History Primary Source Exercise
Primary Source Exercise – Unit Three
Instructions: Choose one of the two primary source exercises on the next slide. After studying the Power Point presentation “Making Sense of Primary Sources write a 500-750 word response to one of the two exercises. Then upload via the Turnitin.com link provided under Week Three of the Titanium Website for this course. Be sure that you proofread your responses carefully. Note that Turnitin.com will pick up on any “borrowed” responses or “collaborative” work.
Primary Source Exercise – Three
Note: Both of this week’s primary source exercises deal with a common theme – that of the “other.” People tend to understand and be more sympathetic toward other peoples and societies whose distance from their own – geographical or cultural – is smaller rather than greater. This is one reason, for example, why people from complex tilling societies with cities often viewed tribal peoples or pastoral nomads such as those who inhabited the steppes of Central Asia as inferior. They also had more sympathy for people who shared their own or similar religious beliefs. We find in the case of Europeans encountering Africans and Native Americans for the first time, but Europeans by no means have a monopoly on “ethnocentricity.” Chinese, Arabs and most other peoples have encountered “strangers” whose customs and worldviews they have struggled to understand and viewed unsympathetically.
Ibn Fadlan
In 921 the Abbasid Caliph Muqtadir sent Ibn Fadlan from Baghdad to the camp of the Bulghar Khan on the banks of the Volga River. Muqtadir wanted Fadlan to deliver gifts to the Khan. The goal of Fadlan’s journey was twofold – to observe the Bulghar’s and those at their camp, and to try to persuade the Khan, who had recently converted himself and his people to Islam, to ally himself with Muqtadir.
Ibn Fadlan
The Bulghar camp was far beyond the boundaries of the Islamic “dar-al-Islam,” or center of the Islamic world. This meant that during his journey to and from the camp, Fadlan had the opportunity to observe for his ruler many mostly non-Muslim peoples. While at Muqtadir’s camp, Fadlan encountered a group of “Rus,” essentially Vikings, who had traveled down the Volga River from Scandanavia to trade with the Bulghar’s but also to explore and, when they could, raid villages and towns along the river. The “Risala” is Fadlan’s record of his journeys and observations, and in this excerpt we see how Fadlan observed and assessed the Vikings. What we can also assess is the extent to which Fadlan’s own cultural preconceptions shaped his observations and assessment of the Rus.
Primary Source Exercise – Three
In other words, we learn from these readings that the very ideal of tolerance of cultural diversity is itself culturally relative, and a pretty recent development in history. Most societies in the pre-modern world were not tolerant and did not celebrate cultural diversity. So we have to ask ourselves why this was the case? That is part of what we are trying to get at with this exercise. Why did Fadlan criticize the Rus and Vikings? What was it about their culture that he disliked. Suppose that our observer had been from a culture more similar to that of the Rus and Vikings – perhaps a merchant from medieval Germany? How might the reaction have been different?
Primary Source Exercise Three
We also have to ask similar questions about the readings related to Confucianism and Buddhism. Clearly both Yan Zhitui and Han Yu, even though diametrically opposed in their assessment of whether Buddhism could/should be accepted in China, have something in common in their discourse: they agree that the gauge by which Buddhism’s suitability in China should be measured ought to be Chinese culture. Buddhism was an “alien” import into China. The issue for each man, even though his answer was different, was the extent to which Buddhism could be adapted to China, and for each man, “China” meant “Confucianism.” This is the issue you need to discuss and explain here to make sense of these readings.
Primary Source Exercise – Three
Read the section “Contrasting Views: The Reception of Buddhism in East Asia” from Sources of Crossroads and Cultures, Vol. I. Why did Yan Zhitui argue that a Confucian scholar could also be a devoted Buddhist? What reasons did Han Yu offer as to why Buddhism fit neither with Chinese culture nor with Confucianism? Why was this issue so important to both men? What does it suggest about how China viewed its own culture in relation to others, and the role of Confucianism in Chinese culture?
What reception did Buddhism receive in Japan? Why?
Read the background material on Ibn Fadlan and then the excerpts from his writing. How did Fadlan perceive the Vikings/Rus people he was visiting? What colored his perceptions of them? How accurate a witness do you think he was when he described these people? What can historians learn from this passage about Ibn Fadlan’s idea of what it meant to be civilized? What does the passage suggest about cultural tolerance in Fadlan’s society?
