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Poland's patriotic Tartars

Hugh O'Shaughnessy — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

The spirit of Genghiz Khan, the leader of the Tartars who swept into Europe at the end of the 14th century, is still present in a little Polish village.

IT WOULD be too much to claim that the ghost of the old Central Asian warrior Genghiz Khan is alive and well amid the gentle countryside near the village of Kruszyniany in north-east Poland, where huge quantities of maize and blackcurrants grow in great fields carved out of the virgin forest home to bison, wildcats, and foxes. But the old man is about if you want to look for him and the message he leaves is not what one might expect.

In Kruszyniany and in Lithuania to the north live a few thousand descendants of the Muslim warriors who arrived, took Poland to their hearts and fought for it over the past six centuries. They came to conquer but stayed to defend. In 1410, the brilliant horsemanship they brought from the steppes helped the Poles vanquish the Teutonic Knights who were keen on spreading German influence into this part of Eastern Europe. The victory of 39,000 Poles and their allies against the 27,000 Knights at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 is as deeply burnt into the memory of Polish schoolchildren: it was a foundation stone of Poland's very identity. And not only did these Muslim Tartars help keep the Germans at bay they did the same with the aggressive Russians to the east and the no less warlike Swedes to the north.

King Jan Sobieski gave Kruszyniany to the Tartars in 1679 as a reward for their services. He granted them the right to marry Christian women and bring up their children as Muslims if they kept out of politics. Over the centuries the surviving, though much reduced, community has maintained its traditions and even today sets an example which could be followed outside Poland.

On the third Friday of every month a few Tartars go to the mosque in Kruszyniany and the one in the nearby village of Boboniki. In the villages' two fine 19th century buildings the nonagenarian Imam Stefan, who lives in the neighbouring city of Bialystok, leads the prayers to the Almighty. At festival times congregations are swollen enormously when the scattered Muslim community gathers in the best-known Muslim sites in Poland.

Adam, who has done his stint in the Polish army, tends the mosque and tells how during the Second World War the Germans took it over as a field hospital. He also looks after the cemetery under the pines on the hill where old headstones roughly carved in the 17th century lie beside modern monuments naming those from all over Poland who lie here. Four years ago he joined a group of 12 local persons on a pilgrimage to Mecca paid for by the Saudi Arabian Government. He pulls a recent photograph out of his pocket which shows Cardinal Glemp, the head of the Catholic church in Poland, on a visit to his mosque. "It was good of them to come here," he murmurs.

Ms. Radkiewicz who looks after the Boboniki mosque says that the local Muslims have over the centuries learned how to co-exist in the most friendly way with their Christian neighbours, most of whom are Catholic with a sprinkling of Russian Orthodox. "We're happy to celebrate Christmas with them," she says cheerfully.

Harmonic relations

The most striking sign of good relations between the faiths is to be found on a little knoll a short drive from Kruszyniany. Two seven-metre high crosses, one Catholic, the other Orthodox, stand beside a granite boulder finely carved with the Muslim crescent and star on what has become known as Ecumenical Hill. Mieczyslaw Siewko, a former inspector of forests who promoted the idea of the site, says: "We all live here in harmony. We're friends."

The present harmony is a reminder that despite its present international reputation of being a redoubt of rather hard-line Catholicism, Poland had another tradition. In Renaissance times it had a rather better record of religious tolerance than the England of Elizabeth I.

The question that remains is whether the local Muslim population will survive in two villages which are being drained of their young by the bright lights of Bialystok, Warsaw, and Western Europe. And it is unlikely that the Imam will live much longer.

A solution may come in the form of tourism. The national tourism authorities are promoting a "Tartar trail" highlighting the things to be seen and visited around the place. A vogue, too, is forming for Tartar food. Dzeneta Bogandowicz, a very dynamic Tartar lady with a doctorate in history, has made herself into a minor national figure by setting up a Tartar restaurant in Kruszyniany which serves potato cakes, dumplings, and other delights to visitors. So far the village has escaped the odour of Disneyfication. But in future, as the tourist numbers swell, it may have to be on its guard.

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