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Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 52 (2004) H. 1 © Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, Sitz
Stuttgart/Germany
ABHANDLUNGEN
Andrii Danylenko, New York
The name “Rus’”
In search of a new dimension*
1. Introduction
Ever since the appearance of Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer’s “Geographia Russiae” (1737/
1744) and Gerhardt Friedrich Müller’s “Origines gentis et nominis Russorum” (1749), the
Varangian-Rus’ian controversy has known but a few historiographic turns.1 At first sight,
a wholly new vista, in particular of the name “Rus’”, has recently arisen in a study of a
prolific Ukrainian Canadian historian George D. Knysh.2 Yet his interpretation proves on
closer inspection less convincing than originally envisaged inasmuch as it is all the more
patterned on the same patriotic vantage point as outlined first by Mikhail Lomonosov and
subsequently cultivated by Russian anti-Normanists, in particular in the Soviet and early
Post-Soviet period.3 One should not disregard, however, a recent attempt to reconcile
extreme points of view, which has been made by Håkon Stang in 1996.4 The latter tried to
substantiate the Greek origin of the name “Rus’” which might have referred primarily to
the ancient Northmen, purportedly the Heruli or, to use the author’s spelling, “Eruls”, in
the 6th century. This name was allegedly transmitted from Byzantium to Old Ladoga and
subsequently incorporated into the whole of the Novgorod and Eastern Krivichi region.
According to this author, the term “Rus’” could have been influenced by a local Baltic
Finnic ethnic group, the Veps, who similar to the Finnish “ruotsi” (cf. BFinn. *rōtsi),
called the Swedes “roč’”, a form which is likely to account for the palatalized final dental
in “Rus’”. In the 9th century, more precisely in 839, the East-Finnic (Veps) form “roč’”
reached the Byzantines, and was rendered by a Greek scribe as “‘Ñò”.
* I am grateful to Dr. Diana Gosselin Nakeeb (Pace University, New York) for valuable com-
ments on an earlier draft of this paper. Yet, any opacity is my own.
1 GOTTFRIED SCHRAMM Altrußlands Anfang: Historische Schlüsse aus Namen, Wörtern and Tex-
ten zum 9. und 10. Jahrhundert. Freiburg im Breisgau 2002, p. 30.
2 GEORGE D. KNYSH Kyiv’s original Rus’, in: Ukrainian Quarterly 55 (2000) 2, pp. 150–185.
3 Cf. I. P. Shaskol’skii’s study, published in 1970 (IGOR P. SHASKOLSKII Recent developments in
the Normanistic controversy, in: Varangian Problems. Copenhagen 1970, pp. 21–38) and one of the
recent books of V. V. Sedov (VALENTIN V. SEDOV Drevnerusskaia narodnost’. Moskva 1999; see
also IDEM Slaviane: Istoriko-arkheologicheskoe issledovanie. Moskva 2002, especially pp. 570–
574), which, in some places, appears a pure reiteration of obsolete theses, e. g., about the Old-
Russian state/people as a unity in the 10th to 13th centuries. Accordingly, an alleged Varangian
impact on the formation of this state comes to naught (cf. SIMON FRANKLIN, JONATHAN SHEPARD
The emergence of Rus’ 750–1200. London, New York 1996, p. 28, fn. 26). A comprehensive survey
of the recent, especially Post-Soviet interpretations of the above controversy is provided by DITT-
MAR SCHORKOWITZ Die Herkunft der Ostslaven und die Anfänge des Kiever Reiches in der post-
sowjetischen Revision, in: JBfGOE 48 (2000) 4, pp. 569–601 and SCHRAMM Altrußlands Anfang
pp. 21–32.
4 HÅKON STANG The Naming of Russia. Oslo 1996, especially pp. 267, 272–276, 282.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
2
This scenario, however, is not novel at all. Its rationale may easily be traced back to Jo-
seph Marquart’s hypothesis,5 which, in fact, appears highly conjectured to be accepted
without reservations.6 In completing his “logical, philological and historical circle,” Hå-
kon Stang had it in mind to elaborate a sophisticated interpretation. Unfortunately, while
bringing to light, and rightly so, the parochialism of the contest between the Normanists
and anti-Normanists, his theory failed to break through the limits of the circulus vitiosus.
It comes therefore as no surprise that in recent publications7 the Varangian-Rus’ian
controversy tends to be reduced to the etymology of the core term “Rus’”. Without pro-
posing any new vista of the provenance of this name conceived of as a separate lexical
entity, I shall instead attempt a structural treatment of the material under consideration. In
light of the plethora of both historiographic and philological data which are recoverable in
the Byzantine, western (German) Latin, and Arabic records, it would be instructive not
only to reconstruct the underlying form(s) but to construe correspondences between the
well-known Byzantine, German Latin, and Arabic attestations which may serve as a basis
for further discussion. Based on a thorough survey of these attestations, such a structural
approach appears all the more useful since no one has so far succeeded in bringing into
logical unity these three basic sources related to the etymology and early history of the
name “Rus’”.
2. The Byzantine and Other Southern Records
2.1. “Who called themselves” or “who were called by others”?
The name “Rhōs” first appears in a well-known, ever since its publication by Gottlieb
Siegfried Bayer in 1744 (1737), entry under the year A.D. 839 in the official Carolingian
royal annals (“Annales Bertiniani”)8 which recounts about an embassy from the Byzantine
Emperor Theophilos (829–842) to the Frankish Emperor Louis le Débonnaire and men-
tions, specifically, some emissaries from the people called “Rhos” (Rhōs): “qui se, id est
gentem suam, Rhos vocari dicebant” (“they, that is, their people, were called Rhos”).9 In
5 JOSEPH MARQUART Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge: Ethnologische und historisch-
topographische Studien zur Geschichte des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts (ca. 840–940). Leipzig 1903,
p. 65 ff.; VLADIMIR A. MOSHIN Variago-russkii vopros, in: Slavia 10 (1931) pp. 109–136, 343–379,
501–537, here pp. 522–523.
6 GOTTFRIED SCHRAMM Die Herkunft des Namens Rus’: Kritik des Forschungsstandes, in: For-
schungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 30 (1982) pp. 7–49, here pp. 33–34.
7 BOHDAN STRUMIŃSKI Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus’: Northmen, Finns, and East Slavs
(Ninth to Eleventh Centuries). Edmonton, Toronto 1996; ALEKSANDR A. KHLEVOV Normanskaia
problema v otechestvennoi istoricheskoi nauke. S.-Peterburg 1997, p. 87.
8 L’Abbé C. DEHAISNES (ed.) Les Annales de Saint-Bertin et de Saint-Vaast, suivies de fragments
d’une chronique inédite. Paris 1871, pp. 19–20; GEORGIUS H
EINRICUS P
ERTZ (ed.) Monumenta
Germaniae Historica [hereafter MGH]. Volume 1. Hannoverae 1826, p. 434.
9 Apart from the citations from the Lavrentian and Hypatian copies of the Kyiv [Kiev] Primary
Chronicle which are given in folios, all other examples and citations are identified by pages, and
quoted as they are represented by editors or compilers in the corresponding publications. The names
of the languages will be abbreviated as follows: Arabic – Arab., Baltic Finnic – BFinn., East Slavic
– ESl., Finnic (Finnish) – Finn., Frankish Latin – FLat., Germanic – Gmc., Gothic – Goth., Greek –
Gr., Hebrew – Heb., Latin – Lat., Middle Greek – MGr., Middle High German – MHG, Middle Low
German – MLG, Middle Russian – MRuss., Old Armenian – OArm., Old Icelandic – OIc., Old
The name “Rus’” 3
view of the “rh” transliterating the Greek letter “…” (“rho”), Jonathan Shepard10 assumed
that the form “Rhos” could have derived from the written word, and thus directly or indi-
rectly from Theophilos’ letter, rather than from a transcript of the spoken word.11 From
this one might tentatively infer that the correct translation of the above phrase should be
based on a reflexive form, i.e., “who called themselves”, but not on a mere passive inter-
pretation, i.e., “who were called by others”.12 Profitable as this conjecture may seem, it is,
however, poorly supported by linguistic arguments proper,13 thus presenting a specific
case of “wishful translating”.
2.2. The Middle Greek Evidence
The Greek name “‘Ñò is first directly attested to in the “Life of St. George of Amas-
tris” written by Ignatius the Deacon (d. after 845). Premised on the extensive study of this
document, V. G. Vasil’evskij14 assumed that the Rus’ were likely to have raided the city
of Amastris on the northern shore of Asia Minor in Paphlagonia between 816 and 842. To
outline their itinerary more precisely, the Rus’ began their raid from the Sea of Azov,
turning southeast along the coast of Georgia, then extending west along the Pontus coast
of Anatolia from Trebizond to Amastris. Although corroborated subsequently by other
Indo-Aryan – OIAr., Old Iranian – OIrn., Old Nordic – ONord., Old Norwegian – ONw., Old Os-
setian – OOss., Russian – Russ., Slavic – Sl., West Arabic – WArab.
As for the Semitic languages, transliterations from Arabic and Hebrew are based chiefly on the
“transcriptional principles” as provided by Tadeusz Lewicki in his compendium (TADEUSZ LEWICKI
Źródła arabskie do dziejów słowiańszczyzny. Wrocław, Kraków 1956, pp. x–xii), and letter-for-
letter correspondences in HEINZ-JOSEF FABRY, HELMER RINGGREN (eds.) Theologisches Wörterbuch
zum Alten Testament. Volume 7. Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln 1993, pp. 271–284. If cited from specific
publications, the editors’ transliterations are generally preserved, see, e. g., ABDURRAHMAN ALI EL-
HAJJI (ed.) Abū ‘Ubayd Al-Bakrī. The Geography of al-Andalus and Europe. From the Book “Al-
masalik wal-mamalik” [“The Routes and the Countries”]. Beirut 1387/1968; HANS MŽIK (ed.) Das
Kitāb sūrat al-arñ des Abū Ğa’far Muhammad Ibn Mūsā al-òuwārizmī. Arabischer Text. Leipzig
1926.
10 JONATHAN S
HEPARD The Rhos guests of Louis the Pious: whence and wherefore?, in: Early
Medieval Europe 4 (1995) 1, pp. 41–60, here p. 43.
11 From the philological point of view, this argument appears more persuasive in comparison with
the view recently revived by E. A. Mel’nikova (ELENA A. MELNIKOVA [ed.] Drevniaia Rus’ v svete
zarubezhnykh istochnikov. 2e izdanie. Moskva 2001, p. 101) and her colleagues (MIKHAIL V. BIBI-
KOV, ELENA A. MELNIKOVA, VLADIMIR IA. PETRUKHIN Rannie ėtapy russko-vizantiiskikh otnoshe-
nii v svete istoricheskoi onomastiki, in: Vizantiiskii vremennik 59 (2000) pp. 35–39, here pp. 37,
39). They strongly believe that this form as encountered in “Annales Bertiniani”, in particular in
“Prudentii, Trecensis episcopi, annales a. 835–861” (MGH volume 1, pp. 429–454), must have been
directly borrowed from the Scandinavians. Interestingly enough, this claim is based exclusively on
the long o, which is purported to have sounded in the Scandinavian word. As I shall show this sound
is, in fact, crucial, for the reconstruction of the name Rus’, but should be treated on more solid lin-
guistic grounds.
12 STANG The Naming of Russia p. 298.
13 See RAPHAEL KÜHNER Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache. Volume 2, part 1.
Hannover 1912, pp. 104–111.
14 VASILII G. VASILEVSKII Trudy. Volume 3: Russko-variazhskie issledovania. Petrograd 1915,
pp. cviii–cxi.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
4
scholars,15 this view, however, remains open to doubt, especially in the face of some histo-
riographic and philological limitations16 regarding the form “‘Ñò”.17
The first reliable record of the Middle Greek name “‘Ñò” dates back to the mid-9th
century, when the patriarch of Constantinople Photius (d. 891) described in two homilies
the attack of “a people from the north” on Constantinople in June 860. It is remarkable
that the indeclinable form “‘Ñò” occurs only in the titles and not in the text of the homi-
lies. Apart from rhetorical embellishments, particularly in the famous passage which reads
“An obscure nation, a nation of no account, a nation ranked among slaves, unknown, but
which has won a name from the expedition against us”,18 this people was once identified
with a “fierce and barbarous Scythian tribe”,19 i.e., “Ô{ äS Óêõèéê{í ôï‡ôï êáp ì{í
Vèíïò êáp ÂÜñâáñïí”,20 which prompted quite a reasonable comment by M. V. Lev-
chenko21 that the invaders with the name “Scythian” were not Scandinavian but Slavs.22 It
is noteworthy that the name “‘Ñò” first occurred, not in the title, in Photius’s “Encyclica
ad sedes orientales”, written in 867. Having referred to “Rhōs” by name, “ô{ êáëïýìå-
íïí ‘Ñò”,23 Photius characterized them in terms which leave little doubt that he identi-
fied them with the invaders of 860.
Of far greater importance, in this respect, is a form, which is found in Bishop Liud-
prand’s (d. 972) evidence of 958–962, that is, “ρïõóéïé” […ïýóéïé].24 Vilhelm Thomsen25
stated that this new Middle Greek form as compared with the form “‘Ñò, was more
15 FIEDRICH WESTBERG O zhytii sv. Stefana Surozhskogo, in: Vizantiiskii vremennik, izdavaemyi
pri Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk 14 (1907) pp. 227–236; OMELJAN PRITSAK At the dawn of Chris-
tianity in Rus’: East meets West, in: Harvard Ukrainian Studies 12/13 (1988/1989) pp. 87–113;
CONSTANTIN ZUCKERMAN Deux étapes de la formation de l’ancien état russe, in: Les centres proto-
urbains russes entre Scandinavie, Byzance et Orient. Ed. by Michel Kazanski [et al.]. Paris 2000,
pp. 95–120; MELNIKOVA (ed.) Drevniaia Rus’ p. 92.
16 CARL DE B
OOR Der Angriff der Rhos auf Byzanz, in: Byzantinische Zeitschrift 4 (1895)
pp. 445–466, here p. 446 ff.; ALEKSANDER A. VASILEV The Russian Attack on Constantinople in
860. Cambridge, MA 1946, pp. 71–79. For the attempt to show that the passage in the “Life of St.
George of Amastris” is in Photius’s style, see ATHANASIOS MARKOPOULOS La vie de Saint George
d’Amastris et Photius, in: Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 28 (1979) pp. 75–82.
17 VASILEVSKII Trudy p. 64.
18 CYRIL MANGO The Homilies of Photius Patriarch of Constantinople. English Translation, In-
troduction and Commentary. Cambridge, MA 1958, p. 98; KARL M
ÜLLER, THEODORUS M
ÜLLER
(eds.) Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum. Volume 5: Photii de Russorum incursione homiliae
duae. Paris 1883, p. 168.
19 MANGO The Homilies of Photius p. 89.
20 MÜLLER, MÜLLER (eds.) Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum p. 165.
21 MITROFAN V. LEVCHENKO Fal’sifikatsiia istorii vizantiisko-russkikh otnoshenii v trudakh A. A.
Vasil’eva, in: Vizantiiskii vremennik 4 (1951) pp. 149–159.
22 DIMITRI O
BOLENSKY The Byzantine sources on the Scandinavians in Eastern Europe, in:
Varangian Problems. Copenhagen 1970, pp. 149–169, here p. 151.
23 VASILEIOS LAOURDAS, LEENDERT GERRIT WESTERINK (eds.) Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum
et Romanorum Teubneriana. Volume 1: Photii Patriarchae Constantinopolitani Epistulae et Am-
philochia. Leipzig 1983, p. 50.
24 RUDOLF BUCHNER (ed.) Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters. Vol-
ume 8: Widukinds Sachsengeschichte. Adalberts Fortsetzung der Chronik Reginos. Liudprands
Werke. Darmstadt 1971, p. 460.
25 VILHELM THOMSEN Det Russiske riges grundlæggelse ved Nordbœrne, in: IDEM Samlede afhan-
dlinger. Volume 1. København 1919, pp. 231–414, here pp. 266, 350.
The name “Rus’” 5
closely connected to the Slavic „Rus’“, but assumed that the Greeks, albeit wrongly,
might have identified this name with the homophonous MGr. …ïýóéïò (“red-haired”). In
view of different chronologies of the two Middle Greek forms, “‘Ñò” and “…ïýóéïé”, a
student is, in fact, at a loss as to whether he can treat the latter Byzantine expression as a
“spoken Byzantine Greek designation for the Rūs26, although its popular Greek etymol-
ogy appears more than obvious in Bishop Liutprand’s “Antapodosis”: “Gens [...], quam a
qualitate corporis Greci vocant Ρïõóéïé, Rúsios, nos vero a positione loci nominamus
Nordmannos”27 (“A people [...], whom the Greeks call in quality of body Ρïõóéïé,
Rúsios, but we call them Nordmanni because of geographical position”28).
Contrary to the form “‘Ñò”, Håkon Stang29 is too quick to define the latter word-form,
Ρïõóéïé […ïýóéïé], traditionally labeled as “colloquial”, as a pre-Christian term, which
might have appeared in the era of the first mass invasion of far-northerners in the very
heart of the Byzantine empire. This dichotomy, however, turns out to be rather murky in
light of some well-known facts. Suffice it to recall here the name “‘Ñωóßá which was
first attested in the Byzantine sources, in particular in “De Caerimoniis” and “De Admin-
istrando Imperio”,30 while competing with the expressions “÷þñá ôí ‘Ñò31 and
÷þñá ô\ò ‘Ñωóßáò”.32 As a toponym, the name “‘Ñωóßá”, derived with the help of the
26 OMELJAN PRITSAK The origin of the name Rus’, in: Passé turco-tatar. Présent soviétique. Études
offertes à Alexandre Bennigsen. Ed. by Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay [et al.]. Louvain, Paris 1986,
pp. 45–65, here p. 56.
