Formation of Ideas About the Eastern Source of the Volga and about the Irtysh in the Muslim Geographic Literature of the 10th Century

The aim of the article is to study the image of the Volga (Itil) River and its sources, the beginning of which the Muslim authors believed to be in the mountains of Asia. The main problem of this article is the identification of these sources with the modern hydrographic network of North Asia (the Ob and Irtysh Rivers). The research methodology consisted in comparing the images (1) on different maps, and (2) with descriptions of geographical realities recorded in the works by Arab authors. For convenient work and perception of realities, two maps used were drawn with reproduction of the majority of inscriptions in Cyrillic (orientation to the north). The drawing of Haukal's hydrography reproduces the publication of the map according to the 11th-century Istanbul manuscript published by the Dutch Arabist Johannes Kramers. The world map of al-Istakhri is given schematically on the basis of a publication by Joseph Needham. In the text of the geographical texts of al-Istakhri, the Volga (Itil) is described as a river flowing from the lands of the Turkic Kyrgyz. According to al-Istakhri, the source of the Itil (Volga) was located somewhere on the border of the Kimak lands and their eastern neighbors Kyrgyz. On Haukal's world map, the Volga has three sources: western, northern, and eastern. Like on al-Istakhri's map, the eastern source starts from the south-western frontier of Kyrgyz lands. As I.G. Konovalova noted, Arab-Persian authors placed the sources of the Kama River (the real eastern source of the Volga) far in Asia, confusing them with the upper reaches of the Irtysh. In the article, the authors studied the first Arab sources of the 9th-10th centuries with data on the Irtysh (Artush): al-Masudi's Book of Admonition and Revision (Kitab at-Tanbih wa-l-'Ishraf) and Boundaries of the World (Hudud al-Alam) by an unknown Persian author. As a result of the analysis of the geographical descriptions and maps, the authors came to the conclusion that the study of the sources allows stating that Muslim geographers of the late 10th century describing the Kimak (Trans-Ural) section of the Atil River used unclear information about the great Siberian river Ob. The eastern borders of the Upper Ob basin (the upper reaches of the Tom and the eastern tributaries of the Biya) really adjoined the lands of the Yenisei Kyrgyz. The sources of the Ob are located in the same mountains from which the Irtysh flows, but only more to the North.

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