Ahmad ibn Rustah

Ahmad ibn Rustah Isfahani (Persian: احمد ابن رسته اصفهانی‎‎ Aḥmad ibn Rusta Iṣfahānī) more commonly known as Ibn Rustah (ابن رسته, also spelled Ibn Rusta and Ibn Ruste), was a 10th-century Persian explorer and geographer born in Rosta district, Isfahan, Persia. He wrote a geographical compendium known as Book of Precious Records. The information on his home town of Isfahan is especially extensive and valuable. Ibn Rustah states that, while for other lands he had to depend on second-hand reports, often acquired with great difficulty and with no means of checking their veracity, for Isfahan he could use his own experience and observations or statements from others known to be reliable. Thus we have a description of the twenty districts (rostaqs) of Isfahan containing details not found in other geographers' works. Concerning the town itself, we learn that it was perfectly circular in shape, with a circumference of half a farsang, walls defended by a hundred towers, and four gates.

His information on the non-Islamic peoples of Europe and Inner Asia makes him a useful source for these obscure regions (he was even aware of the existence of the British Isles and of the Heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England) and for the prehistory of the Turks and other steppe peoples.

He travelled to Novgorod with the Rus', and compiled books relating his own travels, as well as second-hand knowledge of the Khazars, Magyars, Slavs, Bulgars, and other peoples.

He wrote of tenth-century city of the Rus':

His impression of the Rus' seems to be very favourable:

This is in contrast to the account of Ibn Fadlan and other Arab authors whose views on hygiene (based on Islamic teachings on cleanliness and Islamic medical knowledge) contrasted with that of the Rus'. However, the word clean initially appeared in the first Russian translation of Ibn Rustah by professor Daniel Chwolson (who also misspelled his name as Ibn Dasta(h)). Consecutive Russian editions of Chwolson's translation include a footnote saying that the Arabic original clearly says the opposite, unclean or impure, and suggesting that Chwolson made such a correction intentionally, out of a remote concern that modern Russians might be offended by such characteristic.

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