ABSTRACT
This chapter considers al-Ghazl's embassy as an illustration of the way the Vikings in Spain were remembered in the early Middle Ages, which has pushed them to the margins of modern histories of the period. Although used originally of Zoroastrians, the term majs was in time applied by the Arabs to all northern nations', as the Spanish Arabist Pascal Gayangos noted as long ago as 1840. There were other ways of labelling the Vikings, but, given the imprecision of Arabic terminology, it is surprisingly rarely that authors find these pagan warriors being categorized using the terms that were used of other groups of non-Muslims. The Arab authors sometimes used of the Vikings a term similar to that used by the Latin authors, who called the Vikings Northmen, Nordomanni, Normani or Lodomani. Neither of these stories contributes to the discussion of barbarian ethnography that was, in a slightly less garbled fashion, taking place in the work of geographers such as al-Mas'd.
