Remarks on Mieszko’s Payments to His Warriors: “Market Weights” or “Good Coins (Dirhams) of Fixed Value”?

Widukind of Corvey’s Deeds of the Saxons [Res gestae saxonicae], records the following: “They happily received Wichmann, who then wore down the barbarians, who lived even further away, with numerous battles.  Wichmann defeated King Miesco, who ruled over the Slavs called the Licicaviki, in two battles, and killed his brother.  He then extorted a great quantity of booty from them” (Widukind of Corvey, p. 140). 

Widukind’s entry regarding Mieszko, typically attributed to the year 963 A.D., is generally identified as the earliest reference to Mieszko and the polity he reigned over, latterly known as Poland.  However, some scholars have posited that the fragmentary reports on the Slavs prepared by Ibrahim Ibn Ya’Qub al-Isra’ili at-Turtushi, which were latterly preserved through their incorporation into Al-Bakrī’s Kitāb al-masālik wa’l-mamālik (Book of the Roads and Kingdoms), may have reflected travels that occurred as early as 961-962 A.D., not the usually posited 965-966 A.D., and thus antedate Widukind’s first entry regarding Mieszko and his Slavs (Zaborski, p. 8). 

Ibrahim Ibn Ya’Qub reported the following regarding Mieszko and his realm: “The country of Mashaqqah [that is Mieszko, earlier in the text identified as ‘King of the North’] is the largest one among the countries [of the Slavs].  It abounds in food, meat, honey, and agricultural produce.  The taxes are collected in market weights.  Those are the salary of his men in every month, and each of them has a certain amount of them to get.  He has three thousand warriors wearing coats of mail; a hundred of them is worth a thousand of other warriors in the battle.  He gives those men clothes, horses, arms, and everything they need.  If a child is born to one of them, he orders the child to be paid a maintenance, regardless of the latter’s sex.  When the child grows, and he is a boy, he marries him and pays the dowry to her father.  The dowry of the Slavs if very big, and they pay it in the same way as the Berbers do.  If a man, thus, has two or three daughters, he gets rich, but if he has two sons, he becomes poor” (Mishin, pp. 187-188).    

What is of particular interest to the numismatically inclined, and has been of interest to generations of scholars, are the references to the taxes collected and paid by Mieszko to support the three thousand warriors, warriors that allowed Mieszko to expand, consolidate, and stabilize his realm and, as recorded in a second entry by Widukind, become friend of the emperor and enjoy ultimate victory over Wichman (Widukind of Corvey, pp. 143-145). 

As current scholarship does not support that Mieszko issued any coinage of his own and reveals that his son, Boleslaw Chrobry, struck Poland’s first denars between 992 A.D. and 1000 A.D. (see Suchodolski 2019 and Suchodolski 2015 for a discussion of which denars are contenders for earliest denars struck in Poland), we must look elsewhere for what, exactly, Mieszko may have collected for taxes and used to pay his force of mercenary warriors.

Mishin, in his translation of Ibrahim Ibn Ya’Qub, indicated that Mieszko collected taxes in “market weights,” which were then used to pay his warriors a fixed monthly salary.  This peculiar translation, “market weights,” is ultimately based on the scholarship of Tadeusz Kowalski, who proposed this translation (matᾱqῑl al-murquatiyya) (because the Arabic word for “dinar” (matᾱqῑl) was followed by a corrupted (?) or unattested Arabic word modifying it which has stymied the best attempts of scholars searching for an appropriate translation for generations but which some, including Kowalski, viewed as meaning market (al-murquatiyya) – and a market dinar would, hypothetically be most appropriately translated as a “market weight”. 

In a paper prepared for a 2006 conference celebrating the 60th anniversary of Kowalski’s remarkable scholarship regarding the testimony of Ibrahim Ibn Ya’qub, Andrzej Zaborski discussed this translation issue at length, noting that alternatives proposed over the years have include Byzantine money (a proposal widely rejected), legal tender/money, and his own hypotheses, “good coins of fixed value” or “coins of diminished value.”  Zaborski concluded that the translation issue required further investigation.  (Zaborski, pp. 64-65).  I suggest that the text has revealed all that it will yield and that the evidence on the ground, or rather in the ground, argues that “good coins of fixed value” should prevail as the preferred translation.  To support this contention, I appeal to the numismatic hoard evidence.

Mateusz Bogucki discussed the use of dirhams in Slavic lands in 2011, based on hoard evidence, and divided the time periods during which the hoards went into the ground into seven phases.  Bogucki’s Phase III most aligns with the period during which Mieszko is referred to as collecting taxes and paying warriors salaries.  Here is, in part, what Bogucki has to say about that period: “Phase III (early tenth century). At the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries, an important change in dirham importation may be observed. A significantly greater number of hoards are known from the period 900-40, and they are much larger (up to 1,000 coins). They are found in eastern Poland, Great Poland and Pomerania. Dirhams are almost exclusively whole coins. Some complete (undamaged) ornaments also occur in the hoards. Analysis of the coins and ornaments demonstrates that, during this phase, two important routes were in use. Coins found in Pomerania came via the Baltic, whereas coins in the eastern parts of Poland and Great Poland arrived mainly via the eastern land-route” (Bogucki (2011), p. 136). 

