In the medieval world intercontinental commerce consisted largely of exchanges of luxury goods. Fur was one of the most important commodities exchanged. Members of the upper classes in both Oriental and European societies placed great value on it. One Islamic observer, writing in the tenth century, described “the kings of the Arabs and the Barbarians” wearing “dresses of … [fox] furs.” He explained that fur garments “form part of their vanity… [and] the kings wear tiaras, khaftans, and robes of these furs…” By the eleventh century the fashion in Europe was similar. A bishop of northwestern Europe bemoaned the fact that the “odor [of fur has] inoculated our world with the deadly poison of pride” and that “for right or wrong we hanker after a martenskin robe as much as for supreme happiness…” Similar reports testify to continued consumer demand for fur in Europe and in the Orient through the sixteenth century, the end of the period of this study, and even later.

Sources on fur consumption indicate that the finest quality fur originated in northeastern Europe, in other words, in the region that is now northern European Russia, and the northwestern corner of Siberia. It was here that fur-bearing animals grew the thickest, softest pelts in the purest winter hues. It was from this region that the world demand for fur was satisfied. And it was this region, the distant Far North, that became known in Islamic literature as the mysterious “land of darkness.”