The Imagology of Women in Ibn-e Fazlan Travelogues

Imagology is one of the branches of comparative literature that attempts to identify the features and attitudes of other nations through literary works. The identification of women’s image in other countries and nations from the viewpoint of a foreign poet or author is a topic of the knowledge imagology. This plays an important role in understanding the position, interests and attitudes of women in those societies. In this essay, the images of women in Ibn-e Fazlan Travelogues are studied. This travelogue is one of the oldest survived literary works about the lands located in the basin of Volga River and Central Asia. The author of the work also traveled and visited Iran and Turkan region. In Ibn-e Fazlan travelogues, valuable and exclusive information and images of Turkish, Bulgarian, Iranian and Russian women are given. These images and information have been studied and classified in this essay within the four perspectives of marriage, clothes, jewelries and bondwomen based on the methodology of imagology. This is concluded that those images of women were strange and odd to Ibn-e Fazlan based on his beliefs and the environment he lived in. The strange images are specially marked for Russian, Turkish, Bulgarian and Iranian nations, in order.