The immigration into Poland of the Western Jews, and their role within the Kingdom ’ s social

and economic structure

The settlementof Jews in Poland and a gradual development of their autonomous institutions,constitute a fascinating andenormouslyimportant chapterofboththe Polish and theJewish history. TheJewsin Poland throughout centuriesconstituted generally a world apart from the society, religion and institutions of the Polish monarchy. But due to their skills and complementary professional activities they wereable to interactadroitlywiththeessentially alien society gradually advancing their own group interests in relation to all the estates of Christendom: thenobles, theburghers, the Churchand the king, bothwithin the Europeanandinternational context. Jews settled in Poland as far back as the beginning ofthe 1 Th centuryand the reasonsfor this settlementare important for the understandingoftheir history in the Kingdom of Poland. The earliest history ofJewish settlement in Poland is fragmentary, sparse and difficultto interpret and historians do it using in general all available source materials concerning the Jews living in East-Central Europe at the turn of the second millenium A.D., and also studying the political, social, economic and institutional history of the states of the region. The agreed common opinion is thatthe histories of theJews in Poland, Bohemia and Hungary have in this context much in common.

The most fruitful sources for the understanding of Jewish life on the territory ofthe aforementioned states are texts which try to interpretassociations between the Arabgeographers or travelers and the rabbinical literaturewrittenbetween the

10th and the 13th centuries, especially along the Rhine and in northern France. All these sources refer to “the presence ofJewishmerchants in different, interconnected

82 2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom

settlements in East-Central Europe, which is looked upon as a compact territory which had an influxof traders engaging in exchangebetween Western Europe, the AbbasidCaliphate, SpanishAndalusia and Byzantium.Alltheearliest Jewish settle­

ments possible toidentify in [East-Central Europe] hadcontacts withthe Ashkenazy cultural centers being on the territory between the Meuseand Rhine Rivers. This explains similaritiesin their organization, and alsosuch facts that the rabbis resid­ ing in the above-mentioned [cultural centers] were considered to be the religious authorities by the residents ofthe Jewish settlementsinthe East-Centralpart of the continent. Inall these countries the rules ofsettlement and the relations between the local authorities and the newcomers were - wecanpresume - the same or similar''’'.

It is still assumed that the first Jews reportedlyappeared in Poland sometimebefore MieszkoI converted to Christianity and consecrated his duchy via Rome, notCon­ stantinople orKiev, in 966. This was a strategic decisionon the part of the Polish ruler, who tied Poland strongly to Latin Christianity. By accepting it from Rome through Prague, instead of through Germany, he also distanced himselffrom the Holy Roman Empire of Otto I - just recentlyestablished in 962- a very potentpo­ litical andmilitarypresence.

Although a theoryof the Jewish influx from the East following the collapse oftheKhazarState in 965 - with its Jews, probably usingsomeformof the Turk­

ishand Slavonic languages- cannot be corroborated by any clear scholastic evi­

dence, such a hypothesis cannot be excludedeither.12 Thereis nodoubt thatJewish merchants and travellers started trekking the length and breadth of Polandway back in the 10th century. It is possiblethat if “thefirstJewishsettlers in Bohemia and Poland camefrom Khazaria [they came]bya route leading throughsouthern Ruthenia, but it is [a/so] impossible to reject another hypothesis, that the first Bohemian andPolishJews camefromHungaryor even Byzantium. Anyway, even ifsuchoriginalgroups existed in BohemiaandPoland, they quickly lost their sig­ nificance, meetinga new Jewish wavecomingfrom the West, from Germany and France, the wave connected with the Jewish trade of these countries withCentral andEastern Europe [...] TheJewish trade with the Central andEastern Europe was originally connected with the Western Jews- especially those comingfrom Spain, France andtheRhinelands - and playedaleading rolein the international trade ofWestern Europe with theIslamic Orient. Thus many Jewish trading posts

1 H. Zaremska, ‘Początki żydowskiej obecności i osadnictwa na ziemiach polskich X-XV w.’ (Beginnings of the Jewish Settlement in Polish Lands in between the 15th and 18th cen­

turies) in W. Sienkiewicz (ed.), Atlas historii Żydów polskich, Demart, Warszawa 2010, p. 23.

2 See 0. Pritzak, ‘The Khazar Kingdom’s Conversion to Judaism’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1978); also D. M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, Schocken Books, New York 1967. As Bratkowski wrote “Mieszko gave as a gift a camel to the six year old German emperor Otto III in 986. It definitely was not locally bred. This was probably the very source of the future speculations that the Polish Jews came out of the Khazar world.” In Pod wspólnym niebem..., p. 10.

