The ancient Muslim East attached great importance to the purity of the body. All the more interesting is the testimony of the Arabs who are authoritative in this regard:
“The country of the Slavs is flat and wooded, and they live in it. And they have no vineyards and arable fields. And they have something like barrels made of wood, which contain hives and honey. When someone dies with them, his corpse is burned. The next day after the burning of the deceased, they go to the place where it happened, collect the ashes from that place and put it on the hill. And they all worship fire. When one of the nobles dies, they dig a grave for him in the form of a large house, put it there, and together with him put in the same grave his clothes and the gold bracelets that he wore. Then they put a lot of foodstuffs, containers of drinks and a minted coin there.
They keep their clothes clean and their men wear gold bracelets. They have many cities and they live freely”(VM Beilis, Arab authors of the 9th - first half of the 10th century on the statehood and tribal structure of the peoples of Europe).
From the lips of educated Arabs, this sounds like a much greater compliment than medieval Europeans would say.