27 MGH volume 3. Hannoverae 1839, p. 331.
28 Ibidem p. 277.
29 STANG The Naming of Russia p. 23.
30 CONSTANTINE P
ORPHYROGENITUS De caerimoniis aulae byzantinae. Ed. by Johann Jacob
Reiske. Volume 1. Bonn 1829, book 2, chapter 15, p. 594 ff. For a survey of ethnic and political
information related to this term in Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ treatise “De Administrando Impe-
rio” (948–952), see IRÈNE SORLIN Voies commerciales, villes et peuplement de la Rôsia au Xe siècle
d’après le De Administrando Imperio de Constantine Porphyrogénète, in: Les centres proto-urbains
russes pp. 343–355.
31 GYULA MORAVCSIK (ed.), ROMILLY JAMES HEALD JENKINS (transl.) Constantine Porphyrogeni-
tus. De administrando imperio. New revised edition. Washington, DC 1967, 4:11.
32 MORAVCSIK (ed.) Constantine Porphyrogenitus 37:43. It would be instructive to cite here a
hapax legomenon from chapter 9 of this treatise, “^ VζωΡωσία” (“the Outer Rus’”). Providing no
term to denote “the Inner Rus’”, the relevant passage seems to give evidence of a clear dichotomy of
political structure along the Dnieper route in the 10th century. The long-standing controversy lies,
however, in where the other, Inner Rus’, was situated. Leaving aside numerous commentaries,
sometimes mutually contradictory (see PAVLO SMIRNOV Volz’kyi shliakh i starodavni rusy [narysy z
rus’koї istoriї VI–IX vv.]. Kyiv 1928, p. 119 ff.; ALEKSANDR POGODIN “Vneshniaia Rossiia” Kon-
stantina Bagrianorodnogo, in: Mélanges linguistiques et philologiques offerts à M. Aleksandar
Belić. Beograd 1937, pp. 77–85; OMELJAN PRITSAK Where was Constantine’s Inner Rus’?, in: Har-
vard Ukrainian Studies 7 [1983] pp. 564–567), one can hardly endorse the “most simple and satis-
fying” thesis about Kyiv and its territories as ‘Ñωóßá proper (cf. SORLIN Voies commerciales, villes
et peuplement de la Rôsia p. 347). Poorly convincing appears also A. Soloviev’s hypothesis
(ALEKSANDR S
OLOVIEV ‘Ç #ÅÎÙ ‘ÑÙÓÉÁ, in: Byzantion 13 [1938] pp. 227–235) according to
which the whole of Rus’, including the territories of Kyiv proper with adjacent Vyshgorod and
Vytychiv, belonged to the “^ VζωΡωσία”. The validity of this hypothesis is challenged in view of a
similar term in the “Kitāb Ruğār” (“Liber Rogerii”, ca. 1153) of al-Idrīsī (ALEXANDER SEIPPEL [ed.]
Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici. Osloae 1896–1928, pp. 29–30). While writing about the sixth
section of the sixth climate, he mentions the country of “the Outer Rus’” (“ﺔﺠﺮﺎﺨﻠا ﺔﻴﺳﻮرﻠا”) (Al-
ANDRII DANYLENKO
6
suffix -éá, could have been in use along with terms derived from the parallel root …ïýó-,
e. g., “ôí ‘Ñïõóéêí” next to “ôí ‘Ñïõóßùí” in Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ “De
Caerimoniis”.33 Otherwise, one could hardly explain the attestation, in 1142, of the adjec-
tive form …ïýóéêïò in an inventory of possessions of the Rus’ian St. Pantelejmon mon-
astery on Mount Athos, inhabited by the Rus’ians since 1030. Remarkably, in 1177 and
1182, the Rus’ian monks were called by the Greek ïs ‘Ñò (indecl.) or rather frequently
ïs ‘Ñïýóïé, ‘Ñïýóóïé” (decl.). The parallel word forms were still commonplace in
1188 and 1194, i.e., “ôí ‘Ñïõóóí, ôí ‘Ñïõóí, ôí ‘Ñò”.34
2.2.1. The Arabic “ﺔﻴﺳﻮرﻠا” (“ar-Rūsīja”)
A similar parallelism is evidenced in Middle Russian, which knew orthographic pairs
like “Rusiia”/“Russiia” (15th century) and “Rosiia”/“Rossiia” (16th century).35 To explain
this parallelism, Antoine Martel was obviously too hasty to advance a twofold influence,
i.e., Polish Latin (cf. Lat. Russia) in the former case and Byzantine in the latter case.
Leaving aside peculiar forms of the type MRuss. rossiistyi and rustyi (16th century) which
are surely patterned on the Byzantine counterparts, it would be quite reasonable to posit
both indigenious and imported tradition operating in case of “Rusiia”/“Russiia”.
Tracking down the indigenious tradition, it is expedient to cite the above Arabic form
ﺔﻴﺳﻮرﻠا” [ضرا] as found in al-Idrīsī’s “Opus geographicum”36. While identifying some-
times “ar-Rūsīja” (“ﺔﻴﺳﻮرﻠا”) with an isle, or, better yet, a peninsula (“ةرﻱزﺠﻠا”, “al-ğazīra”),
Idrīsī. Opus geographicum. Ed. by Enrico Cerulli [et al.]. Part 8. Neapoli, Romae 1978, p. 914), a
term which he might have borrowed from the secret handbook of Byzantine diplomacy written by
Constantine Pophyrogenitus (PRITSAK Where was Constantine’s Inner Rus’? p. 558). Geographi-
cally, he contrasts this kind of the Rus’ with another one in the title of the fourth section of the sixth
climate, “ىﻮﺻﻗﻝا ﺔﻴﺸﻮرﻠا دﻼﺒ” (Al-Idrīsī. Opus geographicum p. 892) “the farthest Rus’” (cf.
“l’extrême Russie” in PIERRE-AMÉDÉE JAUBERT [ed., transl.] Géographie d’Édrisi traduite de l’arabe
en français. Volume 2. Paris 1840, p. 382), which comprises settlements in the Carpathian region:
“There are two kinds (ﻒﻧﺼ) of the Rus’. One kind of them is that one which we are treating in this
section. And the other one is those who live in the vicinity of the country of Hungary (ﺔﻴﺮﻜﻨأ) and
Macedonia (ﺔﻱﻧوذﻗﻣ)” (Al-Idrīsī. Opus geographicum p. 920; see JAUBERT [ed., transl.] Géographie
d’Édrisi p. 404). In this respect, I. G. Konovalova (IRINA G. KONOVALOVA Vostochnaia Evropa v
sochinenii al-Idrisi. Moskva 1999, p. 152) seems quite right to state that the opposition “far/near” as
applied in the toponymy reflects here the geographical egocentrism, which is likely to depend on a
particular vantage point.
It should be noted parenthetically that in the Parisian manuscript (Parisiensis 2221, a. 1300) there
is, as has been cited above, a slightly different spelling, “ﺔﺠﺮﺎﺨﻠا ﺔﻴﺸﻮرﻠا” (“ar-rūšija al-óāriğa”). Yet,
taken palaeographically, this difference (see JAUBERT [ed., transl.] Géographie d’Édrisi p. 399) does
not have any bearing on the subject under consideration.
33 ALEKSANDR SOLOVIEV Le nom byzantin de la Russie. La Haye 1957, p. 12; IDEM Vizantiiskoe
imia Rossii, in: Vizantiiskii vremennik 12 (1957) pp. 134–155, here p. 137; see also “^ ‘Ñùóéê[ in
Leo the Deacon’s writings (BARTHOLD G
EORG N
IEBUHR Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae.
Volume 11: Leonis Diaconi Caloënsis Historiae. Bonnae 1828, p. 151).
34 ALEKSANDR SOLOVIEV Histoire du Monastère Russe au Mont-Athos, in: Byzantion 8 (1933)
pp. 213–238, here pp. 219, 221.
35 ANTOINE M
ARTEL Un point d’histoire du vocabulaire russe: Россія, Русский, in: Mélanges
publiés en l’honneur de M. Paul Boyer. Paris 1925, pp. 270–279, here pp. 272–273, 275.
36 See also fn. 32.
The name “Rus’” 7
this geographical name was known in the Islamic descriptive school of geography37 as
early as the 10th century, e.g., in the works of Ibn Rosteh (922), Ibn FaÝlān (ca. 922), Ibn
·auqal (ca. 978) and other authors,38 reserving a special place for a 13th-century Spanish
geographer, Ibn Sa‘īd, and 14th-century Syrian writers, Abu’l-Fidā’ and ad-Dimašqi.39
Premised mostly on al-Idrīsī’s work, Ibn Sa‘īd,40 who is closely followed by Abu’l-Fidā’,
provides a rather detailed account about an isle (= peninsula), situated not far from this
city, in the center of a great lake, “¾ūmā”.41 Many towns were erected on the shores of this
lake; the inhabitance of these towns was largely mixed Muslim and Christian. According
to V. Bartol’d42, one can hardly define this locality. This author, however, is inclined to
situate this “isle/peninsula” not in the estuary of the Don and the Dnieper, but somewhere
in the southern Rus’ contrary to the opposite view, situating such an “isle/peninsula” in
the Novgorod region or in the surroundings of Old Ladoga.43 In any case, the Islamic
authors provide no reliable evidence as to the real landscape, save that the Rus’ian “isle/
penincula” was most likely surrounded by rivers and lakes. To draw a telling parallel in
the Islamic descriptive school of geography, one can mention Abu’l-Fidā who identified
towns, located in the Tigris-Euphrates Mesopotamia, with an “isle/peninsula”.44 On the
whole, Abu’l-Fidā’ seems to have followed, in this case, a long-standing Oriental tradi-
tion, since, much earlier, al-Muqaddasī wrote in his “Aôsan at-taqāsīm fī ma‘rifat al-aqā
37 FERDINAND WÜSTENFELD (ed.) Jacut’s geographisches Wörterbuch. Volume 2. Leipzig 1867,
pp. ٨٣٦٨٥٠.
38 HARRIS B
IRKELAND (ed.) Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder. Oslo 1954,
pp. 16, 19, 49–50, 53–58, 66–67, 70–71, 74, 91–92, 99, 103, 116, 119, 123, 127–128; SEIPPEL (ed.)
Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. 11.
39 IRINA G. KONOVALOVA Sostav rasskaza ob “ostrove rusov” v sochineniiakh arabo-persidskikh
avtorov X–XVI vv., in: Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy. 1999 g. Vostochnaia i Sever-
naia Evropa v srednevekov’e. Moskva 2001, pp. 169–189.
40 SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici pp. 35–36, ١٠١.
41 CHRISTIAN MARTIN FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan’s und anderer Araber Berichte über die Russen älterer
Zeit. St. Petersburg 1823, p. 31; SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ١٠٢. A 14th-
century version may be found in the Geography of Abu’l-fidā’ (JOSEPH TOUSSAINT REINAUD, MAC
GUCKIN DE SLANE [eds.] Géographie d’Aboulféda’. Texte arabe. Paris 1840, p. ٢٠٤; for a French
translation, see JOSEPH T
OUSSAINT R
EINAUD [ed., transl.] Géographie d’Aboulféda’. Volume 2,
part 1. Paris 1848, p. 288; AUGUST F
ERDINAND M
EHREN [ed.]. Cosmographie de Chems-ed-Din
Abou Abdallah Mohammed Ed-Dimichqui. Texte arabe, publié d’après l’édition commencée par M.
Fraehn. St.-Pétersbourg 1866, pp. ٢٦١٢٦٢. It is interesting to mention here “ﺔﻴﺳﻮﺮﻠا ةرﻱزﺠ” (“the
Rus’ian isle”) which was added by Jākūt in al-Iþ¾aórī’s “Masālik al-mamālik” (“Viae regnorum”, ca.
951) (MICHAEL JAN DE GOEJE [ed.] Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum (hereafter BGA). 2nd
edition. Volume 1: Viae regnorum. Descriptio ditionis moslemicae auctore Abu Ishák al-Fárisí al-
Istakhrí. Leiden 1927, p. ٢١٨, fn. (k). It is also noteworthy that the term “¾ūmā” is most likely a
corrupted form of the name “ىﻣرﻄ” (“¾irmi”) as found in al-Idrīsī (Al-Idrīsī. Opus geographicum
pp. 921, 957; see JAUBERT [ed., transl.] Géographie d’Édrisi pp. 405, 434).
42 VASILII V. BARTOLD “Geografiya Ibn-Sa‘ida”, in: Recueil des travaux rédigés en mémoire du
Jubilé Scientifique de M[onsieur] Daniel Chwolson. Volume 2. Berlin 1899, pp. 226–241, here
pp. 232–233.
43 FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan’s und anderer Araber Berichte pp. 47–50; PETER B. GOLDEN The question
of the Rus’ Qağanate, in: Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982) pp. 77–97; STANG The Naming
of Russia pp. 187–188. For a bibliography, see KONOVALOVA Sostav rasskaza ob “ostrove rusov”
pp. 69–170.
44 REINAUD (ed., transl.) Géographie d’Aboulféda’ volume 2, part 2. Paris 1848, p. 50.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
8
līm” (“Optima dispositio in scientia orbium terrestrium”, ca. 985–986) about “Ğazīrat Ibn
‘Umar”, a city named after his founder, and situated in the estuary of the Tigris.45
All in all, the account about both the Rus’ian country/city and the Rus’ian isle/penin-
sula may be conceived of as a compilative composition of two, both chronologically and
geographically, different traditions, i.e., a more ancient Oriental tradition as cultivated in
Central Asia, and a younger tradition of the Mediterranean geographers. What is more
remarkable is that the two traditions reflect most likely “different areas of the outer activi-
ties of the Rus’”. The above dichotomy is most convincingly corroborated by two com-
plementary versions of the account about the Rus’ian isle as encountered in the writing of
Ibn Iyās (1448–1524).46 While following, on the whole, both Persian and Arabic geogra-
phers, this author believes that the Rus’ are a kind of Turkish people who speak an exotic
language.
It stands therefore to reason that the form “ar-Rūsīja” (“ﺔﻴﺳﻮرﻠا”) may represent a rather
ancient East Slav term (stem) borrowed into Arabic either directly or via the Byzantines.47
This borrowing might have taken place in the prehistoric time, thus demanding a closer
consideration of phonological traits of the borrowing process.48
2.3. The Hebrew “שּׁאר אישנ” (“nāsī rōš”)
The parallelism of the above derivatives both from “Rhōs” and “Rus[s]-” warrants here
some additional comments, especially vis-à-vis another form, which may be connected
with the historical appearance of the Rus’. After the first clashes with the ferocious and
cruel Rus’ in the 9th century, Byzantine writers referred to, phonetically, a similar archaic
name cited twice in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. Most schol-
ars49 maintain, especially in view of a detailed study of A. Florovskii50 who closely fol-
lowed some of his predecessors,51 that the Hebrew words שּׁאר אישנ” (“nāsī rōš”) were
mistakenly translated as “Dñ÷ïíôá ‘Ñþò”.52 At the end of the 10th century the Byzantine
historian Leo the Deacon,53 referring to Ezekiel’s prophecies, identified the chief Ros
(Rōš), mentioned along with the fabulous destructive peoples of Gog and Magog (from
the North), with the name of the Rus’ who were also known in Byzantium as Tauroscythi-
ans. This biblical and, at first glance, phonetic similarity (cf. “‘Ñþò” [ros] next to “‘Ñò
45 ANDRÉ MIQUEL (ed., transl.) Al-Muqaddasī Aôsan at-taqāsīm fī ma‘rifat al-aqālīm (la meilleure
repartition pour la connaissance des provinces). Damas 1963, pp. 79, 275.
46 AUGUST ARNOLD Chrestomathia arabica. Pars 1 textum continens. Halis 1853, pp. 73–76; see
ANATOLII P. NOVOSELTSEV Vostochnye istochniki o vostochnykh slavianakh i Rusi VI–IX vv., in:
Drevnee gosudarstvo i ego mezhdunarodnoe znachenie. Ed. by Anatolii Petrovich Novosel’tsev [et
al.]. Moskva 1965, pp. 355–419, here pp. 401–402.
47 See also § 4.4.
48 See also § 5.1.
49 PRITSAK The origin of the name Rus’ p. 47; STANG The Naming of Russia pp. 26–28.
50 ANTONII F
LOROVSKII “Kniaz’ Rosh” u proroka Iezekilia (gl. 38–39) (Iz zametok ob imeni
Rus’), in: Sbornikъ vъ chest’ na Vasilъ N. Zlatarski. Sofia 1925, pp. 505–520.
51 ADAM C
LARKE (ed.) Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: The text with a
commentary and critical notes. Volume 4. New York 1833, p. 267; EDUARD K
ÖNIG Zur Vor-
geschichte des Namens “Russen”, in: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 70
(1916) pp. 2–96; THOMSEN Det Russiske riges grundlæggelse ved Nordbœrne p. 342.
52 HENRY BARCLAY SWETE (ed.) The Old Testament in Greek according to the Septuagint. Cam-
bridge, MA 1905, Ez. 38:2, 39:1.
53 NIEBUHR Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae p. 150.
The name “Rus’” 9
[rōs]) allowed M. Ia. Siuziumov54 a thousand years later to trace back the name “Rus’”
directly to the Biblical people ‘Ñþò as mentioned in the Old Testament.55 According to
Håkon Stang,56 this case may be treated as a philological and logical blunder, since there
was originally no “prince of ‘Ros” whatsoever, for Heb. rōš signifies merely “head,
leader, chief”,57 cf. “Fili hominis, pone faciem tuam contra Gog, in terra Magog, princi-
pem summum Mosoch et Thubal”.58 This is why Håkon Stang offers for consideration
three forms of interest to the appearance of the name “Rus’”, i.e., “rus-”, “ros”, and “‘rōs”,
which were all allegedly used by the Byzantines.
