A curious work, in an eighteenth-century manner: an account of the peoples of the Caucasus and the Volga steppes in the tenth century by an Armenian interpreter who rose to be Swedish ambassador in Berlin. While strictly factual, and drawn from two dozen Islamic sources listed and discussed in the introduction (in itself a valuable list), the book is cast in the form of the travels of an invented traveller from Bagdad, who travels through the Caucasus, spends much time with the Khazars (who converted to Judaism), visits the Bulgars and the Rus (and witnesses the funeral, and the sacrificed slave girl described in Ibn Fadlan). Explanatory notes take up almost as much room as the travels themselves.