The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores. It records the distances to the lands of the island barbarians,11 the changes in the countries, the places which adjoin the boundaries, and the arrangement of cities and suburbs, with the differences of costume, the varieties of diet, the punishments and prohibitions, laws and regulations, customs and products.12 Nothing is left unrecorded;13 because it was this gentleman’s intention, [and] his whole wish, to make the people of the future, for a thousand years hereafter, realize that the way of our country is in harmony with nature and that we have achieved this measure of success in civilizing the barbarians of the south and east.

And it is a custom of his people that if one of them should have reared a beautiful daughter he offers her to the king as a concubine (ama mawtu-’ a) and he possesses her without a marriage ceremony as slaves are possessed, and this in spite of the fact that Islam has triumphed among them and that they follow the Malikite school and that this sultan Musa was pious and assiduous in prayer, Koran reading, and mentioning God [dhikr]. “I said to him (said lbn Amir Hajib) that this was not permissible for a Muslim, whether in law (shar’) or reason (‘aql), and he said: ‘Not even for kings?’ and I replied: ‘No! not even for kings! Ask the scholars!’ He said: ‘By God, I did not know that. I hereby leave it and abandon it utterly!’ “I saw that this sultan Musa loved virtue and people of virtue. He left his kingdom and appointed as his deputy there his son Muhammad and emigrated to God and His Messenger. He accomplished the obligations of the Pilgrimage, visited [the tomb of] the Prophet [at Medina] (God’s blessing and peace be upon him!) and returned to his country with the intention of handing over his sovereignty to his son and abandoning it entirely to him and returning to Mecca the Venerated to remain there as a dweller near the sanctuary (muja-wir); but death overtook him, may God (who is great) have mercy upon him.

“I asked him if he had enemies with whom he fought wars and he said: ‘Yes, we have a violent enemy who is to the Sudan as the Tatars are to you.

Prior to this, before the flesh ofthe sheep is served, the master takes what pleases him; and furthermore if he gives to anyone a special piece, it is the custom, that he who receives it shall eat it himself, and he may not give it to another; but if he cannot eat it all he carries it off with him, or gives it to his servant if he be present, who keeps it; otherwise he puts it away in his captargac, which is a square bag which they carry to put such things in, in which they store away bones when they have not time to gnaw them well, so that they can gnaw them later and that nothing of the food be lost.

Then an attendant goes out of the dwelling with a cup and liquor, and sprinkles three times to the south, each time bending the knee, and that to do reverence to the fire; then to the east, and that to do reverence to the air; then to the west to do reverence to the water; to the north they sprinkle for the dead.

And the accursed ones began to ride through the streets, writing down the Christian houses; because for our sins God has brought wild beasts out of the desert to eat the flesh of the strong, and to drink the blood of the Boyars.

God alone knows who they are and whence they came out. Very wise men know them exactly, who understand books; but we do not know who they are, but have written of them here for the sake of the memory of the Russian Princes and of the misfortune which came to them from them. For we have heard that they have captured many countries...