They are the filthiest of God's creatures. They have no modesty in defecation and urination, nor do they wash after pollution from orgasm, nor do they wash their hands after eating. Thus they are like wild asses. When they have come from their land....they build big houses of wood on the shore, each holding ten to twenty persons more or less....With them are pretty slave girls destined for sale to merchants: a man will have sexual intercourse with his slave girl while his companion looks on. Sometimes whole groups will come together in this fashion, each in the presence of others. A merchant who arrives to buy a slave girl from them may have to wait and look on while a Rus completes the act of intercourse with a slave girl.
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The 13th Warrior briefly shows hints of promiscuity amongst the locals, including slavery, though Ahmad makes no attempt to deride the Europeans for their slaveholding, as the Muslims had the largest collections of slaves in the world. The Arab's depiction of promiscuous sexuality may also not be his own personal comparison between the Iranian and Arabic world of his fundamentalist home empire, but rather it may root in the fact that Ahmad (himself a fundamentalist Muslim and Islamic scholar) considered them pathetic infidels apostate from the Islamic law of purity he was seeking to bring to the southerly Turkic tribes. The tasting of pork, the drinking of alcohol, etc. stimulate this hatred and disgust for the infidel by the Muslim Arab writer.
Ahmad, however, did praise them as upright, beautiful, and unique. He described their features as clearly European. The descriptions are true of both the Slavic, Germanic, and Finnic races alike. He describes their culture and tradition as unique and simple.
I have seen the Rus....I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blonde and ruddy; they wear neither tunics nor caftans, but the men wear a garment which covers one side of the body and leaves a hand free. ---
Each man has an axe, a sword, and a knife and keeps each by him at all times. The swords are broad and grooved, of Frankish (German) sort. Every man is tattooed from finger nails to neck with dark green (or green or blue-black) trees and figures.
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Each woman wears on either breast a box of iron, silver, copper or gold; the value of the box indicates the wealth of the husband. Each box has a ring from which depends a knife. The women wear neck rings of gold and silver....Their most prized ornaments are beads of green glass of the same make as ceramic objects one finds on their ships. They trade beads among themselves and they pay an exaggerated price for them....They string them as necklaces for their women. No standard measure [economic unit] is known in the land.... They are very fond of pork (Haram/forbidden in Islam)....The Rus are a great host, all of them red haired; they are big men with white bodies. The women of this land have boxes made, according to their circumstances and means, out of gold, silver, and wood. From childhood they bind these to their breasts so that their breasts will not grow larger.
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