Ibr?h?m Ibn Ya‘q?b Al-Isr?’?l? Al-Tur?ushi

(b. Tortosa, Spain; fl. second half of the tenth century)

geography.

Ibr?h?m ibn Ya‘q?b, a Spanish Jewish merchant, was known for his travels through eastern, central, and western Europe on business and, probably, diplomatic missions. At that time, about 965, there were colonies of Jews throughout Europe who would be apt to receive a fellow Jew. Only fragments remain of his one or more geographical writings.

Because of the difficulty in identifying the names of towns and places from those who quoted Ibr?h?m’s description of his journey, the itinerary may be given only tentatively. He crossed the Adriatic, traveled through Bordeaux, Noirmoutier, st.-Malo, Rouen, Utrecht, Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), Mainz, Fulda, Soest, Paderborn, Schleswig, Magdeburg (where he met Bulgarian ambassadors at the court of Emperor Otto I), then along the right bank of the Elbe and through Prague, CraCow, Augsburg, Cortona, and Trapani. This route led Ibr?h?m through the Slavic and Frankish regions of Europe.

Such later geographers as al-Bakr? (d. 1094), Kit?b al-mas?lik wa’l-mam?lik (“Routes and Kingdoms”;Paris, B.N. MSS 2, 5905), and al-Qazw?n?(b.1203), author of ?Aj??ib al-makhl?q?t wa??th?r albil?d (“The Marvels of Creation and Peculiarities of Existing Things”; Paris, B. N. MS 2775)—possibly through the intermediary of al-Udhr?(fl. 1213), author of Siyar al-N?sir lil-haqq, a history of dynasties which contains notes on towns of southern and western Europe—quoted Ibr?h?m for his particularly rich account of the Slav areas. Since Ibr?h?m was able to learn much at first hand from the Jewish natives, he gave a reliable description of the articles of commerce, their prices, local manufactures, the military situation, customs of the people, Jewish life and merchants, Old Russian history and tribes, agriculture, health conditions, food and drinks, the salt pans of Soest, S?m?nid dirhams struck at Samarkand (914-915) but found in the German region, and much else.

Most of Ibr?h?m’s material was obtained directly by observation, some of it from the natives’ oral literature, and some from written works. It is recognized as being one of the best accounts of the period. His narrative is of great interest in the history of medieval cultures. He writes that the Slavs have no bathhouses but that they erect a wooden house and caulk it with a green marsh moss they call mokh, a substance used on their boats instead of tar. Then a stone is placed in a corner under a high window which lets out the smoke from the fire built to heat the stone. Basins of water are poured over this red-hot stone to create steam. Each person stirs the air with a bundle of dried branches to draw the heat to himself.

Ibr?h?m’s attention to detail is shown in his description of the vehicle of kings as having four wheels and posts. The frame of the cab is hung from the posts by strong chains which are wrapped with silk so that the shaking inside the cab is reduced. Such vehicles were made also for the sick and wounded. The fragments on the Slavs have been much studied in eastern Europe, and the portions on western Europe have been translated into French by A. Miquel. A complete edition is planned by M. Canard.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following works may profitably be consulted: S. M. Ali, Arab Geography (Aligarh, 1959), p. 97; C. Brockelmann, “Zur arabischen Handschriftenkunde,” in Zeitschrift für Semitisik, 10 (1935), 410; M. Conrad, “Ibr?h?m ibn Ya’q?b et sa relation de voyage en Europe,’ in Étudess d’orientslisme Lévi-Provençal, II (Paris, 1962), 503-508; R. Frye, “Remarks on Some New Islamic Sources of the R?s”, in Byzantion, 18 (1948), 119-125; I. Hrbek, “Arabico-Slavica”, in Archiv fül Orientforschung, 23 (1955), 109-135; G. Jacob, Ein arabischer Berichterstatter aus dem 10. Jahrhundert über Fulda, Schleswig, Soest, Paderborn und andere Städte (Berlin, 1891); Studien in arabischen Geographen (Berlin, 1892-1896); and Arabische Berichte von Gesandten an germanische Fürstenhöfe aus dem 9. und10. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1927); T. Kowalski, Relacja Ibr?h?ma ibn Ja?k??ba z podrózy do Krajów slowia?skich w przekazie al-Bekr?ego (Cracow, 1946); I. Y. Krachkovsky, Arabskaya geograficheskaya literatura (Moscow, 1957), pp. 190-193; A. Kunik and V. Rosen, Izvestiya al-Bekri i drugikh avtorov o Rusi i Slavyanakh (St. Petersbury, 1878-1903); A. Miquel, “L’Europe occidentale dans la relation arabe d’Ibr?h?m b. Ya‘q?b”, in Annales de I‘École supérieure des sciences (1966), 1048-1064; La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu‘au milieu de XIe siécle (Paris, 1967), pp. 146-148; and “Ibr?h?m b. Ya‘k?b’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1969), III, 991; V. Minorsky, Hud?d al-‘?lam“The Regions of the World”—A Persian Geography (London, 1937), pp. 191, 427-428, 442; Ramhumar Chaube, “India as Described by an Unknown Early Arab Geographer of the Tenth Century’, in Proceedings of the Third Indian Hist. Congress (1939), pp. 661-971; Semen Rapoport, “On the Early Slavs. The Narrative of Ibr?h?m-Yakub”, in Slavonic and East European Review,8 (1929-1930), 331-341; and F. Westberg, “Ibr?h?m’s Reisebericht’, in Mémoires de l’ Académie des sciences de St. Pétersbourg, 3 (1898).

Martin Levey