2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom 83 located themselvesalongsuch trade routes, which connected Western Europe to the countries of the Abbasid Caliphate".’

Jews travelling between these lands weremultilingual - they spokeArabic, Per­

sian, Spanish, Greek and also manySlavoniclanguages. One of theWest-East routes was depicted in the 9th century by an Arab geographer Ibn Chordadhbeha (Hurdad-biha). This route was used especially by the Jewish traders called the Raddanites (a name possiblytakenfromthe Rodan River),i.e. traders from southernFranceand Spain, some from the Arab Caliphates. Itbegan in Italy (Rumija in Arabic,means the Roman country) and through the Slavic countries (in Arabic bilad al-Saqaliba) reached the capital of Khazaria,located atthe mouth oftheVolgaRiver; then it went throughthe Caspian Sea, reachingIran andthengoing on to China. The information about the knowledge of the Slavonic languages givenby Ibn Chordadhbeha shows that the JewsfromWesternEurope had already by then extensive contacts with the Slavic people, among whom they could stay foran extended period of time. This information is also corroborated by some Hebrew sourceswrittenin Western Europe which, especially beginning with the 11th century, are full of glossaries refererring to the Slavs.34

3 T. Lewicki, ‘Osadnictwo żydowskie i handel we wschodniej Europie’ (Jewish Settlement and Trade in Eastern Europe) in W. Tyloch (ed.), Z dziejów Żydów w Polsce, Interpress, War­

szawa 1983, p. 10.

4 Ibid.

5 A Venetian Doxe, alarmed by this spectacular success of the Maintz Jews, turned in 932 to a German king Henry I and an archbishop of Maintz with a request to chase away the Jews from this town or to forbid them trade in metals, cloth and spices coming from the Orient. An exten­

sive trade by Jewish merchants in the Polish lands is corroborated also by a famous discovery Anotherroute - the great Oriental route, began in Gaul, which had its links to Moslem Spain, thenpassed through Verdun, the mainslave marketin the epoch in which Jews were significantly engaged, importing slaves especially from Central and Eastern Europe, whichforced them touse the tradingposts establishedin Bo­

hemia and Poland. In the 10th century it was in Verdun that an imporatantmarket for trade in Slavic castrates was established. From Verdun the route led to Mainz, Regensburg and Raffelstettenon the Danube,passingnext through the Principality ofMoravia which flourished in the 9,h century and, when this duchy fell, through the territory settled by the Hungarians. It was along this trade route that various groups of merchants,both Muslim and Jewish, were active in the 10th century. As Al-Qazwini, a distinquished Arab cosmographer from the 13th century wrote, when relating a story conveyed by Ibrahim ibnYaqub, Maintzhadvery extensivetrade relations with the Orient in the 10th century. Kievwas used asan intermediary link in this trade and it had a large Jewish kahal there.Thistrade betweenMaintz and Kiev, and also southRuthenia,passing through Polish lands, was extensive inthe 10th and

11thcentury andbroughtthe Jews from WesternEurope huge profits,whichenabled them to compete withthe Italian towns.Jews traded in slaves, pelts, precious metals, cloth and spices. Slaves and peltswere imported mainlyfrom East-Central Europe.5

84 2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom

One branch of this long Oriental roadled from Raffelstetten to Prague, then to Kraków over the plains orthrough thepasses along the Carpathian mountains and then to Kiev. Kraków was already a trading center in the 9th and 10th centuries.6 One of such merchantswas the mysterious figure of Ibrahim-ibn-Yaqub of Tortosa (Abraham ben Jakob b. about 912/913, d. after 966) from the CaliphateofCordoba, Spain.ASephardic Jew and achronicler, atraveller and a merchant, he conducted trade with the Slavic tribes, mainly in slaves, although in alllikelihood he also en­

gaged in espionage for the Caliphate. He left an accountofhis travels to the Slavic lands,probably between 963 and 966. The account survived via the chronicle “The Bookof Roads and Kingdoms“ (or “TheBookof Highways and Kingdoms”,Arabic Kitâb al-Masâlik waj-Mamálik) written around 1068, a geographical text by Abu Abdullahal-Bakri, written inCórdoba.

of dirhems (the Arab coins) in the 19th century minted by the Iranian dynasty of Samanids, the treasure from the first half of the 10111 century. There are also many silver coins coming from Reine region and other settlements in the West from the 10th and 1 llh centuries which have been found in the Polish lands. Some Hebrew texts in the lllh and 12'*' centuries also confer a fact of Jewish merchands from Reine lands doing business in the Slavic lands. Ibid., p. 11.