2.4. The Islamic “Rass”
The above line of reasoning, however, raises some questions.59 It is noteworthy that
most students are unaware of the identification of the Biblical “Ros” with the Islamic
“Rass” as outlined by Joseph Hammer-Purgstall60 for “aþôāb ar-rass” (“سرﻝا بﺎﺣﺻا”, “the
men [people] of ar-Rass”) is encountered twice in the Qur’an:61 “As also ‘Ād and Tha-
mūd, and the Companions of the Rass”.62 Remarkably, commentators are not sure as to,
who the “companions of the Rass” were, thus adducing widely divergent and even fantas-
tic explanations.63 One example is an oasis town named al-Rass in the district of Qasim
about thirty-five miles south-west of the town of ‘Unaiza, reputed to be the central point
of the Arabian Peninsula, and situated midway between Mecca and Basra. The “compan-
ions of the Rass” might well have been the people of Shu‘aib, as they are mentioned along
with the ‘Ād and Thamūd, and Lot’s people in a similar context.64 Among other interpre-
tations, Jāqūt (d. 1229) treats this name in his “Mu‘ğam al-buldān” (“Regiones ordine
literarum dispositae vel Lexicon geographicum”) as a geographical name, i.e., “the valley
54 MIKHAIL IA. SIUZIUMOV K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii slova ‘Ñþò, ‘Ñωóßá, Rossija, in: Vestnik
drevnei istorii 2 (1940) 11, pp. 121–123.
55 SOLOVIEV Le nom byzantin de la Russie pp. 10–11; IDEM Vizantiiskoe imia Rossii p. 135.
56 STANG The Naming of Russia p. 27.
57 KÖNIG Zur Vorgeschichte des Namens “Russen” p. 94.
58 Bibliorum Sacrorum editio sacros. Oecum. Concilii Vaticani II ratione habita. Iussu Pauli
PP. VI recognita. Auctoritate Ioannis Pauli PP. II promulgata. Vaticano [s.a.], Ez. 38.2.
59 WILHELM G
ESENIUS Hebräisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament. Leipzig
1815, p. 578; FRANTS BUHL (ed.) Wilhelm Gesenius’ hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch
über das Alte Testament. 14th edition. Leipzig 1905, p. 674.
60 JOSEPH DE HAMMER Sur les origines russes. Extraits de manuscrits orientaux. St. Pétersbourg
1827, p. 26.
61 HANNA E. KASSIS A Concordance of the Qur’an. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1983,
p. 1033.
62 ABDULLAH YUSUF ALI The Holy Qur-an. Text, Translation and Commentary. Volume 2. La-
hore [s.a.], Sura 25.38, see also Sura 50.12.
63 ALI The Holy Qur-an p. 934, fn. 3094; ELWOOD M
ORRIS W
HERRY A Comprehensive Com-
mentary on the Qurán: Comprising Sale’s Translation and Preliminary Discourse. Volume 3. Lon-
don 1896, p. 214; cf. FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan’s und anderer Araber Berichte pp. 34–35. For a synopsis
of various interpretations in Islamic, and especially Arabic literature, see HAMMER Sur les origines
russes pp. 12–17, 24–29, who offered, however, rather a dogmatic explanation of the fate of these
legendary people.
64 ALI The Holy Qur-an Sura 26.176–190.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
10
ar-Rass” (“ﻦﺎﺝﻱﺏرذا ىداﻮ سرﻝا”) which is situated in Azerbaidzhan,65 although elsewhere66
he calls it “the river ar-Rass” (“سرﻝا رﻬﻧ”) in the same country.
In the context of our study, however, of utmost importance are semantic and morpho-
logical particularities of the above Arabic term. The root meaning of Arab. rass differs
obviously from that of Heb. rōš (“head”) as Arab. سأر means “head”, but not سرﻝا.67
Having conducted an extensive study of the designations of the well in Ancient Arabia, E.
Bräulich68 asserted with good reason that the noun “rass” (pl. “risās”) should be treated as
a “neuter expression” for a well, or shallow water-pit.69 Moreover, he assumed that the
meaning of this appelative might have been influenced by an apparent or real proper noun.
This is why some commentators hold that ar-Rass, a remnant of Thamūd, cast (rassa)
their prophet into a well (rass) and were consequently exterminated.70 It is then obvious
that the semantic difference is brought about by structural particularities of the above
roots. Thus the Hebrew root pattern differs from the Arabic two-consonant root with the
second geminated consonant and without a long vocal. One is wondering therefore
whether the Greek Septuagint translation, “Dñ÷ïíôá ‘Ñþò”, of Heb. nāsī rōš was a phi-
lological and logical blunder, as has been recently asserted by Håkon Stang. This claim
becomes even murkier, if one recalls that this wording is rendered in the Arabic transla-
tion of the Old Testament as “raīsu ruš” (“شور ﺲﻴﺌر”).71 All in all, Heb. rōš (“head”) with
a number of the figurative meanings ranging from the “head, leader” of a social group to
the “New Year”, e. g., “rōš haššānāh” as attested in the Bible (Ez. 40:1)72 should in fact be
opposed to the homonymous “rōš” in reference to the Biblical people.
2.5. The Syriac “Hrōs”
The above philological controversy resists comprehensive explanation, especially if
one recalls the name “Hros” (“Hrōs”) as first attested in the Syriac Chronicle which was
compiled in the 550’s A.D. by an anonymous Syrian writer, Zachariah of Mitylene, com-
monly known as Zacharius Rhetor or Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor. I shall leave aside the
historical validity of a fantastic description of the “Hrōs” along with other legendary tribes
of the Ammazartē, pygmies, dog-men and the like,73 to say nothing of the alleged identifi
65 WÜSTENFELD (ed.) Jacut’s geographisches Wörterbuch p. ٧٧٩.
66 Ibidem p. ٧٨٠; see HAMMER Sur les origine russes p. 27.
67 EDWARD R
OBINSON (ed., transl.) A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, In-
cluding Biblical Chaldee. Boston 1844, p. 964.
68 E. BRÄULICH The well in Ancient Arabia, in: Islamica 1 (1925) pp. 41–47, 288–343, 454–466,
here p. 330; see JOSEF HOROVITZ Koranische Untersuchungen. Berlin, Leipzig 1926, pp. 94–95.
69 While not so numerous, there are some deviating explications of the basic meaning of this
noun. To adduce a less obvious instance, however, one can mention such an authoritative source as
Reinhart Dozy’s “Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes” (REINHART PIETER ANNE DOZY Supplément
aux dictionnaires arabes. Volume 1. Leiden 1881, p. 525) where the noun “rassa” is translated as a
“mine”, although this meaning is not corroborated by not a single example.
70 HAMILTON ALEXANDER ROSSKEEN GIBB [et al.] (eds.) The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New edi-
tion. Volume 1. Leiden 1960, p. 453; HAMMER Sur les origine russes pp. 15, 87.
71 ةرهﺎﻗﻠا .دﻴﺪﺠﻠا دﻬﻌﻝا ﻢﻴﺪﻘﻠا دﻬﻌﻝا ىأ ﺲدﻘﻣﻠاﺐﺎﺘﻜﻠا [The Holy Book, that is, The Old and New Testa-
ments]. Cairo [s.a.], here Ez. 38.2, 39.2.
72 FABRY (ed.) Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament pp. 271–282.
73 The Syrian text is found in ERNEST W
ALTER B
ROOKS (ed.) Historia ecclesiastica Zachariae
Rhetori vulgo adscripta. Paris 1919, p. 215; “And the tribe which lives near them [the Amazons] is
the Harus [Hrus/Hros], tall, big-limbed men, who have no weapons of war, and horses cannot carry
The name “Rus’” 11
cation of the “Hrōs” with Jordanes’ “Rosomoni” as posited by Joseph Marquart.74 Ac-
cording to the latter author, the old name of the Heruli, “Hrōs”, was applied in the 9th
century to the Northmen-Vikings because of their physical resemblance to the erstwhile
Heruli invaders75 thereby demonstrating a direct semantic connection between the form
“Hrōs” and the name of Rus’.76
This view has been recently revived by Alf Thulin77 who assumed that Zacharius
Rhetor, while closely following the Syrian-Christian legend of Alexander the Great,78
identified the Huns with the Magog and attributed to them (the Huns) a neighboring peo-
ple “Hrōs”. Premised also on the oldest Greek Bible translation, Septuagint, Alf Thulin
stated that the latter Syriac word form might be a direct transcription of Biblical “‘Ñò.79
Disregarding a misleading citation of “‘Ñò” instead of the more appropriate form
‘Ñþò, as is found in the Old Testament, the latter hypothesis turns out to be poorly cor-
roborated linguistically. Firstly, it appears tempting to posit the appearance of “hr” word-
them because of the bigness of their limbs” (FREDERICK JOHN HAMILTON, ERNEST WALTER BROOKS
[transl.] The Syriac Chronicle known as that of Zachariah of Mitylene. London 1899, p. 328); for a
German translation, which appeared simultaneously with that of Frederick John Hamilton and
Ernest Walter Brooks in 1899, see KARL AHRENS, GUSTAV KRÜGER Die sogenannte Kirchenge-
schichte des Zacharias Rhetor. Leipzig 1899; cf. NINA V. PIGULEVSKAIA Siriiskie istochniki po
istorii narodov SSSR. Moskva, Leningrad 1941, pp. 165, 166.
74 MARQUART Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge p. 355 ff. Imitatively and less persua-
sively, George Vernadsky (GEORGE VERNADSKY Sur l’origine des Alains, in: Byzantion 16 (1942–
1943) pp. 81–86, here pp. 83–84) postulated the derivation of “Hrōs” from the fist stem in the com-
pound “Rukhs-As” (“the radiant As”); cf. OOss. rūxs/roxs (“light”) in MANFRED MAYRHOFER Ety-
mologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen. Volume 2, number 16. Heidelberg 1994, pp. 463–
464.
75 This approach has been recently implemented, albeit in a somewhat awkward way, by George
D. Knysh (KNYSH Kyiv’s original Rus’ pp. 169 ff.). The latter student mentioned also a well-known
appelative, originating supposedly from Scythia Sindica (to the South of the estuary of the Dnieper),
“Roxolani”, which is purported by him to be in some way linked to the basic form “Rus-a”. George
D. Knysh obviously vacillated between the Indo-Aryan reflex with a typical grade u as in the form
“Rus-a”, and the Old Iranian reflex characterized by the o-grade, which is represented in the term
“Ros”. Interestingly enough, “Indo-Iranian arguments” can also be found in SCHRAMM Die Herkunft
des Namens Rus’ p. 33, who advanced a sophisticated notion of the Indo-Iranian stratum in order to
account for an ancient layer of linguistic data. Thus, the above mentioned “‘Ñùîïëáíïß (Strabo),
“Rhoxolani” (Plinius), “Roxulani” (Sarmatae Tab.), which is traditionally, after D. I. Ilovaiskii’s
suggestion (DMITRII I. ILOVAISKII Razyskaniia o nachale Rusi: vmesto vvedeniia v russkuiu istoriiu.
2e izdanie. Moskva 1882, pp. 171, 273 ff.), interpreted as “raōχšna” +’Áëáíïß”, i.e., “the radiant
Alans” (MAX VASMER Schriften zur slavischen Altertumskunde und Namenkunde. Volume 1. Ber-
lin 1971, p. 147), could hardly be reduced to a purely Iranian form, since the first stem doesn’t
reconstruct clearly in Strabo’s transliteration. The same is likely to hold true of a more ancient
ethnicon, dating from the 2nd to 1st centuries B.C., i.e., “‘Ñåõîßíáëïé (OLEG N. TRUBACHEV
Lingvisticheskaia periferiia drevneishego slavianstva. Indoariitsy v Severnom Prichernomor’e, in:
Voprosy iazykoznaniia 6 [1977] pp. 13–29, here p. 27).
76 Cf. SCHRAMM Die Herkunft des Namens Rus’ p. 33–34.
77 ALF THULIN The southern origin of the name Rus’. Some remarks, in: Les pays du Nord et
Byzance (Scandinavie et Byzance). Actes du colloque nordique et international de byzantinologie
tenu à Upsal 20–22 avril 1979. Ed. Rudolf Zeitler. Uppsala 1981, pp. 175–181, here p. 181.
78 See ANDREW RUNNI ANDERSON Alexander’s Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Inclosed Nations.
Cambridge, MA 1932, pp. 3–9.
79 THULIN The southern origin of the name Rus’ p. 182.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
12
initially in place of the Greek “” with the rough breathing under Armenian influence, if
the addendum in Book XII in the Syriac Chronicle is in fact based on an Armenian source,
e.g., OArm. hroma as a rendition of “‘Ñìá” (“‘Rome’”).80 Secondly, there is another
form, “Herōs”, actually a Greek word “$Çñùåò” (“heroes”), which occurs in the classical
German translation of Karl Arens and Gustav Krüger81 and may be also reconstructed in
the Russian translation of N. V. Pigulevskaia82 who quite purposively introduced “eros”
(Russ. narod eros, literary “the people of eros”). Yet, despite a certain persistency in using
the above word form, it is not clear whether one deals with the Greek term, as first recon-
structed by Karl Arens and Gustav Krüger, or some other transcription, which should be
taken at face value.
If Zacharius Rhetor really relied on an Armenian informant,83 re-producing in the Sy-
riac language Armenian transcription of most legendary names, one has to account for a
vocalic prothesis which, in classical Armenian as in Old Greek, is likely more often than
not to appear before the Indo-European sound *r, be it e (cf. OArm. erek or erekoy [“eve-
ning”], OGr. |ñöùüò [“dark”] next to Goth. rigis [“darkness”]), a (cf. OArm. Arew next
to Skt. ravi [“soleil”]),84 or o (cf. OArm. orcam, Gr. Tñåýãïìáé, Lat. erugere [“belch out,
disgorge”]).85 Yet, and one should admit it, even this could hardly bring to light the origi-
nal form which stands behind four Syriac letters, HRWS, to refer to a people commonly
identified with the Huns. Granted that the vowel-sounding of “wau” in the middle of a
word denotes any long or short u or o,86 a student may build up four combinations,
HRūS/HRŭS, HRōS/HRŏS, which are likely to leave him at a loss as to which one may
prove to be authentic.87 At any rate, vis-à-vis this assertion, one can hardly endorse, with
80 NINA V. PIGULEVSKAIA Imia “Rus” v siriiskom istochnike VI v. n. ė., in: Akademiku Borisu
Dmitrievichu Grekovu ko dniu semidesiatiletiia. Sbornik statei. Moskva 1952, pp. 42–48, here
p. 47; SOLOVIEV Vizantiiskoe imia Rossii p. 135. For Armenian forms rendering Greek words with
an aspirated , see HEINRICH HÜBSCHMANN Armenische Grammatik. Part 1: Armenische Etymolo-
gie. Leipzig 1897, pp. 374–377.
81 AHRENS, KRÜGER Die sogenannte Kirchengeschichte des Zacharias Rhetor p. 253.
82 PIGULEVSKAIA Siriiskie istochniki p. 166.
83 SCHRAMM Die Herkunft des Namens Rus’ p. 34.
84 JULIUS P
OKORNY Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Volume 1. Bern 1959,
pp. 857, 873; MONIER M
ONIER-WILLIAMS A Sanscrit-English Distionary. New edition. Oxford
1899, p. 869.
85 HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL, ROBERT SCOTT A Greek-English Lexicon With a Supplement 1968.
9th edition. Oxford 1977, p. 686; ANTOINE M
EILLET Esquisse d’une grammaire comparée de
l’arménien classique. Vienne 1903, pp. 24–25.
86 CARL BROCKELMANN Syrische Grammatik mit Paradigmen, Literatur, Chrestomatie und Glos-
sar. 5th edition. Leipzig 1938, p. 7; THEODOR N
ÖLDEKE Kurzgefasste Syrische Grammatik. 2nd
edition. Darmstadt 1966, pp. 2, 5.
87 Remarkably, the same holds true of the hypothesis of Karoly Czeglédy (KAROLY CZEGLÉDY
Bemerkungen zur Geschichte der Chazaren, in: Acta Orientalia 13 [1961] pp. 239–251, here p. 243).
While mentioning rather a common rendition of the Greek through hr in Middle Persian, this
author posited the existence of a Pahlavi text as a basis for the Syriac Chronicle of Zacharius
Rhetor. This Persian text, in turn, might have been based on a Byzantine Vorlage. It is noteworthy
that, although sometimes without direct referring, Håkon Stang (STANG The Naming of Russia
p. 104) is heavily premised on Karoly Czeglédy’s views who, among other things, believed that
“Hrōs” was likely to denote not a people, but simply “the Red” (CZEGLÉDY Bemerkungen zur
Geschichte der Chazaren p. 244).
The name “Rus’” 13
out serious reservations, a highly simplified thesis of Omeljan Pritsak that “in the Syriac
adaptation, this Greek term [i.e., “$Çñùåò”] assumed the form Hrōs”.88
2.6. The Byzantine Stemma.
All this allows us then to omit not only the Syriac form(s) but also the Biblical ‘Ñþò
from any further consideration in the present study, thereby challenging a common claim
that the indeclinable form “‘Ñþò” might have produced a new official designation for the
piratic “Rūs”, the name “‘Ñò”, which is also indeclinable.89 This said, we arrive at the
following forms for the Rus’ name in the Byzantine sources: (1) “‘Ñò [rōs] along with
(2) “…ïýóéïé” [rŭs] leaving aside *‘Ñþò [ros]/rōš and *Hrōs as superfluous in this case.
3. The Latin German Records
3.1. The Earliest Evidence
The oldest known forms in the western European sources occur in Latin texts of Ger-
man provenance. Although meticulously analyzed and represented both geographically
and chronologically by A. V. Nazarenko,90 it would be most useful to recall their main
derivative patterns, which may prove decisive in this study.
At first glance, early attestations of the name Rus’ in Old German records are dispro-
portionately multifarious, especially if compared to the Byzantine terms, “‘Ñò” and
…ïýóéïò”, which differ from each other chiefly by the quantity of the root vowel. De-
spite its obvious geographical inconsistencies,91 the so-called “Der Bayerische Geograph”,
commonly known as “Geographus Bavarus”, composed around or before A.D. 90092 for
88 OMELJAN PRITSAK The Origin of Rus’. Volume 1. Cambridge, MA 1981, p. 6.
89 PRITSAK The origin of the name Rus’ p. 47.
90 ALEKSANDR V. NAZARENKO Ob imeni Rus’ v nemetskikh istochnikakh IX–XI vv., in: Voprosy
iazykoznaniia 5 (1980) pp. 46–57; IDEM Drevniaia Rus’ na mezhdunarodnykh putiakh. Mezhduna-
rodnye ocherki kul’turnykh, torgovykh, politicheskikh sviazei IX–XII vv. Moskva 2001, pp. 11–50;
see also MELNIKOVA (ed.) Drevniaia Rus’ pp. 259–406. One should also mention here a contribu-
tion made by Omeljan Pritsak (PRITSAK The Origin of Rus’ pp. 25, 117–122). Remarkably enough,
his study of 1986, while containing valuable material, demonstrates its close dependence on A. V.
