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      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I first read sections of Ibn Faḍlān’s book as an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow, in the company of John N. Mattock, a guide well seasoned in the classical Arabic tradition. When I began teaching at the University of Oslo in 1992, it seemed only natural that I should guide my students through the description of their Viking forebears. I have read the text in the company of many students at Oslo and Cambridge over the years and learned much from their insights. I would like to thank them all. I can no longer recall what is mine and what is theirs. I guess that’s the camaraderie of the road. The same is true of the audiences at the many institutions where I have talked about Ibn Faḍlān and his journey over the years.

      When I finished The Vagaries of the Qaṣīdah in 1997, I was keen to take a holiday from pre-Islamic poetry, and Ibn Faḍlān’s text seemed like just the site I was looking to visit. I did not intend my stay there to become permanent but, in odd ways, it has. Over the years I have written articles and encyclopedia entries, given papers and radio talks, and received many emails and phone calls from those who have also fallen under the spell of the text. I especially remember the Icelander who lost his patience with me when I tried to explain that Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead was a fantasy novel. Of course, I was hoist with my own petard some years later, when, in the days before library catalogues could be searched electronically, I tried in vain to locate a reference to an article in a journal. I had scribbled it on a piece of paper with no indication as to where I had come across it. After an hour among the catalogues and stacks I realized that the reference was spurious and that it had come from Crichton’s preface to the novel!

      I have kept up my interest in Ibn Faḍlān as a hobby over the years. I have never found the time to learn Russian, so I knew that I was not the person to do justice to the text and its abundant scholarship. So, I have tried, with my edition and translation, to furnish a new generation of scholars with the basic equipment and the grid references they need to find their way through Ibn Faḍlān’s strange but enthralling world.

      Many companions have helped me along the way. An old friend, Geert Jan van Gelder, reviewed my first draft a decade ago and, as is his wont, saved me on many occasions from having egg on my chin before I even left the house. A new friend, Shady Hekmat Nasser, advised on orthography. Thorir Jonson Hraundal, of Reykjavik University, helped with the Glossary and the Further Reading. I am delighted that Ibn Faḍlān has afforded us the opportunity to develop our friendship over the years. Maaike van Berkel gave me a copy of her excellent PhD thesis.

      Most of the work on this volume has been done on flights between London and Abu Dhabi or New York, in the InterContinental Hotel Abu Dhabi, and in various restaurants, hotels, and bars in Greenwich Village and SoHo. I would like to thank the staff of the InterCon and the cabin crews of Etihad and Virgin Airways who looked after me so well. I can well imagine how envious but dismissive of these luxuries Ibn Faḍlān would be.

      Over the years the village of Embsay in Yorkshire has been a welcome retreat where I can combine walking and writing. David and Julie Perrins are wonderful hosts. Nigel Chancellor and Christina Skott took Yvonne and me around the Gulf of Bothnia in their boat and introduced us to the magic of the Finnish sauna. We also managed to explore a Viking cemetery together, despite the depredations of man-eating Finnish insects.

      My family has always given me everything I needed, whatever jaunt I was off on.

      Philip Kennedy and I have been swapping traveler’s tales of our mishaps in the Arabic literary tradition for thirty years. In the company of our editor comrades, we are happily trying to redraw the map of Arabic literary creativity by means of the Library of Arabic Literature. My fellow editors on the board of Library of Arabic Literature are a constant reminder to me of how far I still have to travel in order to master Arabic and English.

      And last but by no means least, I owe a special debt to my project editor Shawkat Toorawa. He and I have worked on this volume on and off whenever we happened to be together over eighteen months, and especially in Abu Dhabi in February 2014. There was a delightful incongruity about discussing the frozen wastelands of the Ustyurt beside the pool at the InterCon. And, as with all adventures, my memories of our collaboration will remain with me forever.

      Despite such generous guidance and company, I am only too conscious of how often I have stumbled and slipped in my edition, translation and notes. Sometimes I just never learn.