In 2016, Bogucki explicitly tied the influx of dirhams into Poland to Mieszko’s use of mercenaries to consolidate his realm: “Assuming the chronology of the deposits is solid, it may even be suggested that the influx of silver to Wielkopolska from the East preceded the Pomeranian route by more than a decade and was initially greater in importance. The issue of the commodity exchanged for silver in the early-Piast state is still difficult to ascertain. It is apparent that the metal was needed to pay for mercenary services and to develop a proper network of administration and infrastructure based on strongholds. Archaeological research proves that the first half of the 10th century, when the core of the state in Wielkopolska was being established, brought destruction to a large percentage of tribal stronghold centres. Juxtaposing these facts with the chronology of the influx of oriental silver into Wielkopolska (discussed above) and the information found in written Arab sources, we may conclude that the economic basis for building the earliest Piast state came from selling slaves – the inhabitants of the destroyed tribal centres of Wielkopolska. By eliminating their hostile neighbours, the Piasts acquired silver, which they could use to consolidate their power” (Bogucki 2016, p. 246).

Based on the above, we know that Mieszko had access to good quality dirhams, in quantity, and that the dirhams were not yet reduced to hacksilber (where they would need to be regularly weighed to be paid out as a salary) as they were in later phases (such as Phase IV, from 970-1010 A.D., which Bogucki noted often included coins and items that were “intensely fragmented”).  This adds support to Zaborski’s hypothesis, and my contention, that the contentious translation should be “good coins of fixed value” rather than the unsatisfactory and less supportable “market weights.” I note that Bogucki, in a 2005 paper, made passing reference to the issue of the form of the warrior salaries (in an article that was poorly translated into English) without addressing the underlying translation issue being discussed in this post :

In my opinion buying meat by silver doesn’t hinder from buying by the silver politically loyalty. In the matter of salary and taxes it’s better to quote the words of Ibrahim: ‘Received by him (king Mieszko I) taxes are trade weights. They are used as payment for his mans (knights). Each month to each man it’s a known number of it’ (Kowalski 1946, 50). Here is necessary to comment the term trade weights –mataqil murquatiyya. Ibrahim might have known the name of dirhems, the western European denars he called Kinszar, so I think that Ibrahim noticed the hack silver, taken not for pieces, but for weight. This relation doesn’t mean that salary and taxes weren’t paid in animals, grain or any other goods. But it shows, that in this matter it isn’t possible to give only one single answer.

Bogucki (2005), p. 1152.

I suspect if Bogucki would reflect further on the issue, and consider the later arguments of Zaborski and the nature of the hoard evidence when Mieszko was doing the bulk of the consolidation of his polity, he might abandon his attachment from market weights to good coins of fixed value. Yet, it is important to take note of the hacksilber hoards and what they may represent and for that, I direct readers to the comments in the article below by Florin Curta.

And finally, as if in response to the 60th Anniversary Conference honoring Kowalski’s scholarship, an updated edition of his work, translated into English, will soon be released. The editor of the new edition was Mustafa Switat, a Research Fellow with the University of Warsaw. Of course, I am most eagerly awaiting to see how the most recent scholarship addresses the issue of the translation issue discussed above and whether Zaborski’s proposed resolution is adopted or perhaps another solution is at hand.

REFERENCES/SOURCES: (Blue boxes may be clicked to be taken to reference works available online for review. Red boxes indicate reference works are not available for online review. If a link for a blue box is no longer working, please advise me of such as nca@northcoastantiquarian.com. Thank you.).

Note: Zabroski’s work is a compilation of scholarly papers read at a May 2006 conference celebrating the 60^th anniversary of the publication of the first and most critical edition of Ibrahim Ibn Ya’Qub’s reports on the Slavs, which had been prepared and published by Tadeusz Kowalski [Kowalski, Tadeusz.  Relacja Ibrāhīma ibn Ja’ḳūba z podróży do krajów słowiańskich w przekazie al-Bekrīego (Relatio Ibrāhīm ibn Ja’ḳūb de itinere Slavico, quo traditur apud al-Bekrī). Cracow: PAU, 1946].  The May 2006 conference concluded by calling for an updated edition of Kalkowski’s work to be published, with appropriate emendations to reflect the latest scholarship, and for it to be translated into English.  Fortunately, the conference’s appeal has been answered as the following is soon to be released:  Kowalski, Tadeusz.  Ibrāhīm ibn Yaʿqūb’s Account of His Travel to Slavic Countries as Transmitted by Al-Bakri with Contemporary Commentary.  Ed. Mustafa Switat. Trans. Agnieszka Waskiewicz.