Nazarenko’s reasoning and at the same time offers rather bold conclusions. For example, Omeljan
Pritsak (PRITSAK The origin of the name Rus’ p. 50) states that the form “Ruzara-” as attested in the
compound “Ruzaramarcha” in a charter issued 16 June 863 by the East Frankish king Louis the
German (PAUL KEHR [ed.] Die Urkunden der deutschen Karolinger. Volume 1: Die Urkunden Lud-
wigs des Deutschen, Karlmanns und Ludwigs des Jüngeren. Berlin 1934, p. 157) is the genitive
plural of the toponymic suffix -āri. This claim, however, is open to doubt. Firstly, derivatives with
the original German suffix -ari were intrinsically the nominative plural, e.g., “Tannāra, ad Tan-
naron” (“dwellers of the town of Tann”), while the corresponding genitive forms became common-
place much later (WILHELM BRAUNE Althochdeutsche Grammatik. 8th–9th edition. Tübingen 1959,
p. 188; ADOLF B
ACH Deutsche Namenkunde. Volume II, part 2. Heidelberg 1954, pp. 401–402).
Secondly, the vocal -a in “Ruzara-“ is most likely to be interpreted not as a part pertaining to the
flexion but as a mere link element (NAZARENKO Drevniaia Rus’ na mezhdunarodnykh putiakh
p. 17), which is revealing in such parallel suffixal forms as -ario/-ariu/-ari, cf. “in Thuringheimaru
marca” (ca. 821), “Froseri burgoward” (ca. 961) and the like (BACH Deutsche Namenkunde. Vol-
ume II, part 1. Heidelberg 1953, pp. 84–85).
91 MELNIKOVA (ed.) Drevniaia Rus’ pp. 292–293.
92 NAZARENKO Ob imeni Rus’ v nemetskikh istochnikakh IX–XI vv. p. 47.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
14
the use of the Frankish government, mentions for the first time the name Rus’ in the form
“Ruzzi” which follows immediately the name “Caziri”.93 Subsequently, in the 10th to 11th
centuries this name occurs in similarly styled forms like “Rusci” (973), “Ruscia gens”
(960) as found in the “Annales Hildesheimenses” and the “Lamberti Annales”, or “Rus-
ciani” and “Rusii” (“Rusorum naves”) next to “Russii” (“Russorum naves”) in the writ-
ings of Liudprand of Cremona (d. 972), finally “Ruscia” (1009) which is common in the
“Annales Quedlinburgenses”,94 “Ruzia” as attested in the “Vita Stephani Regis Ungariae
edente W. Wattenbach”, or “Ruzzia” (1025, 1032) which is encountered in the “Vita
Chuonradi II. Imperatoris”.95 Of utmost importance is the unique Old High German form
“Ruizi” which occurs under the year 1032 in the “Annales Hildesheimenses” as “dux
Ruizorum” referring to Henry, the son of St. Stephen, baptizer and founder of the Hun-
garian Christian Kingdom (997–1038).96
With regard to word-final (di)graphs in names for the Rus’, arresting attention is the
Chronicon of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (975–1018) which has come down to us in
its autograph. Thietmar resorted to three spelling variants, thus rendering the final conso-
nant with the help of either c as in “Rucia”97 or the digraphs sc as in “Rusciae prius”
(“bishop of Rus’”),98 “Ruscia”,99 “regis[que] Ruscorum Wlodemiri” (“the king of the
Rus’ians [Vladimir]”),100 “rex Ruscorum”, or sz as attested in “Ruszorum regis” (“the king
of the Rus’ians”).101
3.2. The Formative Models
As follows from, in total, 48 attestations of names for Rus’ in Old High German
sources,102 all the extant forms fall roughly into two spelling patterns, i.e., with the final c
as opposed to the final z, thus refuting the claim of Omeljan Pritsak about their inter-
changeability in High German writing practice.103 Moreover, the stemma for the Rus’
name should also account for the above-mentioned Old High German form, “Ruizi”,
which is found in the Annals of Hildesheim. Both final graphs and the so-called umlaut as
rendered by the digraph ui need further consideration in the context of our study.
93 MANFRED HELLMANN Karl und die slawische Welt zwischen Ostsee und Böhmerwald, in: Karl
der Grosse. Lebenswerk und Nachleben. Ed. by Wolfgang Braunfels. Volume 1. Düsseldorf 1965,
pp. 708–713, here p. 713.
94 MGH volume 3, pp. 60, 61, 69, 80, 331, 353(e), 355.
95 MGH volume 11. Hannoverae 1854, pp. 232, 264, 269; see BORIS OTTOKAR UNBEGAUN L’ori-
gine du nom des Ruthènes, in: IDEM Selected Papers on Russian and Slavonic Philology. Oxford
1969, pp. 128–135, here p. 129.
96 MGH volume 3. Hannoverae 1839, p. 98.
97 ROBERT HOLTZMANN (ed.) Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg und ihre Kor-
veier Überarbeitung. Berlin 1935, p. 385.
98 HOLTZMANN (ed.) Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg p. 64; see DAVID A.
WARNER (ed., transl.) Ottonian Germany. The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg. Manchester,
New York 2001, p. 108.
99 HOLTZMANN (ed.) Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg p. 388.
100 Ibidem p. 486; WARNER (ed., transl.) The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg p. 357.
101 HOLTZMANN (ed.) Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg p. 478.
102 NAZARENKO Ob imeni Rus’ v nemetskikh istochnikakh IX–XI vv. p. 51.
103 PRITSAK The origin of the name Rus’ p. 54; cf. NAZARENKO Drevniaia Rus’ na mezhdunarod-
nykh putiakh p. 35.
The name “Rus’” 15
To start with, the graph z (“Ruzi”, etc.) was commonplace in Latin texts originating
from Allemania and Bavaria, while the graph c (“Ruci”, “Rusci”, etc.) used to character-
ize, on the whole, northern Germany. Adopted from the Romance practice to render the
letter ζ in words of Greek provenance, the graph z was introduced to designate two new
dental phonemes which evolved as a result of the second High German consonantal shift:
the affricate /ts/ and the fricative /z/ similar to the modern German /s/ as opposed to the
etymological /s/.104 The graph z which is typical of Old High German styled forms in the
9th to 11th centuries might have served as a substitute for the Slavic /s/ as found in the
self-designation “Rusь”.105 In Old Saxon, however, with a lack of the corresponding spi-
rant, the forms written through the graph z were pronounced with the affricate sound
which, according to the Latin orthographic tradition, was commonly rendered by the
graph c, i.e., “Ruc-” in place of “Ruz-”.106
Deserving special attention is the Old High German hapax legomenon “Ruizi” with the
digraph ui which was sporadically used to render the umlaut (< ū) in the 10th to 12th
centuries, thereby coalescing sometimes with the old diphthong ui. This is why beginning
from the mid-10th to 11th centuries such forms were likely to be ousted by parallel Mid-
dle High German forms with another (mirror-like) digraph like “Riuze”, “Rūze” or “riu-
zesch”/“riuzisch” (“Rus’ian”) with the commonplace iu rendering the corresponding long
or “umlauted” vowel in open stressed syllables.107 From this point of view remarkable is
the locus classicus “Reusse” (< MHG “Reuze”/“Reusze” resulting from the diphthongiza-
tion of the umlaut) as encountered in the official Middle German records of the Slavic
(Polish-Ukrainian) town Ruś108 or in the official title of Russian emperors in the 18th
century, “Kaiser aller Reussen”.109 It is used now sporadically to distinguish, and rightly
so, between “Rus’” (“Reußland”) and “Rossija” (“Rußland”).110
Accordingly, in the late Middle Ages, forms with the umlaut might have come to the
West European peoples via Germany. The Swedish y-quality (cf. “ryss” [“Russian”] is
therefore likely to have originated from German iu [y].111 The latter German vowel is
reflected in a remarkable Arabic lexeme, “brūs” (“ﺲﻮرﺏ”), which, manifesting its mor-
phological similarity with the form “Rūs” (“ﺲﻮﺮ”),112 is found in a traveler’s account
composed in 966 or 973113 by Ibn Ja‘qūb.114 What is remarkable in the form “ﺲﻮرﺏ” is its
104 BRAUNE Althochdeutsche Grammatik pp. 82–83, 151; NAZARENKO Ob imeni Rus’ v nemet-
skikh istochnikakh IX–XI vv. p. 51.
105 NAZARENKO Drevniaia Rus’ na mezhdunarodnykh putiakh p. 49.
106 BRAUNE Althochdeutsche Grammatik pp. 154–156; AGATHE LASCH Mittelniederdeutsche
Grammatik. Tübingen 1974, p. 172.
107 BRAUNE Althochdeutsche Grammatik pp. 42, 47, 56–57.
108 BRONISŁAW CHLEBOWSKI, WŁADYSŁAW WALEWSKI (eds.) Słownik geograficzny Królewstwa
Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich. Volume 10. Warszawa 1889, p. 19.
109 NAZARENKO Drevniaia Rus’ na mezhdunarodnykh putiakh p. 23–24; SCHRAMM Altrußlands
Anfang p. 189.
110 STRUMIŃSKI Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus’ p. 87.
111 THOMSEN Det Russiske riges grundlæggelse ved Nordbœrne pp. 350, 355.
112 EL-HAJJI (ed.) Abū ‘Ubayd Al-Bakrī p. ١٦٨.
113 BERTOLD S
PULER Ibrāhīm Ibn Ja’qūb. Orientalische Bemerkungen, in: JBfGOE 3 (1938) 1,
pp. 1–10, here pp. 9–10.
114 SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ٨٢; BIRKELAND (ed.) Nordens historie i
middelalderen etter arabiske kilder p. 44; FRIEDRICH WESTBERG Beiträge zur Klärung orientalischer
Quellen über Osteuropa (erste Hälfte des Mittelalters), in: Bulletin de l’Académie Impériale des
ANDRII DANYLENKO
16
lengthened vowel ū115 which might reflect an “umlauted” or long vowel in the corre-
sponding Old (High?) German form as attested in the name “Godke Pruceman” (1266) or
“Otto de Prutzen” (1328).116 Diachronically, this assumption looks highly plausible, espe-
cially in view of such later derivatives as “Breusch”, “Preusch”, cf. MLG Prüß(mann).117
It should be also noted that the quality of the German vowel in forms like OHG Ruizi
or MHG Riuze proves that the original Germanic form had a suffix beginning with j-, i.e.,
-jan.118 Since this consonant disappeared in the relevant written forms in the main bulk of
southern dialects in the mid-9th century and in the Bavarian dialect already in the early
9th century,119 one can easily assume that the Old High German, and consequently Old
Lower German, forms for the Rus’ name might have been patterned on the old Slavic self-
designation “rousь with a reflex of the new ū2 not later than at the very beginning of the
9th century.120
As concerns the learned forms “Ruten-” (“Rutenorum rex”) as first attested in the “An-
nales Augustani” under the year 1089121 and “Ruthen-” (“Ruthenorum”) which appears as
early as in the Annalista Saxo (ca. 1139),122 one can easily put them ad acta, inasmuch as
they both originated from the Gallic tribal name in Julius Caesar’s “Commentarii de Bello
Gallico”, “Ruten”.123 The same is likely to hold true of the Vulgar Latin form “Rugi”.124
sciences de St. Pétersbourg. VIIIe série 11 (1899) 4, pp. 211–314, here p. 234. According to Ibn
Ja‘qūb’s account, the “brūs” (“the Prussians”) were, in fact, one of the Germanic tribes. The “brūs”
used to speak a “peculiar language” not known to the neighboring Slavs, and lived somewhere in the
northern Europe, on the shore of the “Circumferential Ocean”, i.e., the Atlantic Ocean, not far from
the Poles ruled by Miškuh (ﻪﻘﺵﻣ) (Mieško I, 962–992) and the Scandinavians (“Rūs”), see SEIPPEL
(ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ٨٣; GEORG J
ACOB (ed., transl.) Arabische Berichte
von Gesandten an gemanische Fürstenhöfe aus dem 9. und 10. Jahrhundert. Berlin, Leipzig 1927,
p. 14; FRIEDRICH W
ESTBERG Ibrāhīm’s-ibn-Ja‘kūb’s Reisebericht über die Slawenlande aus dem
Jahre 965, in: Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des sciences de St. Pétersbourg. VIIIe série 3
(1898) 4, pp. 1–183, here p. 56; see also THOMSEN Det Russiske riges grundlæggelse ved Nord-
bœrne p. 289.
115 MICHAEL JAN DE GOEJE Een belangrijk arabisch bericht over de slawische volken omstreeks
965 n. Ch., in: Verslagen en mededeelingen der koninklijke Akademie van wetenschappen Afdeel-
ing letterkunde. 2. Reeks 9 (1880) pp. 187–216, here p. 203.
116 BACH Deutsche Namenkunde. Volume I, part 1. Heidelberg 1952, pp. 256, 260.
117 MAX GOTTSCHALD Deutsche Namenkunde. Berlin 1954, p. 472.
118 NAZARENKO Ob imeni Rus’ v nemetskikh istochnikakh IX–XI vv. p. 53.
119 BRAUNE Althochdeutsche Grammatik pp. 110–112.
120 NAZARENKO Ob imeni Rus’ v nemetskikh istochnikakh IX–XI vv. p. 53.
121 MGH volume 3 p. 133.
122 MGH volume 6. Hannoverae 1844, p. 770.
123 HEINRICH MEUSEL (ed.) C. Iulii Caesaris Commentarii De Bello Gallico. 19th edition. Vol-
ume 1. Berlin 1961, I/45:2, VII/5:1, 64:6, 75:3, 90:6. Unusual as it may seem at first glance, the
form “Ruthenia”, i.e., *Ruthānīya, was reconstructed by Peter B. Golden (GOLDEN The question of
the Rus’ Qağanate) for the Arabic “ﺔﻴﻧﺎﺜﺮا” as encountered in al-Iþ¾aôrī’s “Masālik al-mamālik”
(“Viae regnorum”, ca. 951) (BGA 2nd edition. Volume 1: Viae regnorum. Descriptio ditionis mos-
lemicae auctore Abu Ishák al-Fárisí al-Istakhrí. Leiden 1927, p. ٢٢٦). The latter book is based on al-
Balôī’s writings (SEIPPEL [ed.] Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici pp. 15–16, ٥٦; BIRKELAND
[ed.] Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder p. 29) and recounts about a so-called
“third tribe” of the Rus’ along with “ﺔﺏﺎﻴﻮﻜ” and “ﺔﻱﻮﻼﺼ”. Contrary to the latter terms, which are
generally identified as Kiev [Kyiv] and the Slovenes in the Novgorod area respectively (FRÄHN Ibn-
Foszlan’s und anderer Araber Berichte pp. 145–149, 170, 257, 264; FRANCISZEK KMIETOWICZ Ar-
tāniya-Artā, in: Folia Orientalia 14 [1972/1973] pp. 231–260), the “third name” *Arthāniya still is
The name “Rus’” 17
3.3. The Latin Stemma
Thus we are left with two derivative patterns depending primarily on the quality of the
root vowel: 1) “Ruzi”/“Ruci”/“Rusci” with the graph u rendering tentatively a plain vowel
and 2) “Ruizi”/“Riuze” with the umlaut resulting from the long ū. Taken chronologically,
the second pattern precedes most likely the first model, especially if one accounts for the
relative chronology of the shortening of the new Slavic ū2.125 The final consonant *-t as
postulated for a hypothetical basic root *Rūt(j)-126 has no significance in the quest for the
etymology of the name “Rus’”. As A. V. Nazarenko127 himself pointed out, all similar re-
constructions has so far proved to be unrealistic and are likely to come to naught in future.
Hence, the stemma of the Rus’ name in the Latin German records may be reduced to
the following forms: 1) „Ruizi“/„Riuze“/„Rūze“ [ū] and 2) „Ruzi“/„Ruci“/„Rusci“ [ŭ]. As
for *Ruten/Ruthen-, *Rug-, and other learned forms they fall conspicuously outside the
scope of the Varangian-Rus’ian controversy.
4. The Arabic Records
4.1. The Earliest Evidence
The first, although indirect mention of the Rus’ in Islamic records occurs in an account,
which dates from the 6th century but is documented in the Chronicle of Íabaristān from
the earliest times to H. 881 (A.D. 1476).128 This Chronicle was composed by a Persian
statesman and historian, Ôahir al-Dīn Mar‘ashī (b. A.D. 1412) not in the end of the 14th
not clear, despite manifold interpretations of this name (for a survey, see NOVOSELTSEV Vos-
tochnye istochniki o vostochnykh slavianakh p. 417; ALF THULIN “The Third Tribe” of the Rus, in:
Slavia Antiqua 25 [1978] pp. 99–139; KONOVALOVA Sostav rasskaza ob “ostrove rusov” pp. 169–
189). As concerns Peter B. Golden’s *Ruthānīya which is modeled on the Arabic “Armānūs”
(“ﺲﻮﻧﺎﻣﺮا”) for the Byzantine Greek Ñùìáíüò (see BIRKELAND [ed.] Nordens historie i middelal-
deren etter arabiske kilder p. 33), the author bases his transcription on the fallacious Arabic form
*ﺲﻮﻧﺎﻣﺮا instead of “ﺲﻮﻧﻣﺮا” (“Armanūs”) (SEIPPEL [ed.] Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici
p. ٦٠). To adduce another example, one can cite Alf Thulin’s reading *Urmāniya (“Northmen”)
which is patterned on the West Arabic form “al-urmān” (“ﻦﺎﻣﺮﻷا”), see “Kitāb al-ğa‘rāfija” (“Liber
geographiae”, ca. 1155) in SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici pp. 30, ٣٨;
MA·AMMAD HADJ-SADOK (ed.) Kitāb al-dja‘rāfiyya. Mappemonde du calife al-Ma’mūn reproduite
par Fazārī (IIIe/XIIe s.) rééditée et commentée par Zuhrī (VIIe/XIIe s.). Damas 1968, pp. 202, 232,
259, 269. Of interest here is ad-Dimašqī’s (1256–1327) account of four “kinds” (“سﺎﻧﺝا”) of the
Rus’, i.e., “ﺔﻴﺮکارﻜ”, “ﺔﻱﻮﻼﺼ”, “ﺔﻴﻧﺎﺜﺮا” and “ﺔﻴﺻارﺏ” (MEHREN [ed.] Cosmographie de Chems-ed-Din
Abou Abdallah Mohammed Ed-Dimichqui pp. ٢٦١٢٦٢). The above classification is obviously a
later interpretation of ancient information (BORIS N. ZAKHODER Kaspiiskii svod svedenii o Vos-
tochnoi Evrope. Volume 2. Moskva 1962, p. 103).
