Magyar tribes. Hungarians. An amazing history of the people. Musicians and poets
MAGYARS, a people who are identified with the state of Hungary, created by him and existing to this day (in the language of the Magyars, "Hungary" sounds like "Magyarorsag", which means "land of the Magyars").
The distant ancestors of the Magyars, who spoke languages belonging to the eastern (Ugric) branch of the Finno-Ugric language family, occupied the area of the middle reaches of the Volga and its eastern tributaries. In 1 thousand BC. some of these peoples moved eastward into the territories located in the basins of the Ob and Irtysh rivers. The most eastern of the ancestors of the Magyars came into contact with the western Turks (Chuvash). Anthropological features and the study of names support the assumption that the initial relationship of the more militant and culturally more advanced Turks with the relatively primitive tribes of the Ugric had the character of conquest. However, in the history of these peoples there comes a moment of their complete mixing. The new community used the Ugric lexical base, but this language contained a large number of Turkic words, and its grammatical structure was mainly Turkic. This mixed Turkic-Ugric community consisted of free people whose way of life was typical of the steppe nomads.
In the 5th c. The Magyars crossed the Volga and settled in the steppe zone north of the Caucasus. They are known at that time as On-Ogur (Ten Arrows); the name "Hungarian", which the Magyars do not refer to themselves, comes from a Slavicized version of this word (some make "Magyar" from the Ugric Mansi and Turkic Eri, "man"). The Magyars lived in this region for approx. 400 years. Until now, the widely held assumption of their identity with Attila's Huns is false. In the subsequent period of their history, the Magyars increasingly acquired the characteristic features of the Turks, being under the rule of the Bulgars. OK. 830 AD they moved west across the Don River, and in 896, under the leadership of Prince Arpad, they crossed one of the passes of the Carpathians and stopped in that place, namely in Hungary, which became their permanent European home.
Soon the Magyar cavalry began to make their raids across Europe, but in 933 AD. were defeated by the Germans under the leadership of Heinrich Ptitselov. An even more serious lesson was inflicted on them in 955 AD. Heinrich's son is Otto the Great.
The Magyar prince Geza (r. 972–997) conceived the idea of converting his people to Christianity. This idea was brought to an end by his son and successor, St. Stephen (r. 997–1038), who received the royal crown from Pope Sylvester (1000), introduced the foundations of legislation and contributed to the creation of a single political system in Hungary, which has been preserved since that time in one form or another.
From the very beginning of their presence in Hungary, the Magyars formed a privileged class of free people, ruling both over the slaves they brought with them or newly acquired, and over the local subjugated peoples. Social and political differences corresponded to ethnic differentiation. Soon the situation changed, as a large class of unfree Magyars developed, which by the 15th century. accounted for three-quarters of the entire population of the Magyars. At the same time, many non-Magyars were incorporated into the Magyar tribal nobility. The great majority of them adopted the Magyar language and culture, and the Hungarian state continued to exist as fundamentally Magyar. Having retained this trend even after the war between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent resettlement from the devastated territories, by the end of the 18th century. decreased in numbers due to the Magyars. There are less than half of them left relative to the entire population of Hungary; Magyars were the majority only in the central lowland regions of the country. In the 19th century their numbers in some regions were restored, but the non-Magyars were now no less significant in the life of the Magyar national state. In 1920 Hungary was divided along national lines. However, this principle was applied inconsistently, and more than a quarter of the Magyar-speaking population of Hungary were included in those parts of the divided country where representatives of the indigenous nationality were supposed to live. Therefore, despite the fact that today Hungary is still truly "the land of the Magyars" ("Magyarorszag"), the Magyars themselves live in neighboring countries as ethnic minorities. An approximate picture of their numbers is as follows: Hungary - 9,750,000 (excluding 300 thousand non-Magyars); Romania - 1,700,000; Czechoslovakia - 400 thousand; Yugoslavia - 500 thousand; Ukraine - 150 thousand. Crisis in the agrarian sector of the late 19th century. became the reason for the emigration of many Magyars to the United States (who have since been mostly assimilated), there were much fewer people who left for political reasons, which was most pronounced relatively recently: in 1945–1946 and in 1956.
Despite the fact that the Magyars have long been Europeans, they retain not only their ancestral language, but also many customs and characteristics that put them in a special position compared to their neighbors.