Source: Francesco Guisti, “Encountering the Other in the Middle Ages: from Ibn Fadlan’s account to Michael Crichton’s Fiction.” https://www.academia.edu/2390360/Encountering_the_Other_in_the_Middle_Ages_from_Ibn_Fadlan_s_account_to_Michael_Crichton_s_Fiction
The early tenth century, when Ibn Fadlan lived, was the culmination of great changes in the Islamic world. Over a century had passed since the establishment of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate in 750, the Islamic religion was now firmly established from Spain to the frontiers of India and Islamic civilization had been transformed from a society bound to Bedouin tribal mores into a manifold international culture. At that time Baghdad became the largest city in the world, with its densely populated urban area measuring about 10 kilometers by, roughly the same size as Paris within the outer boulevards. These are the features of the world in which Ibn Fadlan was born and lived as an Arab learned in the laws and customs of Islam and a confidant of the Caliph, so he probably felt he was bringing enlightenment, as well as a new faith, to a region of backwardness and even savagery. Ibn Fadlan’s mission emerged in response to a message from the king of the Bulghars (whom he calls Saqaliba)
https://www.academia.edu/2390360/Encountering_the_Other_in_the_Middle_Ages_from_Ibn_Fadlan_s_account_to_Michael_Crichton_s_Fiction
Ibn Fadlan
The king’s full name, it seems was Almish ibn Shilki Elteber, inasmuch as we have little information about the language of the Volga Bulghars of that time, the meaning of his name is unclear. He ruled a kingdom on the upper Volga River, roughly corresponding to modern Tataristan. His kingdom included many tribes who followed various pagan rites, as well as someMuslim converts, and it is likely that he sought to unite all of them under a single monotheistic faith, and thereby to consolidate his power by creating, in effect, a state religion. Also, since he paid tribute to the Khazars (the principal hegemonic nation on the steppes of southern Russia) andwished to be free of this dependence, he sought the support of the enemy of the Khazars to the south of their domains – the area ruled by the Caliph. The Bulghars’ king asked for aid in building a fortress and for instruction in the Islamic religion. The inhabitants of Baghdad at that time knew little about the north and, in a period of intense proselytizing of Islam, Ibn Fadlan was interested in what he saw and heard, as well as eager to instruct the king and his court in Islamic doctrines and practices. Ibn Fadlan started on Thursday, June 21, 921, following a route which veered from the well-known path called Silk Road (the main trade route between the Mediterranean and China’s rich northern plains) only to swing to the east of the Volga River, avoiding the domains of the Khazars. From Khwarazm to Bulghar the journey took two months, although in the spring the melting snows made crossing rivers difficult, as mentioned in the account.
Ibn Fadlan
In his journal Ibn Fadlan speaks about Islamic Arabs of the Caliphate, Khwarazmians, Pechenegs,Turkic tribes, Bulghars, Khazars (converted to Judaism about the year 700), but the most discussed section is that about the Rus. James Montgomery gives notes about this portion of the text, especially on the controversy over whether the Rus were only Swedes or a mixture of peoples engaged in trade with Bulghars and Khazars. Probably the Rus were mostly Scandinavian with Slavs and Finns joined to them over the course of years of settlement in today’s Russia, but the number of newcomers from Sweden probably was always small in relation to the native Slavs and Finno-Ugrian-speaking inhabitants. Sometimes the word “Viking”, “Varangian”, and “Rus” areused interchangeably, but the first term was applied mainly to those Scandinavians from Norway and Denmark who behaved like pirates rather than merchants. The Rus or Varangians, on theother hand, were primarily traders, although not averse to plunder. Attempts to differentiate between the two designations have led nowhere, so we may consider the two as synonymous. TheRus had come to the east in the eighth century and had established themselves in Ladoga in the north as their principal settlement, but they later transferred to Novgorod. Then they moved southon the Dnieper River, and Kiev became their main town.
Ibn Fadlan
As early as 908 they had raided Constantinople across the Baltic Sea. By the time of Ibn Fadlan’s trip, the Rus had been well established in Novgorod, Kiev, and elsewhere, so those who came to the Bulghars to trade may have come from any Rus settlement, “although”, Frye writes, “those described by Ibn Fadlan, we may guess, came from the north down rivers from the Baltic.” Those already settled in town such as Novgorod probably would not have been so “wild” and “uncultured” as our author depicts them. Although the clothing, jewelry, and arms of the Rus interested Ibn Fadlan, our author was even more observant of and disgusted by the Rus practice of washing in a basin rather than having flowing water poured over hands and face as the Muslims would do. The presumed superiority not only of the Islamic religion, but also of Islamic practices and customs over others makes there marks of our author similar to the attitudes of many European travelers of the nineteenth century in Africa and Asia. Muslim ablutions and washing of the hands were contrasted with the uncleanliness of the Rus
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