6 On these trading lanes and the first contacts of Jews with the Slavic lands and then with the Polish principality of Mieszko I and Bolesław Chrobry see A. Gieysztor, ‘Beginnings of Jewish Settlement in Poland’ in Ch. Abramsky, M. Jachimczyk, A. Polonsky (eds.), The Jews in Poland, Basic Blackwell, Oxford 1986, pp. 15-21.

7 T. Kowalski (ed.), ‘Relacja Ibrahima ibn Jakuba z podróży do krajów słowiańskich’ (The Account of Ibrahim Ibn Jakub) in Monumenta Poloniae Histórica, S. 2, Vol. 1, Polska Akademia Umiejętności, Kraków 1946; T. Lewicki, ‘Certaines Routes Commerciales de la Hongrie duHaut Moyen Age’, Slavia Antiqua, Vol. 14 (1967), p. 15 ff; on the crisis of the Muslim world and its contact with the Slavic lands see T. Lewicki (ed.), Źródła arabskie do dziejów Słowiańszczyzny (Arab Sources on the History of the Slavs), Vol. 1, Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Wrocław 1956, Źródła Objaśniające Początki Państwa Polskiego. Źródła Orientalne, Vol. 1. The Account of Ibrahim Ibn Jakub is the first reliable description of the Polish state under Mieszko I (c. 960- -992), the first historical ruler of Poland. He also gave the oldest known description of Prague (F(a)rdga/B(a)rdga) and a confirmation that the Bohemian duke Boleslaus I was a ruler of Prague, Bohemia (Boy(e)ma) and Krakow (K(a)ráko/K(a)rakü). Mieszko I is called in his account as “the king of the North”. Ibn Jakub mentions Krakow for the first time, describing it as one of the trade centers of the Slavic lands.

Ibrahim-ibn-Yaqub notonly recorded - probably in 963 - the arrival ofthe Hun­

garian Jews in Prague to buy furs and slaves, but also became a perceptive and so­ phisticated observer, writing the firstimportantdescriptionof Poland. Mostprobably he was a spy for the Caliphate with a task of finding out the military and economic potentialofthe countries on the Eastern border of the German Roman Empire, aris­ ing politicalsuperpower with the new universalist idea, just reborn by the German kingOtto I in962, which might havecreated panic in every rulerwith any sense of geopolitical strategy. Ibrahim-ibn-Yaqubperceptively recognized the enormous sig­

nificance of the lands hetraveled through. Atthe beginning ofthe 10th centurythese­ rious symptomsof the greatcrisis inthe Muslimworld began to be apparent and Mus­ lim diplomacywas probably using all possible means to respond to this challenge.7

2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom 85

The new political entity whichthe German Roman Empire constituted,could pose such a challenge, both in the positive and in the negative senses, and it was just a matter ofprudence to ascertain who might be a possible ally againstthis new uni­ versal empire on its other side.

The first Jewishpermanent settlements began tocropup in westernPoland in the 11thcentury, although this might be a conservative estimate, since such settlements, as mentioned earlier, organizedasJewish communities, kahals, were definitely cre­ ated earlier along the trading routes. Such a Jewish kahal existed, for instance, in Magdeburg in the second half ofthe 10th th centuryand Ibrahim ibnYaqub wrote around965 about asettlement known as Mallahat al-Jahud (in Arabic “Jewishsalt works”), whereprobably existed, as wecaninfer from thename itself, a Jewish ka­ hal. This settlement,according to Ibrahim, waslocated in a Slavic country on a route leadingfrom Magdeburg to Prague. For some historians itwas Mieszko I (960-992), the first historically-recognizedPolishdukewho also mintedthe first coins with He­

brew letters on them. It is still not clear whether theyweremintedthisway because of the Jewishtraders passing throughPoland who were very active in Eastern Eu­ rope, or because his minters were Jews. Some yet attribute thecoins to the times of the duke Mieszko the Old, whoreigned with interruptions(1173-1202).8During the reignof theduke Wladislaw Herman (1079-1102), Jews already constituted the fair­

ly well established elementamong the local populationof the country. SomeJews came to Poland after the pogrom in Prague in 1096, and were welcome in Poland.

But thefirst mass migration ofJews to Poland probablycameduringthefirstcrusade in 1098, anda son of WladislawHerman, Boleslaus III Krzywousty (the Wrymouth) (1007-1138)was sympathetic towards them and encouraged them tosettle in Poland recognizing their economic potential, alsoevidenced by loans granted by him.