So says part of the Hungarian scientists
The Kazakhs, indeed, often have the name Madiyar (Magyar)
Hungarians have Kazakh roots
Kazakhs and Hungarians are brother nations, says the famous Hungarian orientalist and writer Mikhail Beike, author of the book "Turgai Magyars".
We managed to meet a famous writer by interviewing him.
We offer the reader fragments of this conversation.
What is your new book about?
The fact is that the scientific schools that exist today in the world give completely different interpretations of where the Hungarian people originate from. Some confidently classify us as a Finno-Ugric language group, identifying us with such peoples as the Khanty and Mansi. Other scientists, to whom I include myself, suggest that our common ancestors were the Turks of the ancient world. The search for evidence eventually led me to Kazakhstan. But there is also a little background here.
The very name of our state, Hungaria, as the Hungarians call it, according to one of the scientific hypotheses, is translated as the country of the Huns, or Huns - in Russian transcription. As is known, it is the Huns, who came out of the steppes of Central and Central Asia, who are the ancestors of the entire family of Turkic peoples inhabiting the territories from the foothills of the Altai and the Caucasus to the borders of modern Europe. But that's just one theory. There are other assumptions. Since ancient times, our people themselves have had a legend about two brothers - Magyar and Khodeyar, which tells how two brothers hunting for a deer parted on the road. Khodeyar, tired of the chase, returned home, while Magyar continued the pursuit, going far beyond the Carpathian mountains. And here's what's interesting. It is here, in Kazakhstan, in the Turgai region, that the Magyars-Argyns live, in whose epic this legend is repeated, as in a mirror. Both we and they identify themselves precisely as one people - the Magyars. Children of the Magyar. This is what my book is about.
Can't you be more specific?
As scientists suggest, in the 9th century, a single people of the Magyars was divided into two groups, one of which migrated to the west, to the lands of modern Hungary, the other remained in their historical homeland, presumably somewhere in the foothills of the Urals. But already during the time of the Tatar-Mongol invasion, this part of the Hungarian tribes became part of two large tribal federative unions of the Argyns and Kipchaks on the lands of Kazakhstan, while retaining their self-identification. Scientists call them that: Magyars-Argyns and Magyars-Kipchaks. Until now, on the gravestones of the deceased, these people, in fact, in everything Kazakhs, indicate the belonging of the deceased to the Magyar clan. Now the most interesting. If the ancestors of the Magyars who remained in their historical homeland were not related in language, culture and way of life with the peoples included in these tribal formations, do you think they would have accepted them there? And the second question. Why did the Kipchaks, who defended Otrar, flee from the pending retribution from Genghis Khan in 1241-1242, not somewhere else, namely to Hungary, under the protection of King Bela IV? There is clearly a relationship here.
It is difficult to imagine Hungarians as nomads.
However, it is. Until the 11th century, the Hungarians adhered to a nomadic lifestyle. Our people lived in yurts, milked mares, raised cattle. And only later, with the adoption of Christianity, our ancestors switch to a sedentary lifestyle. The same Kipchaks living today in Hungary, with regret, we have to state that for the most part they do not know folk customs, they have forgotten their native language. But at the same time, among the Hungarians, there is a growing interest in everything related to our distant history. The collection of Kazakh folk songs, compiled by Janos Shiposh, caused a huge resonance in our country. Publications about modern Kazakhstan and its history are multiplying. About Kazakhs, Kazakhs-Magyars. As far back as the 13th century, the monk Julian made an attempt to find his historical roots for the first time, having equipped two expeditions to the East. Unfortunately, both of them failed. A new wave of interest in the search for their historical ancestral home flares up in Hungarian society at the turn of the eighteenth century. Searches are being conducted in various regions of the planet, including a significant part of Asia, Tibet and India. And only in 1965, the famous Hungarian anthropologist Tibor Tot discovers a Magyar settlement in the Turgai region of Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to conduct serious research at that time. The Turgai region was closed to foreigners in those days. And only with the collapse of the USSR and the acquisition of independence by the Republic of Kazakhstan, long-term scientific expeditions of Hungarian scientists to your country became possible.
It took you about two years to complete your photo-rich book. Could you tell us about your trip to the Turgai steppe? And what personally touched your soul on this trip?