124 NAZARENKO Drevniaia Rus’ na mezhdunarodnykh putiakh p. 45–48; cf. PRITSAK The origin of
the name Rus’ pp. 57–60.
125 GEORGE Y. SHEVELOV A Prehistory of Slavic. Heidelberg 1964, pp. 276–279, 506–507.
126 NAZARENKO Ob imeni Rus’ v nemetskikh istochnikakh IX–XI vv. p. 56; PRITSAK The origin
of the name Rus’ p. 65.
127 NAZARENKO Drevniaia Rus’ na mezhdunarodnykh putiakh p. 50.
128 HAMMER Sur les origines russes pp. 50, 111.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
18
century as was fallaciously posited long ago by Christian Martin Frähn129 but in the begin-
ning of the 15th century. The mentioned account, with an apparently anachronistic use of
the term “Rūs”,130 reads that at the coronation of the ruler of the areas around Derbent he
was acknowledged as having authority over the lands of the Rus’, the Khazars, and the
Slavs (“ﺐﻼﻘﺴ ﺮزﺥ ﺲﻮﺮ كﻼﻤا”).131
More reliable attestation of the Rus’ (cited twice) is found in Íabarī’s (838–923) multi-
volume Arabic Chronicle which was translated, in a shortened version, into Persian by
Belamī in the 10th century. There is in this text particular information related to an Arabic
war waged in 644 by the Rus’, Khazars, Alans, and Balanğars.132 A comparison with the
Arabic original shows, however, that the term “Rus’” might have been inserted in the text
by the translator or a copyist,133 although the full text of Íabarī’s Chronicle is likely to
have contained specific data about the Rus’.134
One may therefore wish to rely on those Islamic sources, which furnish more convinc-
ing and profuse evidence about the earliest Scandinavian colonizers, commonly identified
with the Rus’, who together with the East Slav, Finno-Ugric, and Turkish (the Bulghārs
and Khazars) peoples, could have taken part in the formation of the Rus’ Kaganate along
the Volga trade route.135 The anti-Normanists, however, are accustomed to quote liberally
from Ibn òurdāÜbeh’s “Kitāb al-masālik wa’l mamālik” (“Liber viarum et regnorum”, ca.
849/850) in order to refute the above possibility, thus strengthening the theory of Slavic
129 FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan’s und anderer Araber Berichte p. 38; cf. AVRAAM IA. GARKAVI [ALBERT
HARKAVY] Skazaniia musul’manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh (s poloviny VII veka do
kontsa X veka po R. Kh.). S.-Peterburg 1870, p. 79, fn. 3.
130 STEFAN SÖDERLIND The realm of the Rus’: A contribution to the problem of the rise of the
East-Slavic kingdom, in: PER STURE URELAND, IAIAN CLARKSON (eds.) Scandinavian Language
Contacts. Cambridge, New York 1984, pp. 133–170, here p. 151.
131 HAMMER Sur les origines russes p. 111; FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan’s und anderer Araber Berichte
pp. 36–37.
132 STIG WIKANDER Orientaliska källor till vikingatidens historia, in: Historisk tidskrift 1 (1963)
pp. 72–79, here p. 77; NOVOSELTSEV Vostochnye istochniki o vostochnykh slavianakh pp. 360–
362, 364–365.
133 GARKAVI Skazaniia musul’manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh pp. 79–80; BORIS A.
DORN Caspia. Über die Einfälle der alten Russen in Tabaristan, nebst Zugaben über andere von
ihnen auf dem Caspischen Meere und in den anliegenden Ländern ausgeführten Unternehmungen.
St. Petersburg 1875, pp. xliii–l. One can cite, for instance, the following most illustrative passage
from the French translation of the Persian version: “Je me trouve entre deux ennemis: les Khazars et
les Russes” (HERMANN ZOTENBERG Chronique de Abou-Djafar-Mo‘hammed-ben-Djarīr-ben-Yezid
Tabari, traduite sur la version persane d’Abou-‘Ali Mo‘hammed Bel‘ami. Volume 3. Paris 1871,
p. 496; cf. GARKAVI Skazaniia musul’manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh p. 74). As has been
mentioned, the Arabic Vorlage does not contain any mention of the Rus’, although the Khazars are
in the focus of the chapter, devoted to the Arabic war against Azerbajdzhan (MICHAEL JAN DE GOEJE
[ed.] Annales quos scripsit Abu Djafar Mohammed at- ibn Djabir Tabari. Prima series. Volume V.
Leiden 1893, pp. ٢٦٦٢٦٦٢).
134 NOVOSELTSEV Vostochnye istochniki o vostochnykh slavianakh p. 362.
135 DANIIL A. KHVOLSON Izvestiia o khozarakh, burtasakh, bolgarakh, madiarakh, slavianakh i
russakh Abu-Ali Akhmeda ben Omar Ibn-Dasta. S.-Peterburg 1869, p. 23; GARKAVI Skazaniia
musul’manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh p. 267; SMIRNOV Volz’kyi shliakh i starodavni
rusy p. 118 ff.; PRITSAK The Origin of Rus’ pp. 26–28, 182, 583.
The name “Rus’” 19
origin of the Rus’.136 However, the information about the Rus’ (“ﺲﻮﺮ”) provided by this
geographer is not clear at all. Moreover, according to B. N. Zakhoder,137 who undertook
an extensive comparative study of the relevant Arabic sources, this information should be
treated as the corollary of a “complicated and naïve compilation of two different attesta-
tions”.
Suffice it to note that the corresponding data about the Rus’ as a kind of Slavic people
are mostly concentrated in a chapter which deals with two groups of international traders,
i.e., the Jewish Radanites and the Rus’ merchants,138 and could have been inserted in the
text much later by one of the copyists.139 It is also noteworthy that the Jewish Radanites
and the Rus’ merchants are conspicuously confused in the text of Ibn òurdāÜbeh. All this
made Michael de Goeje introduce some changes in the translation of the corresponding
passage.140 Furthermore, two historiographic facts are likely to influence linguistic inter-
pretation of the corresponding word form as evidenced not only in the writings of Ibn
òurdāÜbeh but also in other Arabic (or Persian) sources. To start with, the first reliable
attestation of the form “ﺲﻮﺮ ” dates back several years earlier in comparison with Ibn
òurdāÜbeh account on the Rus’ and Slavs in 849/850.141 Already in his “Kitāb sūrat al-
arñ” (“Book of the picture of the Earth”), which was compiled between 836 and 847 and
came down to our time in the copy of 1037, Ibn Mūsā al-òuwārizmī (d. 835/855), while
commenting on the Greek name for “the country of Germany”, adds “and it is [also] the
country of the Slavs”.142 What is more remarkable, he mentions also “the Rus’(ian)
mountain” (“ﺲﻮﺮ ﻞﺏﺠ”).143 In this respect, A. V. Novosel’tsev144 quite reasonably draws a
parallel with the anonymous Persian geography entitled “·udūd al-‘Ālam” (“The Regions
of the World”, ca. 982). The latter geography cites “the Rūs mountain”145 purportedly
located to the north of “the Inner Bulghārs” which should be identified, according to A. V.
Novosel’tsev, with the Volga Bulghārs.146
136 KHVOLSON Izvestiia o khozarakh, burtasakh, bolgarakh, madiarakh, slavianakh i russakh
p. 78 ff.; GARKAVI Skazaniia musul’manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh p. 54; OLEKSII PE-
TROVYCH TOLOCHKO, PETRO P. TOLOCHKO Kyivs’ka Rus’. Kyiv 1998, p. 44; see especially IRINA G.
KONOVALOVA Les Rūs sur les voies de commerce de l’Europe orientale d’après les sources arabo-
persanes, in: Les centres proto-urbains russes pp. 395–408, here pp. 395–400.
137 ZAKHODER Kaspiiskii svod svedenii o Vostochnoi Evrope p. 86.
138 BGA volume VI: Kitâb al-masâlik wa’l-mamâlik auctore Abu’l-kâsim Obaidallah ibn Abdal-
lah Ibn Khordâdhbeh. 1889, pp. ١٥٢١٥٥.
139 WESTBERG Beiträge zur Klärung orientalischer Quellen über Osteuropa p. 285; NOVOSELTSEV
Vostochnye istochniki o vostochnykh slavianakh p. 382.
140 ZAKHODER Kaspiiskii svod svedenii o Vostochnoi Evrope p. 89.
141 KONOVALOVA Les Rūs sur les voies de commerce de l’Europe orientale p. 396.
142 MŽIK (ed.) Das Kitāb sūrat al-arñ des Abū Ğa’far Muhammad Ibn Mūsā al-òuwārizmī p. ١١٥.
143 Ibidem p. ١٣٦.
144 NOVOSELTSEV Vostochnye istochniki o vostochnykh slavianakh pp. 373–374.
145 VLADIMIR MINORSKY (ed.) ·udūd al-‘Ālam. ‘The Regions of the World’. A Persian Geogra-
phy. 372 A.H. – 982 A.D. London 1937, p. 160.
146 Strangely enough, Tadeusz Lewicki (LEWICKI Źródła arabskie do dziejów słowiańszczyzny
pp. 13–39) who published excerpts from al-òuwārizmī’s geographical work omitted the account on
“the Rus’ian mountain”. Håkon Stang (STANG The Naming of Russia pp. 181–182) has recently
advanced a new reading of this name. Based on another attestation of this mountain, “ﺲﻮﺮ ا ﻞﺏﺠ
(MŽIK [ed.] Das Kitāb sūrat al-arñ des Abū Ğa’far Muhammad Ibn Mūsā al-òuwārizmī p. ١١٧), he
assumed that the author could have mistakenly taken the “ا” for an initial hamza, i.e., “أ”,
ANDRII DANYLENKO
20
4.2. Al-Mas‘ūdī on the *al-lūd‘āna
Al-Mas‘ūdī, one of the most prolific and successful Arabic polymaths and geographers,
was inclined to compare the Rus’, designated in Spanish Arabic as “al-mağūs” (“the pa-
gans”), with the Old Norsemen: “The Rus’ [consists of] several different nations of di-
verse kinds; one of them is called *al-lūd‘āna [ﻪﻧﺎﻋﺪﻮﻠﻠا]”.147 The rationale for this recon-
structing may be well explained by Joseph Marquart’s148 hypothesis who took al-lūÜāna,
used in the mid-10th century by al-Mas‘ūdī in his “Al-Murūğ aÜ-Üahab [...]” (“Venae
auri”, ca. 943–947),149 to be a corrupted rendition of the Spanish Latin counterpart “Lor-
doman-” < “Nordoman-”,150 inasmuch as al-Mas‘ūdī’s information originated most likely
from a Spanish source. Joseph Marquart supported this assumption by providing another
characteristic misspelling in al-Mas‘ūdī’s “Kitāb at-tanbīh wa’l-išrāf” (“Liber commoni-
tionis et recognitionis”, ca. 946), that is, “al-kūÜkāna” (“ﻪﻧﺎﻜﺬﻮﻜﻠﻠا”),151 which, together with
“al-lūd‘āna”/“al-lūÜāna”, might allegedly stand for the original form like *al-lurdumā-
na/*al-lordomāna.152
The above reconstruction proves to be historically quite plausible. Hence it comes as
no surprise that a similar form was first attested in the information relating to an attack of
the Old Norsemen (Danes or Norwegians)153 against the coast of Western Andalusia in
971, as described by Ibn al-‘IÜārī, a 13th-century Arabic historian.154 The latter historian
“arūs”/”urūs”, although, according to Håkon Stang, the form “arūs” might have reflected a “faint
pronunciation” of the sound [h] before the word-initial [r], cf. Zacharius Rhetor’s “Hrōs”. This is
why Håkon Stang proposed to dismiss this passage from the description of Eastern Europe. Yet this
suggestion appears highly conjectural and designed chiefly in the spirit of wishful thinking, cf. also
Håkon Stang’s (STANG The Naming of Russia pp. 181–182) interpretation of the Arabic “سﻮﺏﺮﺪ” as
“D.rīūs”, a transcription of Danapros, i.e., the Don river; cf. BORIS A. RYBAKOV Russkie zemli po
karte Idrisi 1154 goda, in: Kratkie soobshcheniia Instituta istorii material’noi kul’tury 43 (1952)
pp. 3–44, especially pp. 12–13.
147 SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ٦١; SEMEN RAPOPORT Mohammedan
writers on Slavs and Russians, in: The Slavonic (and East European) Review 8 (1929/1930) pp. 80–
98, here p. 89.
148 MARQUART Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge pp. 348–349.
149 BIRKELAND (ed.) Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder p. 30.
150 D. A. Khvol’son (KHVOLSON Izvestiia o khozarakh, burtasakh, bolgarakh, madiarakh, slavi-
anakh i russakh p. 167; see ZAKHODER Kaspiiskii svod svedenii o Vostochnoi Evrope pp. 89–90)
seems to be first to derive this peculiar (corrupted) Arabic form from the name, referring originally
to the Northmen, of the type “nūrmāna” (“ﺔﻧﺎﻤﺮﻮﻧ”) (cf. FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan’s und anderer Araber
Berichte pp. 71, 174). Strangely enough, Joseph Marquart developed this idea even without saying a
word about D. A. Khvol’son’s hypothesis (cf. VLADIMIR MINORSKII [MINORSKY] Kuda iezdili drev-
nie rusy?, in: Fontes orientalis ad historiam populorum Europae Meridie-Orientalis atque Centralis
pertinentes. Moskva 1964, pp. 19–27, here p. 25.
151 BGA volume VIII: Kitâb at-tanbîh wa’l-ischrâf auctore al-Masûdî. Leiden 1894, p. ١٤١;
SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. 18.
152 It is noteworthy that Joseph Marquart himself later rejected this explanation, a fact taken no
account of by subsequent interpreters of the above misspellings, see PRITSAK At the dawn of Chris-
tianity in Rus’ p. 88, fn. 6; STRUMIŃSKI Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus’ pp. 157–158.
153 TATIANA M. KALININA Arabskie uchenyie o nashestvii normannov na Sevil’iu v 844 g., in:
Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy. 1999 g., pp. 190–210, here p. 209.
154 REINHART PIETER ANNE DOZY Recherches sur l’histoire et la litérature de l’Espagne pendant le
moyen age. 3rd edition. Volume 2. Leiden 1881, p. 298.
The name “Rus’” 21
called the Old Norsemen “al-urdumānījūn” (“نﻮﻴﻧﺎﻣدرﻷأ”),155 a form which is explained by
the loss of the initial n in *an-nurdumānījūn, similar to the loss of l in *al-lišbūna >
“išbūna” (“Lisbon”).156 According to Joseph Marquart, the Arabic form with the charac-
teristic amalgamation of the al- article with the name and the absorption/loss of the initial
consonant was first attested in the Spanish Latin “Chronicon Albeldense” under the year
850 and the year 866: “Eo tempore Lordomani [Nortmanos intellige] primi in Asturias
venerunt”,157 cf. also Lormanes as represented in “Chronicon Lusitanum” under the year
1016: “Æra 1054. Octavo Idus Septembris venerunt Lormanes ad Castellum Vermudij,
quod est in Provincia Bracharensi”.158
4.3. The West Arabic Evidence
The Rus’ (ﺲﻮﺮﻠا) could hardly have been well known among the Arabic geographers in
the early Middle Ages. In this respect, Ibn al-‘IÜārī’s attestation as cited above is most
telling, since the Rus’ are not mentioned either in the works of al-Bakrī (1068), Abu’l-
Fidā’ (1331), or an-Nuwajrī (14th century).159 However, another Arabic (Egyptian) author,
al-Ja‘qūbī (d. 897), described in his “Kitāb al-buldān” (“Liber regionum”, 891)160 the
attack of the Norsemen on the then Arabic city of Sevilla via the fluvial route (Guadal-
quivir) in 844: “The northern pagans [ﺲﻮﺝﻣﻠا] who are called Rūs [ﺲﻮﺮﻠا ﻢﻬﻝ ﻞﺎﻗﻴ] entered it
[Sevilla] in the year 229 [i.e., 843–844] and they took prisoners and ravaged and burned
and murdered”.161 Yet, this passage is generally treated as a kind of misunderstanding
(also to be found in al-Mas‘ūdī’s “Kitāb at-tanbīh wa’l-išrāf”,162 ca. 946,163) because the
155 SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ٣١.
156 ANDRII DANYLENKO [Review of] Bohdan Strumiński: Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus’:
Northmen, Finns, and East Slavs (Ninth to Eleventh Centuries). Edmonton, Toronto 1996, in: Har-
vard Ukrainian Studies 21 (1997) 1–2, pp. 197–200, here p. 199.
157 Chronicon Albeldense (llamado tambien Emilianense) escrito en el año 883. Y continuando en
el de 976, in: HENRIQUE FLOREZ [ENRIQUE FLÓREZ] España sagrada, theatro geografico-histórico de
la Iglesia de España. 2nd edition. Volume 13: De la Lusitania Antigua en comun, y de su Metropóli
Mérida en particular. Madrid 1816, pp. 417–466, here pp. 453, 454.
158 Chronicon Lusitanum, in: FLOREZ España sagrada. Volume 14. Madrid 1905, pp. 402–419,
here p. 404; see MARQUART Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge p. 349.
