Abraham ben Jacob
Ibrāhīm ibn Ya ʿ qūb (Arabic إبراهيم بن يعقوب الإسرائيلي الطرطوشي, DMG Ibrāhīm b Ya ʿ qūb al -Isra ʾ ili aṭ - Ṭurṭūšī Hebrew. אברהם בן יעקב Abraham ben Jakov ) was an envoy of the Caliph of Cordoba from the Muslim Tortosa (Arabic Ṭurṭūša ), who traveled in the second half of the 10th century central Europe.
His trip reports especially from the East Frankish kingdom, including the cities of Mainz, Speyer and Worms, and the Slavic -populated areas of East Central Europe, especially the cities of Prague and Krakow and the obodritischen capital of Mecklenburg belong, despite the problematic tradition located to major narrative sources this time.
Life
Ibrāhīm ibn Ya ʿ qūb was of Jewish origin. About his life almost nothing is known, so that about his background and the function of his travels only on his descriptions founding conjectural. In his reports, he devotes the trade and the economy a great deal of attention, which led to the widespread view that he was a merchant. On the other hand, it also shows interest in ethnography, diseases and climate conditions, which points to a broader educational background. The historian Leopold von Ranke and Eliyahu Ashtor thought it possible that he was a Sephardic Jewish or general physician. Peter Engels suggested in a paper from 1991 that Ibrāhīm ibn Ya ʿ qūb probably was not a Jew, but as to the Islamic faith Converted only the name al -Isra ʾ ili from a sense of tradition in his name has left.
In his reports Ibrāhīm ibn Ya ʿ qūb mentioned two meetings with the Emperor Otto I. However, the dating of the underlying traveling and thus their significance for diplomatic relations between the Muslim Spain and Central Europe in the 10th century are also controversial. The first meeting took place in the year 350 according to the Islamic calendar, that is, between 20 February 961 and February 8, 962, in Rome ( Rumiya ) instead. On behalf of the Caliph of Cordoba Abd ar -Rahman III. Ibrāhīm is met here with the as king of Byzantium ( malik ar-Rum ) designated Otto I obviously on February 2 962 On various shortly after his imperial coronation was adopted, such as by Abdurrahman Ali al- Hajji, that the interlocutor Ibrahim in Rome not Otto I, but the Pope John XII. had been. However, Helmut G. Walther showed with reference to similar designations that malik ar-Rum rather marked a secular rulers.
Even more controversial in the research time and place of the second meeting between Ibrāhīm ibn Ya ʿ qūb and Otto I. This is found in Magdeburg either 965 or 973 on May 1 on the court day of Otto I in Merseburg instead. This is also the key point for the dating of almost all other trips Ibrahim. For a reading of Madi Frgh as Magdeburg, among other Tadeusz Kowalski and André Miquel spoke out. This seems especially the further route of Ibrahim to speak, probably the Elbe and Saale (p. LAWA) downward over calbe ( unsure: Klí.wí ) and securely over Nienburg ( Saale) ( NUB Gh.rád ) to the of Jews operated salt works in Halle / Saale and on about Wurzen ( Búr.džín ) to the trough ( Mldáwá ) led to Prague ( Bragha ). On him the oldest written mention of the city of Prague dates back what Ibrāhīm ibn Ya ʿ brings qūb a special place in Czech history.
In contrast, Helmut G. Walther argued that reported for 965 in any Western source from the receipt of a Muslim delegation, which is why M. Canard, André Miquel and Abdurrahman Ali el- Hajji Ibrahim Ibn Ya ʿ qūb considered only as a private traveler. For the year 973, however, both Arabic and Polish and Bulgarian embassies have been handed down with whom Ibrahim also met. Ibrahim is the first report I of the existence of the Duke of Poland, Mieszko. Widukind of Corvey reported by a court day in Quedlinburg at Easter 973, to which ambassadors of many different peoples homed, so from Byzantium, Rome, Benevento, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, the Bulgarian Kingdom and Denmark. The Feast of the Ascension celebrated Otto I in Merseburg, where he received envoys from africa, where he proved the royal honor with gifts and he invited to stay at his court to them after some time with an answer and probably a counter embassy back to their home to dismiss. Walther was now likely to make that this is not, as is usually assumed by a delegation of the Fatimid Caliph al Muizz negotiated (see also Ifriqiya ). In his view, are " the modern interpreters [ ... ] here victims of the special geographical terminology Widukind. For him, as for many contemporary Islamic Andalusia was a part of Africa. " Simultaneously, a Fatimid embassy to Otto I in no other source is mentioned and given the unstable political circumstances of the time highly unlikely. Therefore, Walther was assumed that Ibrāhīm second meeting with Otto I 973 is to be set at Merseburg, where the meeting with a Polish and a Bulgarian embassy was casually possible. According to the custom of the Spanish Umayyads, it would have been yet another embassy on behalf of the Caliph al - Hakam II, the son and successor of Abd ar -Rahman III. Following the trip to Rome in 961/62. The fragmentary character of the traditional travel descriptions also includes several trips to the East Frankish kingdom not from Ibrahim. On several diplomatic missions Ibrahim, however, the Itinerarentwürfe Canards and el- Hajjis are no longer sustainable.
Tradition
Ibrāhīm ibn Ya ʿ qūb wrote his travelogues probably after his return to Spain for the councils of the caliphs. This report is neither independent nor preserved in its entirety but only in fragments as single quotes in recent works of Arab geographers and cosmographers.
The majority is in the processing of the Spanish geographer Abū ʿ Ubayd ʿ Abd Allāh al - Bakri (1014-1094), who in the chapter on the Slavs in his book Kitabu l - mamāliki wa-l - masāliki (Book of Kingdoms and paths ) einfügte. The book was completed in 1068 and is located in two manuscripts in Istanbul and another, now lost, but known variants in their handwriting before. Others used information and thus preserved al - Udhrī (d. 1085 ). Some fragments that affect the present and France, Germany and Holland in particular, handed the cosmograph Zakarij ' ibn Muhammad al- Qazwini (d. 1283) in his description of the landscape Kitab Atari l - Biladi and also Ibn Abd al - Munim al - Himjarī (14. -15. century) in his dictionary Kitabu r- l - Raudi Mitari Chabari fī l - aktāri.