We, myself and the Scientific Secretary of the Central Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Babakumar Sinayat uly, who accompanied me on the trip, visited there in September. We talked to many people. We visited the grave of the famous Kazakh political figure Mirzhakup Dulatov from the Magyar-Argyn family, paying tribute to the man who openly spoke out against the arbitrariness committed in Stalin's times. And that's what struck me to the core - how many Magyars-Argyns in those years fell under the rink of repression. And how few of them are left today. Many of these people spent seventeen, twenty-five years in Stalin's camps and learned to remain silent. It was very difficult to get them to talk. And I consider for myself a genuine scientific discovery heard here, in the steppes of Turgai, the legend of two brothers, Madiyar and Khodeyar, told to me by old people. Repeating word for word her Hungarian version.
Is this your fourth book on the Kazakh theme?
Yes. Earlier, I had a book translated into Hungarian by your President, “On the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century”. In 1998, the book "Nomads of Central Asia" by Nursultan Nazarbayev was published. In 2001, the book "In the footsteps of the monk Julian." And finally, my last scientific work "Torgai Magyars" was published in 2003 by the TIMP KFt publishing house in Budapest.
P.S. Let's add on our own behalf, this book is published in four languages: Hungarian, English, Russian, Kazakh, and released in a trial edition of 2500 copies. Presumably it will be reissued.
Magyars - the dominant tribe in the Transleitan part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (Kingdom). The main mass of this tribe lives in Central Hungary, on both banks of the Danube and the Tisza; in the west, their settlements reach almost to the very border of the kingdom; in the eastern part of Transylvania, the Seklers belonging to this tribe also live (see). The total number of representatives of the Magyar tribe (1890) in the lands of the Hungarian crown reaches 7426730, which is 42.80% of the total population. By regions, this number is distributed as follows: Hungary with Transylvania accounts for 7356874 hours (48.61% of the total population), Hungary alone - 6658929 (51.69%), Transylvania separately - 697945 (31%), River (Fiume, city and region) - 1062 (3.94%), Croatia and south - 68794 (3.15%). In addition, the Magyars still live in e (1890 - 8139) and in Romania. All these figures are undoubtedly much higher than reality, because national censuses are conducted biasedly: with the general acceptance of all national censuses in Austria-Hungary, not nationality is noted, but the spoken language; Magyar language) everyone who wants to be considered Magyars falls (see). Sometimes the inclusion in the number of people of non-Magyar origin is carried out without their knowledge, sometimes even against their will. in between Magyars about 55%, Evangelicals - Helvetic confession 30%, Lutheran 4%. The Greek confession includes predominantly Omagyarized Russians who have forgotten their language and nationality. Comparative linguistic studies led to the calling of the Finnish or, more precisely, the Eastern Finnish (Finno-Uralic) origin of the Magyars (for the language of the Magyars, see language). Some scholars (e.g.) are ready to consider the Magyars, their language and ancient culture as the result of a mixture of Finno-Ugric elements with Turkish-Tatar ones (V àmbéry, "Die primitive Cultur des tü rko-tatar. Volkes auf Grund sprachl. Forschungen", Lpts., 1879); The memories of the Great Ugria somewhere in the East preserved in the Magyar chronicles very early (as early as the 13th century) prompted the Magyars to look for their homeland and their pagan relatives in this direction. Travels (mostly of monks) began, as a result of which the fact was established that the people living in Volzhskaya speak a language understandable to the Magyars. These travels did not stop until later, and many Magyar scientists long ago came to the conclusion that the Magyars were related to some Finno-Ural tribes. But this opinion met with a strong rebuff from the advocates of other theories (for example, about the origin of the Magyars from the Huns of Attila, about the Turkish-Tatar people of the Magyars), and only recently, mainly on the basis of a philological analysis of the Magyar language, it has been established with sufficient firmness that the ancestral home The Magyars lie far from the Northern Ocean, to the south of the rest of the Ugorians, whose original lineage lay on both sides of the river. Irtysh, from pp. Pechora, Kama and the middle reaches of the Volga in the west to the river. Ob and the upper reaches of the Yaik in the east, almost from 56 ° to 67 ° N. sh. In this Yugoria, Yugaria, or Yugra land, the Magyars lived in the south and southeast, in close proximity to the Turkic peoples. The people