Naval Raids of the Rus and al-Mas'udi's Image of the World

Abstract

The paper presents the reconstruction of methods of great Arab-Islamic scholar al-Mas'udi in his work «The Meadows of Gold…». The comparative analysis of the material on the naval raids of the Rus' in al-Mas'udi's text and the works of other Arab geographers leads the author to the hypothesis that the story of «Russian naval raid» on al-Andalus is nothing more than al-Mas'udi's speculative deduction based on the cartographical image of Europe typical of the Arab science of that period.