Mediating Rūs Religions in Islamicate Geographical Sources

Ideology, Society and Medieval Religion seminar

In the Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish geographical and historical sources on the (“Viking”) Rūs, several ideas about religion and spiritual values emerge. Perhaps the most prominent are ideas about the nature and rituals of Rūs paganism, particularly through narratives of funerary sacrifice.

In this seminar, Tonicha Upham takes a wider view of the available sources, considering barriers to access and the prioritisation of certain types and eras of sources over others, to offer some reevaluations of ideas about Rūs religion as conveyed in this rich body of source material. Looking to geographical perceptions of the conduct of pagan rituals, Christianity, and later to the mediation of ideas about the conversion or partial conversion of the Rūs to Islam, she looks to explore how various conversions were conceptualized, discussed, and understood by geographers writing thousands of miles and (at times) hundreds of years away from their subjects.

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For questions, please contact Tim (tim.wingard@york.ac.uk) or Emmie (emmie.price-goodfellow@york.ac.uk)