themselves have long called themselves Magyars (Magyar), and the Ugrians (, Ougri; the Polish form is Hungarians, Węgry) have been nicknamed them, it seems, from time immemorial by the Slavs (Russians), from whom the Western peoples have already borrowed this name. The Latin and German West began to call them Ungri, Ungari, Hungari, Onogari, and the Byzantines - Τούρκοι, next to the much less common Ούγγροι (also Ούννοι). Both names - Magyars and Hungarians or Ugrians - are now trying to explain on the basis of Finnish dialects. For Magyar, the meaning is "child of the earth" or "highlander" (i.e., inhabitant of the ridge). Name ugry is undoubtedly directly related to our "Ugra" and the "Yugrichs" of our chronicles, that is, the ancestors of the Voguls, Ostyaks, etc. Zyryans and are still called Votyaks and Ostyaks J ö gras, pl. number Jö grajass. In addition to the Magyars proper, the current Magyar people included the Cumans, Polovtsy, Pechenegs, Yazygs, etc., who merged with them, who formerly roamed the southern Russian steppes and then either landed on the way to the passing Magyar horde, or went over to the formed Magyar kingdom and received land from the Hungarian kings for settlement. The Magyar language does not have any significant dialectical varieties: only in pronunciation and in some aspects of colloquial speech are distinguished palots (Magyar P àlò cz, pl. Paloczok, Cumans of Russian chronicles), and the Cumans proper (Mad. Kun), in the plain. Magyars in Hungary live mainly in Great Hungarian Plain, stretching from Pest to the borders of Transylvania and from Tokaj to a and bearing the name Alf ö ld ("lowland"), in contrast to the Carpathian regions in northern Hungary, which are called "highlands" (Felf ö ld). Huge expanses of the earth, having a completely steppe character and bearing the name empty (puszta; cf. Russian desert, wasteland), only partly plowed for crops, but partly they are rich pastures, on which huge herds of cattle and small cattle, pigs, herds of semi-wild horses graze, under the supervision of semi-nomadic shepherds. The Magyar peasant passionately loves his "emptiness" and is reluctant to part with it for a long time. No wonder the Magyar poets dedicated such highly poetic works to her as Kis-Kuns à g (Small) Petofi or his own poems "A puszta Telen" ("Steppe in winter") and "A G òlya" ("Crane"). An important feature in the character of the Magyars is national pride, which determines an arrogant attitude towards other nationalities; e.g. about his closest neighbors - the Slovaks of the Magyars, he says: "Kasa nem etel, T ò t nem ember" ("Porridge is not food, the Slovak is not a person"). In the whole figure and in the expression of the face of the Magyar peasant, one can see a sense of dignity and calmness, not even allowing one to suspect what violent energy he is capable of displaying during excitement. The Magyars are great lovers of dancing; the common people dance almost exclusively the czardas (cz àrdà s). These dances are accompanied by music (violin), but the musicians are usually gypsies; the Magyars themselves do not play music; only shepherds sometimes play a special kind of flute (tilinka). The costume of the Magyar peasant consists of a narrow linen shirt with wide sleeves and white linen trousers slightly below the knees; on his feet are high boots, often with spurs, on his head is a wide-brimmed hat. On holidays, a jacket (mostly blue cloth) and long, very tight pants tucked into boots are added to this. The dandies decorate their hats with flowers on holidays. Women's attire consists of a shirt with wide sleeves and a skirt with an apron; on the shoulders, often a scarf, on the feet, Russian boots, also often with spurs, like men. Girls' hair is braided in one braid and decorated with ribbons; in women, the head is covered with a scarf. Outerwear for mzhch. and wives. serves as a short sheepskin coat, embroidered with silk and colored threads; in extreme cold, they wear a long sheepskin coat. Separate parts of the costume for men and women change, depending on the area. Magyar dwellings are monotonous: the house faces the street with two windows; Beneath them is a bench, a "bearer of words", on which gossips gather to gossip. The houses are mostly one-story, with high roofs covered with reeds, thatch or shingles. The walls of the houses are always whitewashed; some parts are painted in bright colors (green, blue, dark red). The floors in the houses are adobe. In general, in terms of costume and housing, the Magyars have much in common with their neighbors, the same inhabitants of the steppe, for example. Vlachs and even Moldavians. Magyar families are rarely numerous, and often completely childless; in this case, the Magyars sometimes buy a boy for themselves from some wandering Slovak, or they take them into the family of those exported by government commissars from the North. Hungary orphans, mostly also Slovaks.
