posted on Jul, 6 2008 @ 10:52 PM
From "The Thirteenth Tribe":
Among the Volga Bulgars, Ibn Fadlan found a strange custom:
When they observe a man who excels through quickwittedness and knowledge, they say: “for this one it is more befitting to serve our Lord.” They
seize him, put a rope round his neck and hang him on a tree where he is left until he rots away.
Commenting on this passage, the Turkish orientalist Zeki Validi Togan, undisputed authority on Ibn Fadlan and his times, has this to say:[25] “There
is nothing mysterious about the cruel treatment meted out by the Bulgars to people who were overly clever. It was based on the simple, sober reasoning
of the average citizens who wanted only to lead what they considered to be a normal life, and to avoid any risk or adventure into which the
“genius” might lead them.” He then quotes a Tartar proverb: “If you know too much, they will hang you, and if you are too modest, they will
trample on you.” He concludes that the victim ‘should not be regarded simply as a learned person, but as an unruly genius, one who is too clever
by half”. This leads one to believe that the custom should be regarded as a measure of social defence against change, a punishment of
non-conformists and potential innovators.[‡‡‡‡‡] But a few lines further down he gives a different interpretation:
Ibn Fadlan describes not the simple murder of too-clever people, but one of their pagan customs: human sacrifice, by which the most excellent among
men were offered as sacrifice to God. This ceremony was probably not carried out by common Bulgars, but by their Tabibs, or medicine men, i.e. their
shamans, whose equivalents among the Bulgars and the Rus also wielded power of life and death over the people, in the name of their cult. According to
Ibn Rusta, the medicine men of the Rus could put a rope round the neck of anybody and hang him on a tree to invoke the mercy of God. When this was
done, they said: “This is an offering to God.”
Perhaps both types of motivation were mixed together: ‘since sacrifice is a necessity, let’s sacrifice the trouble-makers”.