159 BIRKELAND (ed.) Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder p. 119.
160 BGA 2nd edition. Volume VII: Kitâb al-a‘lâk an-nafîsa VII auctore Abû Alî Ahmed ibn Omar
Ibn Rosteh et Kitâb al-boldân auctore Ahmed ibn abî Jakûb ibn Wâdhih al-Kâtib al-Jakûbî. Leiden
1892, p. ٣٥٤; SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. 10.
161 The English translation is based here on the corresponding passage in RAPOPORT Moham-
medan writers on Slavs and Russians p. 82. As for a translation made recently by Bohdan Strumiń-
ski (STRUMIŃSKI Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus’ p. 85), it contains a mistake in the year of
Hiğra. An exhaustive survey of this account in different Arabic sources, see in KALININA Arabskie
uchenyie o nashestvii normannov.
162 See § 4.2.
163 A similar, almost verbatim description is found in the history of the Arabs in Spain, authored
by J. A. Conde (JOSE ANTONIO CONDE Historia de la dominacion de los Arabes en España, sacada
de varios manuscritos y memorias Arabigas. Madrid 1874, p. 74), who, with regard to the original
habitat of the “mağūs”, wrote: “[...] los Magioges [al-mağūs], gentes fieras habitadores de las últi-
mas tierras Boreales”. A detailed account of this event is found in the history compiled in the 10th
century by Ibn al-Qūtīya (d. 977 in Cordoba) (see DOZY Recherches sur l’histoire et la litérature de
l’Espagne pp. lxxviii–lxxxi, for the French translation, see pp. 259–264) and in al-Maqqarī’s “Nafç
a÷-÷īb [...]” (“Aura odoramenti [...]”), composed in the 16th century on the basis of the “Kitāb al-
ANDRII DANYLENKO
22
Arabs of Spain (and northern Africa) would not call the Norsemen “Rus’”, a name, how-
ever, commonly used by the Arabs in the east.164
However, it is obvious that the term “al-mağūs” appeared in Spain no later than in the
9th century. As a well-known ancient word among the population of Iran who were
mostly adherents of Zoroastrianism, it should have lost its original meaning, “magician”,
and become a vague term for infidels in general, as was the case with the Norsemen. Ara-
bic writers of Spain might have borrowed this word from the Cordoba envoys165 to the
mu÷rib min aš‘ār ahl al-maŸrib” (“Liber gaudium afferens ex carminibus Occidentis”) composed by
Ibn Diçja (1149–1235) (REINHART PIETER ANNE DOZY [et al.] [eds.]. Analectes sur l’Histoire et la
Littérature des Arabes d’Espagne, par al-Makkari. Volume 1. Leiden 1855, pp. ٢٢٢٢٢٣). The
English translation of this passage was first undertaken by Pascual de Gayangos (PASCUAL DE
GAYANGOS The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain; extracted from the Nafhu-t-tíb
min Ghosni-l-Andalusi-r-Rattíb wa Táríkh lisánu-d-dín Ibni-l-Khattíb, by Ahmed ibn Mohammed
Al-Makkarí. Volume 2. London 1843, p. 116); a totally revised translation has been recently offered
by Håkon Stang (STANG The Naming of Russia pp. 152–153). The identification of the “mağūs”
with the Rus’ is not explicitly revealed in other accounts of this event (see DOZY Recherches sur
l’histoire et la litérature de l’Espagne pp. 250–267), e.g., in al-Bakrī’s description of the Northern
Africa (1068) (MAC GUCKIN DE SLANE [ed.] Description de l’Afrique septentrionale, par El-Bekri,
in: Journal asiatique ou recueil de mémoires d’extraits et de notices relatif à l’histoire, à la philoso-
phie, aux langues et à la littérature des peuples orientaux. Ve série 12 [1858] pp. 412–534; 13
[1858] pp. 97–194, 310–416, 467–519; 14 [1858] pp. 117–152, here 13 [1858] p. 169).
164 EVARISTE L
ÉVI-PROVENÇAL Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane. Volume 1. Le Caire 1944,
p. 152 ff. Joseph Marquart (MARQUART Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge pp. 386 ff.)
assumed that al-Ja‘qūbī could have heard of the raid by “al-mağūs” through the Mediterranean in
859, when some scattered groups of Vikings had penetrated as far as Alexandria (see DOZY Recher-
ches sur l’histoire et la litérature de l’Espagne p. 264). This assumption, in turn, is patterned on the
hypothesis of V. I. Lamanskii (VLADIMIR I. LAMANSKII Istoricheskie zamechaniia k sochineniiu: “O
slavianakh v Maloi Azii, v Afrike i v Ispanii”, in: Uchenye zapiski vtorogo otdeleniia Imperatorskoi
Akademii nauk 5 (1859) pp. 1–227, here p. 50). The latter student ascribed the words “who are
called Rūs” to a later copyist who most likely transcribed the book in 1262 (GARKAVI Skazaniia
musul’manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh pp. 67–71; LEWICKI Źródła arabskie do dziejów
słowiańszczyzny pp. 270–271). Of utmost interest here is the following expression: “but God knows
best” (“ﻢﻝﻋا ﻪﻠﻠاﻮ”) as a cautious surmise expressed by al-Mas‘ūdī as to the ethnic origin of the attack-
ers.
165 Among them, according to al-Maqqarī (1591–1632), who in his turn derived most of his data
from the work of Ibn Diçja (1149–1235) (see also fn. 163), was Jaâjā Bakrī, known under the nick-
name “Ÿazāl”, literally “gazelle” (d. 864), a successful diplomat and a renowned poet of Andalus
(DOZY [et al.] [eds.] Analectes sur l’Histoire et la Littérature des Arabes d’Espagne pp. liii–liv;
GAYANGOS The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain p. 116). As a special emissary of
the Umajjad Amīr ‘Abd ar-Raâmān II (822–852), Jaâjā Bakrī undertook several important missions,
in particular a journey to Constantinopole. After the armistice between ‘Abd ar-Rahmān and the
Norsemen, he traveled, in the company of Vikings, as far north as the Norse-dominated Dublin
kingdom under Olaf the White. Yet, the corresponding account appears fictional (LÉVI-PROVENÇAL
Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane p. 127). It is not, therefore, accidental that this “mağūs” land was
metaphorically labeled by Jaâjā Bakrī in his poem as “the farthest of God’s lands, where the way-
farer seldom penetrates” (“ﻪﻝﻝا دﻼﺒ ﻰﺼﻗا”) (DOZY [et al.] [eds.]. Analectes sur l’Histoire et la Littéra-
ture des Arabes d’Espagne p. ٦٣١; SEIPPEL [ed.] Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ١٨; see
STANG The Naming of Russia p. 157). A French translation of this passage was offered by Reinhart
Dozy (DOZY Recherches sur l’histoire et la litérature de l’Espagne pp. 269–278). Harris Birkeland
The name “Rus’” 23
Byzantines. The latter had much earlier inherited the word “ìÜãïò from the ancient
Greeks who, in the mid-1st millennium B.C., were active members of the ever-shifting
pattern produced by the interactions between Asiatic, Iranian, Mesopotamian and other
traditions and peoples.166 Subsequently, the Byzantines might have identified the Scandi-
navians with the magi which lost direct connection with the title for the hereditary priests
of (western) Iran. As for the Arabs, they tried to introduce the word “al-mağūs” in the
context of an authentic traditional legend stating that the mağūs will come from the north
(with the traditions of north- and central-Asiatic shamanism?)167 and plunder Spain every
200 years.168 This exegesis might have first appeared quite natural, especially if we recall
the adoration of fire, comparable to Zoroastrianism, among the Rus’ as described by the
Arabic geographers, for instance, by Ibn Fañlān (ca. 922)169 or al-Idrīsī (1099–1166) who
mentions a “country of the infidels” (“ﺲﻮﺝﻣﻝا ﺾﺮا”) five times (!) in the fourth section of
the seventh climate and one time in the third section of the sixth climate in his “Kitāb
Ruğār” (“Liber Rogerii”, ca. 1153).170
Thus, early West Arabic sources knew not the term “Rūs”, commonly used in the East-
ern Arabic world, but the name “mağūs” which tended to be subsequently ousted by the
form “al-urmān” (“ﻦﺎﻣرﻷا”; “the Norsemen”) (cf. “al-urmānīja” [“ﺔﻴﻧﺎﻣرﻷا”; “the country of
the Norsemen”]) as found, for example, in the anonymous “Kitāb al-ğa‘rāfija” (“Liber
(BIRKELAND [ed.] Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder pp. 83–88, especially p. 87)
seems to have premised his Norwegian text on Reinhart Dozy’s translation.
166 PETER KINGSLEY Greeks, Shamans and Magi, in: Studia Iranica 23 (1994) pp. 187–198, here
p. 195.
167 IDEM Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic. Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. Ox-
ford 1995, pp. 226–227.
168 MARQUART Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge p. 385.
169 AHMED Z
EKI V
ALIDI[-BONN] TOGAN (ed.) Ibn Fañlān’s Reisebericht. Leipzig 1939, pp. ٢,
٩٣٥٣٩, 188–189, 236–237.
170 “Les Russes brûlent leurs morts et ne les enterrent pas [...]” (JAUBERT [ed., transl.] Géographie
d’Edrisi p. 402; for the Arabic text, see Al-Idrīsī Opus Geographicum p. 918). Having analyzed
relevant place names on al-Idrīsī’s map, Richard Ekblom (RICHARD EKBLOM Les noms de lieu bal-
tiques chez Idrīsī, in: Mélanges de Philologie offerts à M. J. J. Mikkola. À l’occasion de son
soisante cinquième anniversaire le 6 Juillet 1931. Helsinki 1931, pp. 14–21) assumed that the coun-
try of al-mağūs was most likely situated both on the Latvian and Lithuanian territories, which by
that time were retaining some archaic traditions, in particular the cult of Perkūnas. According to Ta-
deusz Lewicki (LEWICKI Źródła arabskie do dziejów słowiańszczyzny pp. 163–164), this country
may be located somewhere in the Galician Rus’ (Ruś halicka), although the hypothesis of Oiva
Johannes Tallgren-Tuulio and Aarne Michael Tallgren (OIVA JOHANNES TALLGREN-TUULIO, AARNE
MICHAEL TALLGREN [eds.] Idrīsī. La Finlande et les autres pays Baltiques orientaux [Géographie
VII, 4]. Édition critique. Helsingforsiae 1930, pp. 79–87) who identified “al-mağūs” with the
Rus’inized Norsemen in the Novgorod area, appears more plausible. Overall, the identification of
“al-mağūs” with the infidels as suggested by al-Idrīsī clearly testifies that the notion of “al-mağūs”,
especially in reference to the Norsemen on the shore of the Baltic Sea, was most likely losing its
primordial meaning. It comes then as no surprise that, as recounted by Ibn Diçja in the 13th century,
“the mağūs abandoned the worship of fire and the [corresponding] religion, and returned to Christi-
anity save for the inhabitants of some of their islands in the sea” (see SEIPPEL [ed.] Rerum norman-
nicarum fontes arabici p ١٥). A German translation, which contains a few vague places, may be
found in Georg Jacob (JACOB [ed., transl.] Arabische Berichte p. 38); an updated Norwegian trans-
lation by Harris Birkeland (BIRKELAND [ed.] Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder
p. 84) appears more reliable.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
24
geographiae”, ca. 1150),171 and other similar West Arabic sources.172 The form “al-urmān”
underwent most likely two divergent interferences, which might have happened almost
concomitantly. At first, the latter form could have followed the pattern as realized in the
Frankish name for the Norsemen, “Nortmanni”, “Nordmanni”,173 “Normanni”, etc.174 A
while later, the Arabic form “al-urmān” should have led to parallel Spanish-Latin deriva-
tives like “Lordomani”, “Lodormani”, “Lormani”, a process which is likely to have taken
place upon the absorption of the article in “al-urmān” > “Lurmani”/“Lormani”175 with a
subsequent dissimilative interpretation of the word-initial sound in “Normanni” – “Lor-
mani” or “Nortmanni” – “Lordomani”.176
171 SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ٣٩; HADJ-SADOK (ed.) Kitāb al-
dja‘rāfiyya pp. 202, 232, 259, 269. Interestingly enough, the latter edition, which is based on the
Parisian manuscript of 1410 (see DOLORS BRAMON El mundo en el siglo XII. Estudio de la version
castellana y del “Original” Árabe de una geografía universal: “El tratado de al-Zuhrī”. Barcelona
1991, p. xiv), contains another reading, i.e., “ﺔﻴﻧﻴﻣرأ” (“Great Armīnīja”). The characteristics of this
city/country appear rather contradictory. However, what is important in the corresponding passage
(HADJ-SADOK [ed.] Kitāb al-dja‘rāfiyya p. 231) is that, although the inhabitants of this enigmatic
country were used to travel southwards, their homeland was situated in the north.
172 The interplay between the term “mağūs” and the form “urmān” in the Western Arabic tradition
can be most instructively illustrated by peculiar collocations of chronologically incongruent terms in
some compounds or noun phrases. As for the compounds, not typical on the whole of the Arabic
language system, one can mention a hapax in “Kitāb at-tanbīh wa’l-išrāf” (“Liber commonitionis et
recognitionis”) composed by al-Mas‘ūdī in 946 (BGA volume VIII: Kitâb at-tanbîh wa’l-ischrâf
auctore al-Masûdî p. ١٨١), “ﺲﺠﻧﺎﻣرا” (“urmānğus”) denoting, as it becomes obvious from the text, “a
kind [ﺲﻧﺝ] of Frankish people” (“ﺔﻱﺠﻧرﻔﻻا”), cf. Byzantine “ÖñÜããïé” and East Slavic “frjagove”
(“Franks”) in the Laurentian recension of the Primary Chronicle (Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei
[hereafter PSRL]. Volume 1: Lavrentevskaia letopis’ i Suzdal’skaia letopis’ po akademicheskomu
spisku. 2e izdanie. Leningrad 1926, p. 2; see LEWICKI Źródła arabskie do dziejów słowiańszczyzny
pp. 95–96, 120–121; SEIPPEL [ed.] Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. 7). Of interest also is a
rather remarkable collocation, “al-mağūs al-urdumānijūn” (“ﻦﻮﻱﻧﺎﻣﺪﺮﻷا ﺲﻮﺝﻣﻠا”) which is found in the
account of Ibn al-‘IÜārī (SEIPPEL [ed.] Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ٣١; BIRKELAND [ed.]
Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder p. 111) of the invasion of the Danes (or Nor-
wegians?) into Spain in 971 (DOZY Recherches sur l’histoire et la litérature de l’Espagne p. 298).
This renowned geographer does not only identify “al-mağūs” with “al-urmān” but also places them
somewhere in northern lands, presumably, in the Scandinavian Peninsula.
173 MGH volume 3 pp. 277, 331; cf. FLat. Nordomanni as attested in the “manuscript B” of the
“Annales de Saint-Bertin” from the Saint-Omer Library (DEHAISNES [ed.] Les Annales de Saint-
Bertin p. 59).
174 THULIN “The Third Tribe” of the Rus pp. 136–137.
175 SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. 7; BIRKELAND (ed.) Nordens historie i
middelalderen etter arabiske kilder p. 152, fn. 18; STRUMIŃSKI Linguistic Interrelations in Early
Rus’ pp. 157–158.
176 There is an interesting hapax, “murmān” (“ﻦﺎﻣرﻣ”), which is used in Ibn Ja‘qūb (SEIPPEL [ed.]
Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ٨٢; EL-HAJJI [ed.] Abū ‘Ubayd Al-Bakrī p. ١٥٨; WESTBERG
Ibrāhīm’s-ibn-Ja‘kūb’s Reisebericht p. 39; JACOB [ed., transl.] Arabische Berichte p. 11) in refer-
ence to the Norsemen. The conjecture “germān” as proposed by Michael Jan de Goeje (GOEJE Een
belangrijk arabisch bericht p. 193; see BIRKELAND [ed.] Nordens historie i middelalderen etter ara-
biske kilder p. 143, fn. 10; cf. WESTBERG Ibrāhīm’s-ibn-Ja‘kūb’s Reisebericht p. 158), thus referring
to the Germans appears perfunctory at its core and, remarkably, has remained so far unknown to
most contemporary Muslim scholars; see the preface of, to use the author’s own transliteration,
Abdurrahman Ali El-Hajji to his edition of Al-Bakrī’s “Geography of al-Andalus and Europe” (EL-
The name “Rus’” 25
4.4. The East Arabic Evidence
Returning to the term “rūs” as used in the Eastern Arabic world, one should keep in
mind the difference between two Rus’s. On the one hand, there was the Volga Rus’ Kaga-
nate177 identified by the Arabic writers of the “second Oriental tradition” (according to
Pavlo Smirnov) in the 8th to 10th centuries, e. g., by Ibn Rusteh in his “Kitāb al-a‘lāq an-
nafīsa” (“Liber ornamentorum pretiosorum”, ca. 903–913),178 as an isle – ةرﻱزﺠﻠأ (al-ğazīra
“isle” = “peninsula”)179, which was inhabited by multiethnic tribal groupings, in particular
Scandinavians, Iranians and others.180 On the other hand, the appearance of the Outer
Rus’, as evidenced first in Constantine Porphyrogenitus and much later in works pertain-
ing to the “third Oriental tradition”, can be tentatively associated with the rise of the
Kievan Rus’ which might have been instigated in the 9th century by the penetration of the
Volga Rus’ into the central part of the Dnieper basin.181 Although only the Outer Rus’ was
recorded in Old Rus’ian and Byzantine chronicles, there are some archaeological
HAJJI [ed.] Abū ‘Ubayd Al-Bakrī pp. ٢٦٢٨). There is, in fact, reason to assume that the Arabic
form “murmān” might have been borrowed in ESl. Murmane (“Norwegians”) as used most naturally
in oral speech, cf. “Murmanъ”, a part of the Arctic Ocean (from which the name of Murmansk on
the Kola Peninsula comes (MAX VASMER Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Volume II. Hei-
delberg 1955, p. 176). The colloquial form “Murmane” could have evolved (by distant n-m > m-m
assimilation) from the learned form “Nurmane” modeled in its turn to Latin “Normanni”. Yet all
this could hardly take place in the 15th century, as was posited by Bohdan Strumiński (STRUMIŃSKI
Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus’ p. 157) with regard to “murmane” in the First Novgorodian
Chronicle of the mid-15th century (under the year 1240, 1241, or 1412) (ARSENII N. NASONOV [ed.]
Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis’ starshego i mladshego izvodov. Moskva, Leningrad 1950, pp. 77,
291, 403; cf. “the Murman People” in ROBERT MICHELL, NEVILL FORBES [transl.] The Chronicle of
Novgorod 1016–1471. [n. p.] 1970, pp. 84, 181). The corresponding transformation is likely to have
happened much earlier before the emendation of “murmane” (< “nurmane”) to “urmane” as found in
the Primary Chronicle (written in 1113–1116) (PSRL volume 1: Lavrentevskaia letopis’ pp. 2, 7; cf.
the emendation “nurmany” as adduced in 1926 by Karskij in his edition of the Primary Chronicle).
One has therefore to distinguish between two learned forms, which penetrated into the vernacular of
Old Rus’ian, “murmane” (< “nurmane”) patterned on Lat. Normanni, and “urmane” which came to
be attested/emended later under the influence of the counterpart WArab. al-urmān.
177 Cf. GOLDEN The question of the Rus’ Qağanate.
178 BGA Volume VII: Kitâb al-a‘lâk an-nafîsa VII auctore Abû Alî Ahmed ibn Omar Ibn et Kitâb
al-boldân auctore Ahmed ibn abî Jakûb ibn Wâdhih al-Kâtib al-Jakûbî p. ١٤٥.
179 See also § 2.2.1.
180 GARKAVI Skazaniia musul’manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh p. 262; MARQUART Ost-
europäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge p. 200; SMIRNOV Volz’kyi shliakh i starodavni rusy pp. 80,
120 ff.
181 See also fn. 32. KONOVALOVA Les Rūs sur les voies de commerce de l’Europe orientale pp.
400–403, 404–405. In this respect, of utmost interest are chronicled accounts about a long military
contest between, on the one hand, the Poliane, who were later, along with some other tribes, to be
wholly identified with the Kyivan [Kievan] Rus’, and, on the other hand, the Derevliane and Ulichi.
Their struggle may be treated as a conflict between the “Rus’ian outsiders” from the Volga Kaga-
nate and the autochthonous Slavs. Under the pressure of the Rus’, the bulk of the Ulichi tribe might
have moved northwestwards (VSEVOLOD H
ANTSOV Dialektolohichna klasyfikatsiia ukraїns’kykh
hovoriv. Kyiv 1924, pp. 135 ff.). If this is true, the dialects of Podillia (Podolia) and Halych
(Galicia) are basically Ulichian in their origin and, therefore, appear “more Ukrainian” as compared
to the tribal basis of the Kyiv-Polissia dialects, see GEORGE Y. SHEVELOV A Historical Phonology of
the Ukrainian Language. Heidelberg 1979, p. 208.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
26
grounds182 to assume the possibility that both Rus’ were known not only to the ancient
East Slavs183 and the Byzantines but also to the Arabs, who were inclined to mark down
their venue as far as in the South-Eastern Ladoga area, or even further northwards.184
4.5. The Arabic Stemma
In view of the two phonological patterns as attested both in the Middle Greek and Latin
German texts, it is tempting to suggest the existence of two similar designations for the
Rus’ in Middle Arabic, which is known to possess both short [ŭ] and long [ū], the latter
being rendered by the letter “” “wāw” (mater lectionis). Harris Birkeland185 was first to
take heed of a passage in the Geographical Dictionary of Jāqūt (d. 1229) who cited two
forms of one and the same designation for the Rus’, i.e., “rūs” (“ﺲﻮﺮ”) with the long ū
and “rŭs” with the short ŭ: “ﻮاﻮ رﻱﻐﺒ ﺲﺮ ﻢﻬﻝ ﻞﺎﻘﻴﻮ ”, literally, “and they are [also] called rus
without wāw”.186 Unfortunately, save Jāqūt’s evidence dating from the first quarter of the
182 JOHAN CALLMER From West to East. The Penetration of Scandinavians into Eastern Europe ca.
500–900, in: Les centres proto-urbains russes pp. 72–94, here pp. 73–86.
183 This assumption is corroborated by Nestor’s account which, while traditionally distinguishing
between Japheth’s, Ham’s, and Shem’s descendents, enumerates, among other of Japheth’s descen-
dents, two kinds (tribes, peoples) of the Varangians: “The Varangians dwell on the shore of that
same sea [Varangian sea], and extend to the eastward as far as the portion of Shem. They likewise
lived to the west beside this sea as far as the land of the English and the French” (PSRL volume 1:
Lavrentevskaia letopis’ p. 2; for the English translation, see SAMUEL H. CROSS, OLGERD P. SHERBO-
WITZ-WETZOR [eds., transl.] The Russian Primary Chronicle. Laurentian Text. Cambridge, MA
1973, p. 4). In other words, the Scandinavian Varangians dwelled not only on the shore of the Baltic
Sea, but also “sĕmo”, that is “over here”, where the chronicler himself lived, as far as the frontiers
of the steppe powers, the (Volga-)Bulghārs and Khazars.
184 AHMED ZEKI VALIDI[-BONN] TOGAN Die Nordvölker bei Bīrūnī, in: Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 90 (1936) 15, pp. 38–51.
185 BIRKELAND (ed.) Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder p. 82; see SÖDERLIND
The realm of the Rus’ p. 157.
186 WÜSTENFELD (ed.) Jacut’s geographisches Wörterbuch p. ٨٣٤. The form with the short ŭ (ﺲﺮ)
as cited by Jāqūt should not be confused with two groups of homographs, conveying either geo-
graphical or religious (fabulous) meanings. To take the latter group as an instance, its conceptual
sphere is immediately represented by the name “a÷âāb ar-rass” (“سرﻝا بﺎﺣﺻا”), which, as has been
outlined (see § 2.4), occurs twice in the Qur’ān. As concerns the so-called geographical homonyms,
one can mention here Jāqūt’s “valley ar-Rass” (“ﻦﺎﺝﻱﺏرذا ىداﻮ سرﻝا”) (see § 2.4) and “the river ar-
Rass” (“سرﻝا رﻬﻧ”), i.e., the Araxes (modern Aras), which flows into the Kura river (ﺮﻜﻠا) in the
southeastern Caucasus (WÜSTENFELD [ed.] Jacut’s geographisches Wörterbuch pp. ٧٧٩, ٧٨٠; see
also al-Mas‘ūdī’s account in BGA volume VIII: Kitâb at-tanbîh wa’l-ischrâf auctore al-Masûdî.
p. ٦٢). In this respect, arresting attention is al-Idrīsī’s “Opus geographicum” which reveals two
spellings, both with and without the definite article, cf. “سرﻝا رﻬﻧ” (Al-Idrīsī. Opus geographicum.
Part 4. Neapoli, Romae 1974, p. 422) next to “سر رﻬﻧ” (Al-Idrīsī. Opus geographicum. Part 7. Nea-
poli, Romae 1977, p. 830). In the Cosmography of ad-Dimašqī (1256–1327) one encounters both
types of the homonyms, e.g., “the river ar-Rass” (“سرﻝا رﻬﻧ”), that is, the Araxes (KONRAD MILLER
Arabische Welt und Länderkarten des 9.–13. Jahrhunderts in arabischer Transkription und Übertra-
gung in neuzeitliche Kartenskizzen. Volume 4: Asia, part 2: Nord- und Ostasien. Stuttgart 1929, p.
57, see maps 37, 38; IDEM Mappae Arabicae. Ed. by Heinz Gaube. Part 1. Wiesbaden 1986, pp. 135,
136, 137, 138, 141), and the legendary tribal name, “ar-rass” (“سرﻝا”) (MEHREN [ed.] Cosmographie
de Chems-ed-Din Abou Abdallah Mohammed Ed-Dimichqui pp. ١٠٦, ٢٥٠; FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan’s
und anderer Araber Berichte p. 38). It is noteworthy that as early as 1827, while identifying the
“Rha” (cf. “‘ÑA” in the Geography of Ptolomey), i.e., the Volga (cf. GOTTFRIED SCHRAMM Nord-
The name “Rus’” 27
13th century, this peculiar form is not attested in Arabic geographical literature elsewhere.
However, apart from some linguistic arguments accounting for a possible quick loss of the
form with the short ŭ,187 the distribution, as represented by Jāqūt, appears trustworthy.
There is therefore solid ground for reducing all the known attestations of this name
predominantly in the Eastern Arabic sources to the following stemma: 1) “ﺲﻮﺮ ” [rūs] as
opposed to the less attested 2) “ﺲﺮ ” [rŭs].
5. Synthesizing the Stemmas
5.1. Borrowing from East Slavs?
Bohdan Strumiński188 assumed that had the Greeks borrowed the term “Rus’” directly
from the East Slavs, we would expect *…ïýò in Greek. A notable Normanist, this author
contended that the Greeks must have borrowed the term through the medium of the lan-
guage of the Alans, inasmuch as in this language OIrn. au (= Sl. ou) changed to ō, hence
the Byzantine form “‘Ñò. Yet, had the Greeks really borrowed the term “Rusь directly
from the East Slavs, the corresponding Greek rendition would not necessarily be a form
like *…ïýò-. It is useful to recall here that the Slavic u tended to be represented in north-
ern Middle Greek renditions with the help of ù [o], cf. Óôñþìíç (Parnassis) vs. Sl. *Stru-
menь, Óôñùìßíéáíç (Akarnanien) vs. Sl. *Strumenjane,189 cf. etymologically parallel
…å‡ìá with eu-grade. It is certainly not coincidental that Max Vasmer, while empha-
sizing that Old Finnic renditions of Sl. u contained ō, hence uo, identified the Byzantine
spelling ïs ‘Ñò with ESl. Rusь.
Nonetheless, given that Greek was not sensitive to the length of Slavic vowels, the sec-
ond Byzantine form with u (ïõ) can represent a case of rendering Sl. u of various origins,
including non-etymological or even borrowed u, cf. ËïõêÜâéôóá (Elis) from Sl. *Luko-
vica: “lukъ” (“leek”) (< Gmc. lauka-), Óôñïýæá (Arcada) from Sl. *Stružja190 next to Gr.
pontische Ströme. Namenphilologische Zugänge zur Frühzeit des europäischen Ostens. Göttingen
1973, p. 118, fn. 307.), with the “Ros”/“Ras” (STANG The Naming of Russia pp. 72–73), Joseph de
Hammer (HAMMER Sur les origines russes pp. 50–51) assumed that “a÷âāb ar-rass”/the “Ros” were
the people living on the Volga, that is, the Rus’ who are traditionally situated between the Khazars
and the Slavs. Later Friedrich Knauer (FRIEDRICH K
NAUER Der russische Nationalname und die
indogermanische Urheimat, in: Indogermanische Forschungen 31 (1912/1913) pp. 67–88) expanded
on this idea, although without saying a word about Hammer’s hypothesis. He observed, among other
things, that the name “Rus’” (< *ros) originated from the ancient name for the Volga river, thus
denoting the “Volga people”. All this is likely to support B. N. Zakhoder’s assumption about “سرﻝا
رﻬﻧ” (cf. MINORSKY [ed.] ·udūd al-‘Ālam p. 75) as a case of later compilation (ZAKHODER Kaspi-
iskii svod svedenii o Vostochnoi Evrope pp. 105–106).
187 In rendering an East Slavic form like “Rusь” with the final jer [ĭ] the Arabic form “rŭs”
(“ﺲﺮ“) fits seemingly well phonetically. Yet, while a palatalized final consonant in “Rusь” [rŭs’ĭ] is
not relevant to the Arabic phonetics, the East Slavic form may appear nevertheless anomalous since
it obviously contradicts a derivatively typical triconsonantal root, hence a more natural, from the
point of view of the Arabic morphophonetics, basic (derivative) form like “rūs” (ﺲﻮﺮ).
188 STRUMIŃSKI Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus’ pp. 82–83.
189 MAX VASMER Die Slaven in Griechenland. Berlin 1941, p. 239 ff.
190 GEORGE Y. SHEVELOV A Prehistory of Slavic p. 278; see also ANDRII DANYLENKO The Names
of the Dnieper Rapids in Constantine Porphyrogenitus revisited. An Attempt at Linguistic Attribu-
tion, in: Die Welt der Slaven 46 (2001) 1, pp. 43–62, here 44–45, 49.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
28
óôñåýãù (“to be exhausted, worn out, weary oneself”).191 Moreover, Gr. u (ïõ) could
correspond to the etymological Slavic o, although largely in unstressed positions, e. g.,
ÌïõôóÜñá (Trikkula) from Sl. *Močara and the like.192
Overall, there seem to be substantive grounds for assuming that the form “…ïýóéïò
could have most likely arisen at the time of, or soon after the monophthongization of u-
diphthongs in East Slavic. Thus, phonetically, “…ïýóéïò may actually represent the cor-
responding Rus’ian name with u < ū2, which in turn evolved from an ou-diphthong.
Meanwhile, one cannot dismiss the possibility that the above Byzantine spelling could
have been influenced by some orthographic patterns already generalized by the second
half of the 10th century in Middle Greek. It is, then, instructive to posit that both “‘Ñò
[rūs] and “…ïýóéïò” [rŭs] represent consecutive stages in the phonetic development of
Slavic u-diphthongs, in particular with ou-grade, which monophthongized into an ū-type
sound. In absolute chronology, the monophthongization in Slavic might have taken place
in the 6th or 7th century, although, theoretically, the process could have come to an end a
bit later, depending on a specific dialectal area.193 Based on this chronology, it is therefore
conceivable that not only the Byzantine but also Western-European (Latin German) ren-
dition of both the ū- and u-grade forms fell behind as compared to the corresponding
Slavic changes. This fact can provide additional support to the northern origin of the term
“Rus’”, which might have spread from the Baltic people to the Outer Rus’, then on to the
Germans, Greeks, and subsequently to the Arabs.
If this assumption is true,194 one can hardly adhere then to Omeljan Pritsak’s hypothe-
sis195 about the Rhenish provenance of the Arabic counterpart “ar-rūs” (“ﺲﻮﺮﻠا”) which
was allegedly borrowed as early as the mid-9th century and subsequently used by Ibn
òurdāÜbeh. This hypothesis, however, demands further consideration, and may account
for other data, in particular those excerpted from the writings of Ibn Mūsā al-òuwāriz-
mī.196 All these data should be analyzed structurally,197 thus exposing historical pattern of
191 LIDDELL, SCOTT A Greek-English Lexicon p. 1654.
192 VASMER Die Slaven in Griechenland pp. 240, 234.
193 See SHEVELOV A Prehistory of Slavic p. 238.
194 KNUT-OLOF FALK Kilka uwag o nazwie Ruś, in: Lingua Poznaniensis 12/13 (1968) pp. 9–19,
here pp. 16–19; IDEM Einige Bemerkungen zum Namen Rusĭ, in: Les pays du Nord et Byzance
(Scandinavie et Byzance), pp. 147–159, here 153–155.
195 PRITSAK The origin of the name Rus’ p. 57.
196 See § 4.1.
197 An overly atomistic approach can result in precarious etymologies which are prone to lose
subsequently their vitality. Of interest in this respect is the Red-Blond-People hypothesis of Stefan
Söderlind (SÖDERLIND The realm of the Rus’ pp. 156–157), according to whom “Rusь” is etymol-
ogically connected with Goth. *rauþs (“red”), and belongs to the Proto-Indo-European stem *roudh-
so- or *reudh-so- (“red”) as represented by the Russian adjective “rusyj” (“light brown”) or Lith.
raũdas (“red” of horses) (see JAN OTRĘBSKI Noch einmal über Rusь, in: Die Welt der Slaven 11
(1966) 1–2, pp. 220–223, here pp. 221–222; POKORNY Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörter-
buch pp. 872–873). Without any reference to his predecessor, Håkon Stang (STANG The Naming of
Russia p. 297) has recently outlined an almost identical theory. According to him, the Gothic word
might have resulted in the 5th to 7th centuries in *rōtsi. At first glance, the Red-Blond hypothesis
appears plausible, especially in light of a similar Arabic derivative form as encountered, for in-
stance, in al-Mas‘ūdī’s “Kitāb at-tanbīh wa’l-išrāf” (“Liber commonitionis et recognitionis”, 946),
where “rūsyā” (“ﺎﻱﺴﻮر”) means “the red”: “رﻣﺣﻝا ﻚﻠذ ﻰﻨﻌﻣ” (BGA volume VIII: Kitâb at-tanbîh wa’l-
ischrâf auctore al-Masûdî p. ١٣١). Yet due to active contacts between the Greeks and Arabs one is
The name “Rus’” 29
relations among the attested forms in the Byzantine, Latin German, and Arabic sources,
all approached in their connection to the East Slavic underlying form. This is why, taken
from the developmental perspective, the term “Rus’” as encountered in the above groups
of records attests most obviously to its borrowing from the East Slavs. Historical doublets
in Middle Greek, Latin/Old High German, and Arabic to render the corresponding East
Slavic name should be treated as adaptation of consecutive reflexes of an u-diphthong in
the underlying form, i.e., (ou >) ū and, finally, u.
5.2. Irradiation From the North or From the South?
The basic East Slavic form, however, could hardly be indigenous. This thesis has been
most consistently defended by the Normanists, especially by the disciples of the so-called
“Lund Theory” which derives ESl. Rusь from BFinn. *rōtsi. A classical etymology of the
latter word form was first adduced in 1877 by Vilhelm Thomsen,198 who derived the
BFinn. *rōtsi from ONord. *rōþsmenn or *rōþskarlar (“rowers, seafarers”). This etymol-
ogy underwent substantial revision by Sven Arnold Ekbo199 who offered instead a plausi-
ble form *rōđR with the abstract meaning “rowing/naval expedition” which, as was
pointed out by Bohdan Strumiński,200 belonged to the realm of fiction. In strictly geo-
graphical terms, the “Lund Theory” marks the spread of the alleged *rōđR from north to
south, or, more precisely, to southeast: i.e., from the Western Finns via Rus’ and Byzan-
tium to the Arab world: *rōtsi – “Rusь” – “‘Ñò” – “ar-rūs”.201
The opposite direction is discernable in a theory propounded by O. N. Trubachev.202
While postulating for the “Rus’” an underlying form like OIAr. *ruksa-/ru(s)sa- or OIr.