Literature. Hunfalvy, "Etnographie von Ungarn"; "Die ungarische Sprachwissenschaft"; Fessler, "Die Geschichte d. Ungarn u. ihrer Landsassen" (Lpts., 1816); Europeus, "On the Ugric people who lived in central and northern Russia" ("J. Magyary N. Pr.", 1874); "On the question of the peoples who lived in central and northern Russia before the arrival of the Slavs there" ("Zh. Magyary N. Pr.", July, 1866); V àmbéry, "Die primitive Cultur des türko-tatar. Volkes auf Gr.-sprachl. Forschungen" (Lpts., 1879); Jerney 1844-1835" (Pest, 1851); Toldy, "Culturzust ände der Ungern vor d. Annahme des Christenthums" (1850); Földvàry, "Les ancêtres d" Attila, é tude historique sur les races scytiques" (P., 1875); Cassel, "Magyar. Alterth ü m." (Berlin, 1848); Auguste de Gé rando, "De l" origin des Hongrois" (Paris, 1844); Mailath, "Gesch. d. Magyaren" (1852); Grotto, "Moravia and the Magyars" (St. Petersburg, 1881); Petersen, "Hungary and Its Inhabitants" (Russian translation, St. Petersburg, 1883); Bergner, "Ungarn. Land und Leute" ("Woerl" s Reisehandb ücher", 1888).
October 12th, 2012 05:16 am
Migration of peoples and the history of the Magyars.
It is not customary to call the modern era, as, say, the period at the beginning of our era, the time of the Great Migration of Nations. The current ethnic groups, for the most part, have long occupied their geographical territories. This does not mean, however, that even now there are no mass migrations. Tens of millions of people in our century alone moved from Europe and, to a lesser extent, from Asia to the countries of America, from China to South and Southeast Asia, etc. Ukrainians moved to Kazakhstan. None of us will be surprised to meet a Georgian beyond the Arctic Circle, having met in Kushka - with a Yakut, a Mordvin or an Azerbaijani.
And history knows cases when an entire nation or a large part of it moves at once. For examples of this, it is not at all necessary to turn to the very distant past. In 1916, during the First World War, the authorities of the Turkish Empire began the extermination of the Assyrian people (Aisors), who lived in the eastern part of Asia Minor and in Iran. The chauvinistic leaders of the empire, the Muslim fanatics, took advantage of the war frenzy in the country to try to destroy the Christian Assyrians, as well as the Christian Armenians. The Assyrians desperately resisted, took up an all-round defense, for two years they “repelled, retreating, the blows of the regular Turkish army and the “free” detachments of cutthroats. And then they left their homeland, more precisely, from that part of it that belonged to Turkey. This is how the Assyrians appeared in Russia, the USA, Iraq, Syria and many other countries.
The past of our planet is turbulent, in it more than once or twice the peoples found themselves in the same position as the Aisors in 1916 - under the threat of destruction or enslavement. And they walked away from this threat.
Even the Huns, who later became formidable conquerors of half the world, rushed west from their Mongolia after they were defeated here by the Chinese armies. On the way, they, in turn, became a threat to many tribes, also forced to move away - sometimes as part of the Hun hordes, sometimes in front of them, sometimes these tribes “spread out to the sides”, went north and south from the path of fierce conquerors.
After the Mongols conquered the Middle Volga region, the Volga Bulgars who lived here largely retreated to the north, becoming one of the parts of the emerging Chuvash people. There are many similar examples here.
But often the resettlement of tribes and peoples have other reasons. Thousands of people who are not at all threatened by an external enemy are rising up and looking for a better life in new places. So the Russian people mastered the North of the European part of Russia and Siberia. So once the Scythians came to the Northern Black Sea region, expelling or dissolving the tribes of the Cimmerians who lived here before them. Thus, the German tribes of the Goths moved from the Northern Baltic to the south, to the Black Sea, at the beginning of our era.
At the same time, the very resettlement of the people can occur slowly, stretching for centuries?
In our country, forest hunters and reindeer herders, the Evenks, live in small groups almost throughout vast Siberia. The impenetrable taiga became their homeland for several hundred years, after the Evenks, who until then lived only in the south of Siberia, managed to find ways of hunting and movement that made them masters of the forests.
