IMILLENIUM
A Thousand Years of History
The earliest documentary record from that part of Europe which is now called
Poland, dates from AD 965 to 966. In those years, Ibrahim-Ibn-Jakub, a Moorish
Jew from Tortosa in Spain, accompanied the Khalif of Cordoba on an embassy
to central Europe. He visited Prague, and possibly Cracow, which lay at the time
within the kingdom of the Czechs. Fragments of his report were known to later
Arab geographers:
The lands of the Slavs stretch from the Syrian Sea to the Ocean in the north ... They com-
prise numerous tribes, each different from the other ... At present, there are four kings:
the king of the Bulgars; Bojeslav, King of Faraga, Boiema and Karako; Mesko, King of
the North; and Nakon on the border of the West...
As far as the realm of Mesko is concerned, this is the most extensive of their lands. It
produces an abundance of food, meat, honey, and fish. The taxes collected by the King
from commercial goods are used for the support of his retainers. He keeps three thou-
sand armed men divided into detachments... and provides them with everything they
need, clothing, horses, and weapons ... The dowry system is very important to the Slavs,
and is similar to the customs of the Berbers. When a man possesses several daughters or
a couple of sons, the former become a source of wealth, the latter a source of great pres-
tige.
In general, the Slavs are violent, and inclined to aggression. If not for the disharmony
amongst them, caused by the multiplication of factions and by their fragmentation into
clans, no people could match their strength. They inhabit the richest limits of the lands
suitable for settlement, and most plentiful in means of support. They are specially ener-
getic in agriculture... Their trade on land and sea reaches to the Ruthenians and to
Constantinople...
Their women, when married, do not commit adultery. But a girl, when she falls in love
with some man or other, will go to him and quench her lust. If a husband marries a girl
and finds her to be a virgin, he says to her, 'If there were something good in you, men
would have desired you, and you would certainly have found someone to take your vir-
ginity'. Then he sends her back, and frees himself from her.
The lands of the Slavs are the coldest of all. When the nights are moonlit and the days
clear, the most severe frosts occur ... The wells and ponds are covered with a hard shell
of ice, as if made of stone. When people breathe, icicles form on their beards, as if made
of glass...
They have no bath-houses as such, but they do make use of wooden huts (for bathing).
They build a stone stove, on which, when it is heated, they pour water... They hold a