Historical Figures: Ahmad ibn Fadlan and Abdul Alhazred · 8:39pm Feb 18th, 2017

Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāšid ibn Ḥammād was a Saddle Arabian (horse) traveler, famous for his account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Abbasid Caliph of Saddle Arabia to Mustikk, known as his Risala ("account" or "journal") His account is most notable for providing a detailed description of the Caribou Vikings, including an eyewitness account of a ship burial.

ibn Fadlan lived during Saddle Arabia's age of exploration, roughly 100 years prior to Equestria's founding, and made one of the most detailed accounts of the lives of the Caribou.

I have seen the Caribou as they came on their merchant journeys and encamped by the river. I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, dark and ruddy; they wear neither tunics nor kaftans, but the bucks wear a garment which covers one side of the body and leaves a hoof free. Each buck has an axe, a sword, and a knife, and keeps each by him at all times. Each doe wears on her breast a box of iron, silver, copper, or gold; the value of the box indicates the wealth of the husband. Each box has a ring from which depends a knife. The does wear neck-rings of gold and silver. Their most prized ornaments are green glass beads. They string them as necklaces for their does.

He also describes the hygiene of the Caribou tribe he encountered as disgusting (while also noting with some astonishment that they comb their fur every day) and considered them vulgar and unsophisticated.

More astonishing than his encounter and subsequent stay with the Caribou was his account of the Wendol.

"There are things that no buck can conquer, and no sword can kill, and no fire can burn, and such things are in the forests. The Caribou referred to black creatures as the Wendol, who came with the mist at night to eat their flesh."

The wendol are voracious, primitive, tribal carnivores who practice ancestor worship. an old female is usually in charge, and the tribe cares for her.

They possess primitive elemental magic, using it to create the black mist which surrounds hunting parties, and to create small balls of fire when they need to actually fight.

The tribe which Fadlan stayed with was engaged in a sort of "turf war" with a local Wendol tribe, who raided their halls at night and killed their warriors. Fadlan was chosen as one of 13 warriors to defeat them once and for all, and was one of the only ones to survive. Unfortunately, the part of the manuscript detailing what happened after his departure from the Caribou kingdom was lost.

Unlike many accounts, ibn Fadlan's Risala does not go into overly extravagant exaggeration (the Caribou being "tall as date palms" being the only obvious exaggeration), but simply records the facts as he see them, constantly saying "I saw with my own eyes". He was not a storyteller, but a recorder by nature... something which makes his account of the flesh-eating Wendol all the more unnerving.

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Abdallah ibn-Batsu al-Hazari (who preferred to be called Abdullah Alḥa ẓred, meaning "Servant of the Prohibited", "Servant of the Fenced in", or "Servant of the Great Lord".) was a camel scholar and, unusually for his race, particularly interested in the occult. Fadlan, who knew him, described him as "a tedious and windy individual who talked overmuch."

Alhazred was tortured as a young calf by the ruthless king of his home city. The tortures endured by Alhazred (and his subsequent banishment from his home) contributed to his violent attitude as an adult, which lead him to commit, among other acts, cannibalism, the murder of innocent children and assisting a cult of ghouls in their war against a rival clan.

Described as "a mad poet", he visited the ruins of ancient civilizations, explored subterranean secrets, traveled the Sky Mountains, and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Saddle Arabia and Camelu- the Roba El Khaliyeh or "Empty Space" of the ancients- and "Dahna" or "Crimson" desert of the modern Saddle Arabians, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Throughout his travels, Alhazred learned to use his abilities (lack of empathy, uncanny agility and the ability to communicate with the dead) to survive, often in gratuitously self-serving ways. He accumulated an array of grim survival tools, including an obsidian blade and magic carpet.

Upon returning from his decade of solitude, he wrote a book- al-Azif, which would later become known as the Necronomicon. Those who have dealings with this book usually come to an unpleasant end, and Alhazred was no exception.

Of his final death or disappearance, many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (an equine biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen the fabulous City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was an oddly religious camel, worshiping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.

Interestingly, Alhazred's magic carpet became a family heirloom, and it was his descendant (Safiya, known as "Spunky" to her Equestrian friends) who acted as Camelu's first ambassador to Equestria.

Safiya, aka "Spunky"