Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
With the Tatar tribe which inhabits the north-eastern region of Poland there is connected a little known page not only of Polish history, but of history in general. Whereas all other Muslim peoples established themselves in Europe as conquerors (omitting the majority of Muslims in Yugoslavia, who are of Serb origin and were converted to Islam by their Turkish conquerors), the Polish Tatars inhabit a region never touched by a Muslim invader, and history teaches us that they began to settle in Poland from the middle of the fourteenth century and already professed the religion of Islam.