Ibn Fadlan's Embassy to Volga Bulgaria (921-922)

Almış, ruler of Volga Bulgaria, wrote to Baghdad asking the caliph al-Muqtadir for scholars to teach Islam and craftsmen to build a mosque and a fortress. The Bulgars then depended on the Khazar Khaganate, and Almış hoped that closer ties with the caliph would free him from it.

On 21 June 921 the embassy left Baghdad. It was led by Susan al-Rassi of the caliph's court, with the jurist Ahmad ibn Fadlan as secretary. It travelled through Iran, Bukhara and Khwarazm, crossed the Ustyurt plateau in winter into Oghuz lands, then passed through the lands of the Pechenegs and Bashkirs, and on 12 May 922 reached the camp of the Bulgar ruler.

Ibn Fadlan's Risala is one of the most valuable sources on the life of the Turkic peoples in the 10th century. As an eyewitness he describes the councils of the Oghuz beys, Oghuz women going unveiled, customs of migration and burial, the short summer nights of the Bulgars and the "Rus" traders on the Volga. In Tatarstan, 922 is marked as the year Volga Bulgaria officially adopted Islam.