1258–1283: al-Qazwīnī Reports from Iraq on Schleswig or Haithabu

Abstract

This article deals with a place called Šlašwīq (Haithabu/Schleswig) which is found as a lemma in the Āṯār al-bilād, a work compiled by the thirteenth-century Iraqi cosmographer and geographer al-Qazwīnī. The latter took his information on Šlašwīq and its inhabitants from a travel account written by the tenth-century Andalusian traveller Ibrāhīm b. Yaʿqūb al-Isrāʾīlī al-Ṭurṭūšī. The article considers the origin and transmission of this travelogue and endeavours to resolve which historical place is actually to be identified with Šlašwīq. A large part of the study debates the extent to which this Arabic-Islamic description of Šlašwīq reflects the historical realities of the tenth-century Baltic region, or the subjective impressions of the Andalusian traveller and his later compiler.