Poland

Fülszöveg

Before the Polish state was formed and the Poles learned to write, foreigners described it as the "land of Mieszko" Ibrahim-Ibn-Jacob from Tortosa in Spain left a detailed account of his visit in 965, a year before Poland was christened and became part of European civilization. Although he never reached the "land of Mieszko", he heard a lot about it at the court of Otto I. He wrote that the state was the biggest of all the Slavic countries and it abounded in food, meat and honey. It was located "at the borders of the West". Ibrahim-Ibn-Jacob also stressed the military power of Mieszko who had a detachment of three thousand armed men. This constitued a real power at the time. Ibrahim-Ibn-Jacob was acquainted with Poland better than most Western journalists and politicians today who stubbornly claim that Poland is a country somewhere far to the east, or perhaps to the north For the Russians, Poland is truly part of the West, while Poles seem to be papists, faithful disciples of the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Before the Polish state was formed and the Poles learned to write, foreigners described it as the "land of Mieszko" Ibrahim-Ibn-Jacob from Tortosa in Spain left a detailed account of his visit in 965, a year before Poland was christened and became part of European civilization. Although he never reached the "land of Mieszko", he heard a lot about it at the court of Otto I. He wrote that the state was the biggest of all the Slavic countries and it abounded in food, meat and honey. It was located "at the borders of the West". Ibrahim-Ibn-Jacob also stressed the military power of Mieszko who had a detachment of three thousand armed men. This constitued a real power at the time. Ibrahim-Ibn-Jacob was acquainted with Poland better than most Western journalists and politicians today who stubbornly claim that Poland is a country somewhere far to the east, or perhaps to the north For the Russians, Poland is truly part of the West, while Poles seem to be papists, faithful disciples of the Pope in Rome. Besides, they use the Latin alphabet! They cannot be real Slavs who should be faithful to the Orthodox Church and use a writing originating from the Old-Slavic Cyrillic alphabet. The Poles may be East for the West and West for the East, but they themselves claim that they are in the very middle of Europe. Geography proves it. The distance from Poland to Portugal is equal to that from Poland to the Ural mountains which mark the border between Europe and Asia. The same is with the distance to the Peloponnesus in Greece and to Nord Cap in Norway Since the borders of the Polish state were easily accessible from the east and west, Poland experienced numerous victories and defeats during its history lasting over one thousand years. Its borders extended and shrank, its territory increased and decreased, it moved on the map, and even disappeared from it for a moment!
from the introduction by Wojciech Gielzynski Vissza