Oghuz Herds in Ibn Fadlan's Account

In the winter of 921 and 922 the embassy of the caliph waited in Khwarezm for the ice to melt.^[1] Then it crossed the country of the Oghuz on its way to the Volga Bulgars.^[1] Ibn Fadlan’s report is the one eyewitness account of the Oghuz. It mentions their animals again and again, and it gives numbers.

Camels for the road

In the middle of the month of Shawwal in the year 309, on 16 February 922, the Jayhun began to thaw.^[2] The members of the embassy then bought what they needed for the journey.^[2] They bought Turkic camels and had folding boats made of camel hide, to cross the rivers of the Turks’ country. They laid in bread, millet and dried, salted meat for three months.^[2] The French translator notes that the Turkic camel is described in the Arabic geographers as short in the leg, thick in the neck and yellow in the hair.^[3]

Horses and sheep

After the Oghuz, Ibn Fadlan met the Pechenegs and found them poor by comparison.^[4] He had seen Oghuz, he says, who owned 10,000 horses and 100,000 sheep.^[4] Most of what the sheep ate lay under the snow. They scraped it away with their hooves to find grass, and when they found none they gnawed the snow itself and became very fat. In summer, when they ate grass, they grew thin.^[4]

The figures are the traveller’s estimate, not a count.

Hosts and guests

No Muslim could cross the country without taking one of the Oghuz as his friend and host. He came to the host with a garment, a veil for the wife, pepper, millet, raisins and nuts.^[5] The host put up a tent for him and brought as many sheep as his means allowed. The guest had to slaughter them, because the Oghuz did not cut the throat. They struck the sheep on the head until it died.^[6]

The friendship worked as a deposit and a loan. A merchant who could not take all his camels and horses with him left them with his Oghuz friend, took what he needed from the friend’s camels, horses and money, and settled the account on his return.^[7] A stranger who said “I am your guest” and asked for camels, horses and dirhams was given what he asked.^[8] If the merchant died on the journey, the host went to the returning caravan and asked for his guest. He took from the most eminent merchant as many dirhams, camels and horses as his guest had held, and not a grain more.^[8]

Buying sheep

Ibn Fadlan tells of a merchant from Khwarezm who lodged for some time with a host in the tribe of the Kudherkin, the viceroy of the Turks, in order to buy sheep.^[9] The merchant seduced his host’s son.^[9] The Kudherkin condemned both to death, and then he allowed the merchant to ransom himself. The merchant gave the boy’s father sheep in compensation for the wrong.^[9]

The sheep went north as well. Many merchants of the Volga Bulgars travelled to the country of the Turks and brought sheep back.^[10] The Bulgar merchants also fetched marten and black-fox skins from a country called Wisu.^[11]

Gaps in the account

Ibn Fadlan gives no price for a sheep, and he does not say how many sheep a merchant bought. The rite in which the Oghuz killed the horses of a dead man belongs to another article, Horse sacrifice. The tenth-century geography that lists the herds of the Turkic peoples one by one is treated in the Hudud al-Alam.