*rux-, he claims that southern (Rus’ian) reflexes of these forms were quite pervasive, by
the 6th to 7th centuries, not only in the Pontus region, that is, on the northern coast of the
Black Sea and on the sea of Azov, but also among the Slavs living on the Don and
Dnieper. Among such reflexes, one can cite *russi as a result of consonantal assimilation
in contrast to a more archaic form retaining a word-final “affricate”: *ruksi or *rutsi.203 In
the face of serious counter-arguments, outlined by Gottfried Schramm,204 the Trubachev
more inclined to accept not the alleged Gothic “Red-Blond center”, but the interplay between vari-
ous factors, first and foremost the influence of the medieval form “…ïýóéïò” (“reddish”) (LIDDELL,
SCOTT A Greek-English Lexicon p. 1575; see BIRKELAND [ed.] Nordens historie i middelalderen
etter arabiske kilder pp. 40, 142, fn. 157).
198 THOMSEN Det Russiske riges grundlæggelse ved Nordbœrne p. 346.
199 SVEN ARNOLD EKBO Om ortsnamnet Roden och därmed sammanhängande problem. En över-
sikt från nordisk synpunkt, in: Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 70 (1958) pp. 187–199; IDEM Die Ety-
mologie des finnischen Ruotsi ‘Schweden’, in: JBfGOE 34 (1986) 3, pp. 354–356.
200 STRUMIŃSKI Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus’ p. 78; cf. FALK Einige Bemerkungen zum
Namen Rusĭ p. 148.
201 FALK Kilka uwag o nazwie Ruś p. 19.
202 TRUBACHEV Lingvisticheskaia periferiia drevneishego slavianstva pp. 13–29; see IDEM Indo-
arica v Severnom Prichernomor’e. Rekonstruktsiia reliktov iazyka. Ėtimologicheskii slovar’. Mo-
skva 1999.
203 TRUBACHEV Lingvisticheskaia periferiia drevneishego slavianstva pp. 266, 246.
204 Based on the relative chronology of palatalizational processes in Old Rus’ian, Gottfried
Schramm (SCHRAMM Die Herkunft des Namens Rus’ p. 32; IDEM Altrußlands Anfang pp. 89–90,
102–103) treated quite reasonably O. N. Trubachev’s (TRUBACHEV Lingvisticheskaia periferiia
drevneishego slavianstva p. 225) enigmatic “vernacular and dialectal simplification ks > s(s)” as
purely hypothetical. Indeed, the very existence of a southern form with the cluster ts, like *Rutsь, in
ANDRII DANYLENKO
30
theory could hardly compete with the Normanistic thesis of the spreading of a single un-
derlying form, and it fails to account for the historical doublets in Middle Greek,
Latin/Old High German and Arabic.
Eliminating the above etymologies, one is left with the following hypothesis: ESl. Rusь
is likely to have originated from the Baltic Finnic form *rōtsi, denoting outsiders.205 The
Suomi form was introduced by the Finns to refer to those East Slavic tribes (e. g., the Po-
liane and Slovĕne) which were tribute takers in the region. Later, as a social nomen, this
form was applied to the Norsemen, and even to the West Slavs from the Baltic coast, who
together with the East Slavs assumed the role of retinue members.206 A designation similar
to *rōtsi is lacking in both East and West Scandinavian. Had such a designation existed in
Old Scandinavian, a loan form in Slavic would have been modeled to a plural pattern of
the type “Varjazi” (“varangians”), “Svei”/“Svoje” (“Swedes”) or “Ourmane” (“North-
men”; “Swedes”), “Gъte”/“Gotě” (“Gotlanders”), “Anъglęne”/“Aglęne” (“Englishmen”)
as attested in abundance in the Primary Chronicle of Rus’.207
The most illuminating argument is morphological (derivational). In the process of bor-
rowing, a semantic-morphological shift from the Baltic Finnic singular to the Old East
Slavic feminine collective occurred, based on the model of names of other social and
ethnic groups, such as “Chiudь” for the ancestors of the Estonians, “Vesь”/“Vsь” (<
“Vьsь”, Finn. vepsäläinen [“Vepsian”]) for the ancestors of the Vepsians, all attested next
to “Rusь” in both the Laurentian and Hypatian Chronicles, cf. also “Permь” (“Permians”)
(Finn. permalainen [“Permian”]), “Iamь” (“Iemь”) (“Tavastians”) (Finn. hämäläinen
[“Tavastian”]).208 The corresponding derivational pattern in -jь seems to be common in
the 6th to 7th centuries proves to be untenable inasmuch as the above consonantal group in the
reflex *Rutsi was inadmissible in Slavic until the disintegration of Common Slavic (ANDRÉ
VAILLANT Grammaire comparée des langues slaves. Volume 1. Paris 1950, pp. 84–85). On the
whole, the final consonant in the underlying form appears a true stumbling block in some deviating
etymologies. To adduce an explicit example, one can mention the latest attempt of Lothar Dralle
(LOTHAR DRALLE Artanija – Ruś – Varjagi, in: JBfGOE 33 (1985) 1, pp. 1–22, here p. 18 ff.) to
derive the term “Rus’” from the name of the ancient inhabitance of the isle Rügen, i.e., “Rugini”
(730), cf. also “Runi”, “Ruani”, “Rugiani”, “Rujani”, “Rojani”, and finally “Rani”. Contrary to Lo-
thar Dralle, his predecessors were more cautious in connecting these forms with the name of the
Rus’ (see LUBOR NIEDERLE Slovanské starožitnosti. Series 1. Volume 3: Původ a počátky slovanů
západních. Praha 1919, p. 147–149).
205 G. F. KOVALEV O proiskhozhdenii ėtnonima “Rus’”, in: Studia Slavica Finlandensia 111
(1986) pp. 68–90, here pp. 79–80.
206 “Rousь [...] otъ roda Vęręzheska soushche” (“s Tê ãÝíïõò ôí ÖñÜããùí êáèßóôáíôáé”)
(VASILII M. ISTRIN Khronika Georgiia Amartola v drevnem slavianorusskom perevode. Tekst, issle-
dovanie i slovar’. Volume 1. Petrograd 1920, p. 567; volume 2. Petrograd 1922, p. 289).
207 PSRL volume 1: Lavrentevskaia letopis’ pp. 2, 7; PSRL volume 2: Ipatevskaia letopis’. 2e iz-
danie. S.-Peterburg 1908, p. 4.
208 THOMSEN Det Russiske riges grundlæggelse ved Nordbœrne p. 346. Regular correspondences
of this type fit well into the Thomsen-Shakhmatov formula, most explicitly put forward by A.
Shakhmatov (ALEKSEI A. SHAKHMATOV Skazanie o prizvanii Variagov, in: Izvestiia Otdeleniia
russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti 9 [1904] 4, pp. 284–365, here pp. 339–340) in his famous study about
the so-called invitation of the Varangians: “The form Rusь, as Thomsen pointed out, relates to Ru-
otsi [rōtsi] in very much the same vein as Old Russian [Old Rus’ian] Sum’ [...] correlates with Fin-
nish Suomi”. A similar equation is emphasized in NIEDERLE Slovanské starožitnosti. Series 1. Vol-
ume 4: Původ a počátky slovanů východních. Praha 1924, p. 111.
The name “Rus’” 31
East Slavic ethno- and toponymics,209 and there it proves also to be extremely productive
when adopting the ethnic names of Finno-Ugric tribes, as well as the names of peoples
borrowed from Finno-Ugric languages, where the suffix -i after a palatalized consonant (=
East Slavic -ь after a palatalized consonant) is a common morphological characteristic:
“Vodь”, “Sumь”, “Samoiadь”, “Libь” and the like210 alongside “Žmudь” (“Lithuanians”),
Skifь (“Scythians”), and “Surь” (“Syrians”), all demonstrating presumably “some asso-
ciation” in the language of the Primary Chronicle between the feminine singular ending
and an earlier stage of social organisation.211 In the oldest layer of such ethnic names, the
term “Rus’” seems to be the only one to refer to a Slavic people, a fact which, taken to-
gether with the pertinent historiographic and archaeological data, speaks for the Baltic
coast as a center of irradiation of the BFinn. *rōtsi. The latter transformed into the East
Slavic form “Rūsь”, and later into “Rusь”, which both, in subsequent waves, spread over
the trade routes leading to the Caspian and Black seas before reaching possessions of both
the Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid caliphate.
6. Concluding Remarks
The origin of the name “Rus’” as discussed in the framework of what was aptly dubbed
by Arist Kunik “barangomachía”,212 has obviously resisted comprehensive explanation so
far. The variety of solutions suggested by different scholars testifies to an impasse in the
etymologizing of this term, a procedure which is chiefly reduced to a multiple choice
decipherment. To draw a parallel with linguistic methods proper, the situation with the
interpretation of the term “Rus’” is reminiscent of the Neogrammarian approach as culti-
vated in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. Premised mostly on sound changes triggered
by analogous reasons, the Neogrammarian trend was compelled, nevertheless, to give
place to the structural standpoint which discarded the atomistic approach by paying more
attention to the relationships between language entities.
It becomes obvious, then, that most of the attempts at solving the long-standing Nor-
manistic controversy remained, to use linguistic terminology, Neogrammarian at their
core. This warrants a new, structural interpretation of seemingly well-known stemmas for
the “Rus’” name as found in the Byzantine, Latin German, and Arabic records. As has
been already mentioned, it would be useful in this case to give up searching for an ety-
mology of the underlying form(s). As a matter of fact, even the boldest etymologies are
apt to appear reiterative, and hardly any new idea can be advanced for further scholarly
209 In this respect, of interest is another form, “Donь” (“Denmark”), which occurs in the First
Novgorodian Chronicle under the year 1131, 1134, and later as a parallel form to “donьskaja zem-
lja” (NASONOV [ed.] Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis’ pp. 23, 207, 445; MICHELL, FORBES [transl.]
The Chronicle of Novgorod 1016–1471 p. 13; ALEKSANDR I. SOBOLEVSKII Die slavischen Benen-
nungen deutscher Volksstämme, in: Archiv für slavische Philologie 32 [1911] pp. 309–310, here
p. 309). Incidentally, both Gottfried Schramm (SCHRAMM Die Herkunft des Namens Rus’ p. 38;
IDEM Altrußlands Anfang p. 93) and his critic, Håkon Stang (STANG The Naming of Russia p. 280,
fn. 7), mistook the form “Donь” for an ethnonym.
210 LAMANSKII Istoricheskie zamechaniia pp. 39–40, see PSRL volume 1: Lavrentevskaia letopis’
pp. 5, 7–7v; tom 2: Ipatevskaia letopis’ p. 4.
211 PAUL BUSHKOVITCH Rus’ in the ethnic nomenclature of the Povest’ vremmenykh let, in: Cahier
du monde Russe et Soviétique 13 (1971) 3, pp. 296–306, here p. 304.
212 ARIST A. KUNICK [KUNIK] Zur Literatur der Warangomahía (1859 – März 1874), in: DORN
Caspia. Über die Einfälle der alten Russen in Tabaristan, pp. 279–284; MOSHIN Variago-russkii
vopros pp. 109–115.
ANDRII DANYLENKO
32
consideration without breaking through the limits of the so-called “barangomachía”.
While discussing cross-linguistically diachronic connections between consecutive attesta-
tions of the term “Rus’”, structural methods can prove highly effective in this case.
... In the case of accepting it, one must also accept the fact that during the Middle Ages, a single ethnic identity could exist on such a vast territory from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The origin of the name Rus is unclear (Danylenko 2004). Since the 9 th and 10 th centuries, it was used either as an ethnic label to identify the Vikings of Eastern Europe or as the name for the Middle Dnipro area with the center in Kyiv. ...
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The article offers a comprehensive survey of the Arabic transcriptions of Slavic geographical and personal names in early medieval Arab-Muslim geographical literature. The linguistic structure of Arabic and its orthography are briefly discussed in order to substantiate the relevance of Arabic evidence despite paleographic and systemic shortcomings in the transmission of Slavic names like Rusь, Dirь and Kyjevь by such geographers and historians as al-Mas'ūdī, Ibn Fađlān, al-Iṣṭakhrī, Ibn Ḥawqal and others. The article argues that the transcriptions furnish compelling evidence to be used in the historical phonology of Slavic and some adjacent disciplines.
Historisk tidskrift 1 (1963) pp. 72–79, here p. 77; NOVOSEL'TSEV Vostochnye istochniki o vostochnykh slavianakh pp 133 GARKAVI Skazaniia musul'manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh pp
  • Stig
  • Orientaliska Källor Till Vikingatidens Historia
132 STIG WIKANDER Orientaliska källor till vikingatidens historia, in: Historisk tidskrift 1 (1963) pp. 72–79, here p. 77; NOVOSEL'TSEV Vostochnye istochniki o vostochnykh slavianakh pp. 360– 362, 364–365. 133 GARKAVI Skazaniia musul'manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh pp. 79–80; BORIS A.
Über die Einfälle der alten Russen in Tabaristan, nebst Zugaben über andere von ihnen auf dem Caspischen Meere
  • Dorn Caspia
DORN Caspia. Über die Einfälle der alten Russen in Tabaristan, nebst Zugaben über andere von ihnen auf dem Caspischen Meere und in den anliegenden Ländern ausgeführten Unternehmungen.
Rus' " , in: Studia Slavica Finlandensia
  • F Kovalev O Proiskhozhdenii Ėtnonima
F. KOVALEV O proiskhozhdenii ėtnonima " Rus' ", in: Studia Slavica Finlandensia 111 (1986) pp. 68–90, here pp. 79–80.
Tekst, issledovanie i slovar 207 PSRL volume 1: Lavrentevskaia letopis' pp. 2, 7; PSRL volume 2: Ipatevskaia letopis'. 2e izdanie. S.-Peterburg
  • M Vasilii
  • Istrin Khronika Georgiia Amartola V Drevnem Slavianorusskom Perevode
(VASILII M. ISTRIN Khronika Georgiia Amartola v drevnem slavianorusskom perevode. Tekst, issledovanie i slovar'. Volume 1. Petrograd 1920, p. 567; volume 2. Petrograd 1922, p. 289). 207 PSRL volume 1: Lavrentevskaia letopis' pp. 2, 7; PSRL volume 2: Ipatevskaia letopis'. 2e izdanie. S.-Peterburg 1908, p. 4. 208 THOMSEN Det Russiske riges grundlaeggelse ved Nordboerne p. 346. Regular correspondences of this type fit well into the Thomsen-Shakhmatov formula, most explicitly put forward by A.
S.-Peterburg 1870, p. 79, fn. 3. 130 STEFAN SÖDERLIND The realm of the Rus': A contribution to the problem of the rise of the East-Slavic kingdom Scandinavian Language Contacts 111; FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan's und anderer Araber Berichte pp
  • Harkavy Skazaniia Musul 'manskikh Pisatelei O Slavianakh I Russkikhs Poloviny
  • R Vii Veka Do Kontsa X Veka Po
  • Kh
HARKAVY] Skazaniia musul'manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh (s poloviny VII veka do kontsa X veka po R. Kh.). S.-Peterburg 1870, p. 79, fn. 3. 130 STEFAN SÖDERLIND The realm of the Rus': A contribution to the problem of the rise of the East-Slavic kingdom, in: PER STURE URELAND, IAIAN CLARKSON (eds.) Scandinavian Language Contacts. Cambridge, New York 1984, pp. 133–170, here p. 151. 131 HAMMER Sur les origines russes p. 111; FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan's und anderer Araber Berichte pp. 36–37. 132 STIG WIKANDER Orientaliska källor till vikingatidens historia, in: Historisk tidskrift 1 (1963) pp. 72–79, here p. 77; NOVOSEL'TSEV Vostochnye istochniki o vostochnykh slavianakh pp. 360– 362, 364–365. 133 GARKAVI Skazaniia musul'manskikh pisatelei o slavianakh i russkikh pp. 79–80; BORIS A.
It is interesting to mention here ‫اﻠﺮﻮﺳﻴﺔ"‬ ‫"ﺠزﻱرة‬ ("the Rus'ian isle") which was added by Jākūt in al-Iþ¾aórī's "Masālik al-mamālik
  • Fraehn
  • St
Fraehn. St.-Pétersbourg 1866, pp. ٢٦١-٢٦٢. It is interesting to mention here ‫اﻠﺮﻮﺳﻴﺔ"‬ ‫"ﺠزﻱرة‬ ("the Rus'ian isle") which was added by Jākūt in al-Iþ¾aórī's "Masālik al-mamālik" ("Viae regnorum", ca.
Jacut's geographisches Wörterbuch
  • Ferdinand Wüstenfeld
FERDINAND WÜSTENFELD (ed.) Jacut's geographisches Wörterbuch. Volume 2. Leipzig 1867, pp. ٨٣٦-٨٥٠.
Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder
  • Harris Birkeland
HARRIS BIRKELAND (ed.) Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder. Oslo 1954, pp. 16, 19, 49-50, 53-58, 66-67, 70-71, 74, 91-92, 99, 103, 116, 119, 123, 127-128;
Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ١٠٢. A 14th-century version may be found in the Geography of Abu'l-fidā
SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici pp. 35-36, ١٠١. 41 CHRISTIAN MARTIN FRÄHN Ibn-Foszlan's und anderer Araber Berichte über die Russen älterer Zeit. St. Petersburg 1823, p. 31; SEIPPEL (ed.) Rerum normannicarum fontes arabici p. ١٠٢. A 14th-century version may be found in the Geography of Abu'l-fidā' (JOSEPH TOUSSAINT REINAUD, MAC GUCKIN DE SLANE [eds.] Géographie d'Aboulféda'. Texte arabe. Paris 1840, p. ٢٠٤; for a French translation, see JOSEPH TOUSSAINT REINAUD [ed., transl.] Géographie d'Aboulféda'. Volume 2, part 1. Paris 1848, p. 288; AUGUST FERDINAND MEHREN [ed.]. Cosmographie de Chems-ed-Din Abou Abdallah Mohammed Ed-Dimichqui. Texte arabe, publié d'après l'édition commencée par M.