Farming among the Volga Bulgars

The one eyewitness account of the food and fields of the Volga Bulgars is the report of Ibn Fadlan, who reached their king in 922.^[1]

The harvest

Ibn Fadlan says that the Bulgars ate millet and horse meat. Wheat and barley grew there in abundance as well.^[2] Everyone who sowed anything reaped it for himself, and the king had no claim on the harvest.^[2] The king took a different levy. Every house gave him one marten skin each year.^[2]

The king had further claims. When the king sent a force against a country and it made booty, he took a share with the troops. Whoever gave a wedding meal or invited guests to a feast had to set aside a portion for the king in proportion to the size of the feast.^[2]

Barley and oil

The Bulgars had no olive oil, no sesame oil and no other fat. They used fish oil instead, and all that they cooked with it smelled bad.^[3] They made a porridge of barley, which young slave girls and boys ate. At times they boiled barley with meat. The masters ate the meat and gave the barley to the slave girls.^[3]

Storage

The Bulgars could not store their food in the ordinary way. Their land, Ibn Fadlan says, was black and foul, and they had no places where they could keep their food. They dug pits in the ground and put their food in them. After a few days it went bad, smelled and could no longer be used.^[3]

Grain on the road

When Ibn Fadlan’s party set out for the Turks from Khwarezm, it took bread, millet, and dried and salted meat for three months.^[4] At the Bulgar court the four princes who met the embassy brought bread, meat and millet to greet it.^[5] The French edition renders his word jāwars as millet. It notes that the grain may in fact be sorghum.^[6]