8 As Polonsky writes: “In the twelfth century Jews were employed as farmers of the mint and coiners, a few under Bolesław IV the Curly-Haired, prince overlord of the Polish lands be­

tween 1146 and 1173, and a larger number under his successor, Mieszko III the Old, who was prince overlord in 1173-7 and 1198-1202. Minting by Jews remained significant in the following centuries but was on a smaller scale, and it was finally prohibited by the Sejm in mid-sixteenth century, a prohibition which had the support of both the Council of the Lands and the Lithuanian Council. After 1581 almost no Jews held minting rights. By the early seventeenth century the influx of debased coins from neighbouing lands made the local minting of coins unrewarding.

Under Władysław IV Vasa (r. 1632-48) most regions of Poland-Lithuania ceased minting coins and minting was only resumed much later in the century, A. Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1, pp. 95-96

9 See A. Gieysztor, ‘Beginnings of the Jewish Settlement...’, p. 19. For some a Polish name for a Jew, as was a case with the Kiev Rus which we know from a Nestor Chronicle of the 12th It seems that the Slavonic, and also thePolishname for a Jewappeared in native languages for the first time in the 11th century. In the early medieval period itwas żidin,żid,żyd,the first consonant indicating that the word derivesfrom vulgar Latin, whichwas already an international language in its Romanceand Venetian versions, withthenearestform of giudeo.9Onemay say that betweenthe 8th and 11thcenturies

86 2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom

WesternEurope experienced a certain degree of relative stabilization, and more or less harmonious and interrelated development, both of the gradually emerging le­ gally delineated estatesand also ofthevarious branches ofthe economy. In the 10*

century this development began to influence the then-periphery ofEurope proper, i.e. Central Europe and part of Eastern Europe. Although the latter was creating a similar economy and hierarchy, itwas nevertheless developing a slightly different versionoffeudalism, without a fully-developedfiefdomstructure.10

century, comes from the French pronounciation of a Latin term Judaeus. In Poland the German name Jude was not known or used, although the overwhelming majority of Jews were later com­

ing from German lands. S. Bratkowski, Pod wspólnym niebem..., p. 12.

10 A good overview of the Jewish settlements in relation to the general economic tendencies in Europe is in H. Zaremska, ‘Początki żydowskiej obecności...’, pp. 23-58; as far as the classi­

cal overview is concerned, see A. Vetulani, ‘The Jews in Medieval Poland’, The Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1962), pp. 274-279.

11 The biographers of St. Adalbertus (originally Vojteh, a Bohemian prince), a monk from Prague who conducted Christian missions among the Prussians north of the Polish Dutchy, give many informations of such activities. St. Adalbertus, sent by the Pope Sylvester I appeared in the Polish court in 996 and was soon killed by Prussians. His biographers pass the informa­

tion that the Jewish merchants in Prague conducted a very profitable slave trade selling also christened Slavs to the Muslim countries. The Chronicle of Gall Anonymous described a wife of Prince Vladyslaus Herman Judith buying up slaves from the Jewish merchants before 1085. The Gniezno Doors, (Porta Regia, Porta Enea, Porta Aura), the unigue bronze doors at the entrance to the Cathedral in Gniezno, cast in the 12lh c. during a reign of the Duke of Poland Mieszko III the Old contain two fragments devoted to this topic. In the left wing in scene 7th St. Adalbertus has a vision of Christ admonishing him not to tolerate the trade in slaves by Jews. In the scene 8th St. Adalbergus accuses Jews of trading in slaves in front of the Bohemian prince Boleslaus II the Pious. He admonishes him to stop tolerating this trade. The Gniezno doors constitute one of the most brilliant examples of the European Romanesque art. The time and place of its casting is unknown. See J. I. Daniec, The Message of Faith and Symbol in European Medieval Bronze Because of this already fairlystabilized and sophisticated system of diversified relations, there was aneedto fill theeconomic gaps between these different sectors of the economy, whichfunctioned within a concrete Christian theological and cul­ tural setting, withcertain skills treated asimmoral, or skills which werestillabsent.

Hence the natural need for intermediaries to perform such skills, either to a great extent absentor frowned upon for religious reasons, and Jews fitted perfectly such a role. They performed it firstin the early towns. The Jewishcommunities which hadpreviously developed great organizational and trading skills were used for these newly-needed tasks in East-Central Europe. But theywere also forced in the 11th and

12th centuries to rethink and abandon some of the basiceconomic principles which

12th centuries to rethink and abandon some of the basiceconomic principles which