. The king tried to dissuade him from this reckless decision, but nodded. Already on the boat, the group soon realised that he “would serve the Lord well”. So, as they passed through a wood on the way, that intelligent man’s destiny met its end in a random tree.
Reading this diary today may seem like an anachronistic voyage to a distant time of vandalism, barbarism, and terror. A time when knowledge and craftiness were rewarded with the death penalty. However, let us not be hasty in condemning only ancient peoples.
A thousand years have passed, but ideas such as anti-intellectualism, anti-academic, religious fundamentalism, conspiracy theories, and fake news are still strong.
Claims without scientific basis are nothing new. Manipulation of information by those in power, ditto. Wisdom, erudition, and ethics do not always go together. In the Internet Age, however, these things take on unimaginable dimensions, compromising the survival of democracies and planet Earth itself.
Social media, in particular, are consuming people’s time, shaping our lives and brains, competing with books and other forms of acquiring complex intellectual skills and forming critical thinking, among other worrying impacts. All this contributes to the spread of misconceptions and ignorance, making it challenging for individuals to navigate in a world that increasingly demands, on a day-to-day basis, the decoding of knowledge that is difficult to acquire.
In contemporary times, therefore, the Internet has only made the methods of annihilating the “enemy” more comprehensive, cutting “evil” at the root. Rather than killing the intelligent and skilled, social media works endlessly to prevent them from simply coming into existence.
Notes
Viagem ao Volga – Relato do enviado de um califa ao rei dos eslavos (Voyage to the Volga: Report of a Caliph’s Envoy to the King of the Slavs). Ahmad Ibn Fadlan. Carambaia Publishing House, 2019. Translation and introduction by Pedro Martins Criado. Book languages: Portuguese and Arabic.
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Acknowledgments: Alberto Nogueira Veiga, Paulo Rocha, and all who gave me their precious feedback, thank you for your comments and suggestions.
Images: Aurora Borealis (Tobias Bjørkli, Pexels), Carambaia’s Books (Ana Cecilia Rocha Veiga).