In the preface to the book of the Soviet Evenk historian A. S. Shubin, Professor E. M. Zalkind writes: “It seems almost unbelievable how the tribes that stood at such a level of development could conquer colossal spaces, overcome the difficulties of many months, and sometimes many years of travel . But in fact, the farther back in history, the less important is the factor of distance. Everywhere, wherever the Evenk went in the taiga wanderings, he found reindeer moss for his deer, animals for hunting, bark and poles for plagues. And the easier it was for him to embark on a long journey, since at that time the time factor did not play any role. years spent in one place, years spent on campaigns in new places, all this did not change anything in the usual way of life.
Of course, the words about the role of time and distance can be attributed not only to the Evenks, but also to many other nomads.
Doesn't that explain a lot about the relative ease with which the ancient tribes moved off the planet in search of the best - or at least not the worst places on the face of the earth.
The Kipchaks (Polovtsy) marched from Siberia in the 9th-11th centuries in a single shock wedge to the west, became the masters of most of Central Asia and the Northern Black Sea region, the Oghuz Turks pushed back by them moved to Iran, the Caucasus, and Asia Minor.
The creation of a single state in Norway forced part of the freedom-loving nobility there to go to Iceland with their households. The unification of the former Castile, Aragon, Leon in the Spanish kingdom and the conquest of the south of the Iberian Peninsula led to the mass eviction of the Muslim Arabic-speaking population from there to Africa.
In the 16th century, a strange, but only at first glance, story took place. From the west of Central Asia, nomadic tribes broke into its eastern part. They defeated and expelled its ruler, Emir Babur, from Ferghana (and themselves, having mixed with the local settled population, became one of the ancestors of modern Uzbeks). The unfortunate exile emir, by the way, a descendant of both Genghis Khan and Timur, forced to abandon both his native places and hereditary possessions, fled south with the remnants of his army to Afghanistan and India. and became the founder of a grandiose empire, which received the name of the Mughal power.
We will tell in more detail here about the centuries-old movement of the Magyar people, and then about the resettlement of the gypsies.
From the Yenisei to the Danube In 1848, a year of rapid revolutionary upsurge in almost all European countries, the Hungarians rebelled against the Austrian monarchy that ruled their land. The Hungarian revolution was crushed despite the heroic resistance of its defenders. From the city occupied by Austrian soldiers, a teenager runs away, limping, scolding these warriors as executioners in all the languages \u200b\u200bknown to him. And he knew many languages, because he had studied them since childhood. This homeless lame boy's name was Arminius Vamberi. A name that will become loud, at least for geographers, historians, orientalists and linguists around the world. Arminius Vamberi, a remarkable linguist and passionate researcher, will make amazing journeys, disguised as an Arab dervish, a Turk, a Persian; he will amaze Western ministers with his knowledge and. eastern emirs. And then. “In the field near the Danube, he met several soldiers who had escaped captivity. They were dusty, and defeat was read on their faces.
“It’s all over,” they said, “we’ll lie down and die.” Our freedom is gone!
Then the old shepherd got up and croaked to them in a voice shaky with age:
- Stop, children! Always, when trouble is with us, the old Magyars from Asia come to our aid: after all, we are their brothers, be calm, they will not forget us even now.
So this scene was described in the story "Vambury" by the Soviet poet and prose writer Nikolai Tikhonov.
In his wanderings in Central and Central Asia, in mysterious and often forbidden places for Europeans at that time, Arminius Vamberi tried to find these “old Magyars from Asia”, the memory of which lived in the heart of the Hungarian shepherd.
The ancient Hungarian chronicles speak of the Magyars as relatives of the Huns and assert that other relatives of the Magyars live in Persia.
It is clear that for the ancient chronicler the word Persia could mean not only the country that we know by this name, but a significant part of Asia.
During their wanderings, the legendary brothers Hunor and Magyar captured two daughters of the Alanian king (the Alans, as you remember, are one of the Sarmatian tribes). From these women, says the chronicle of Simon Kazai, all the Huns descended, "they are also Hungarians."
In Hungary, for many hundreds of years, not only scientists, but also the people, remembered the arrival of their ancestors here from afar, from the east, from Asia, and not only remembered, but connected special hopes with their distant homeland and unknown relatives. Maybe just because in Central Europe the Magyars-Hungarians are the only people belonging to the Finno-Ugric language family. On all sides the Magyar island is surrounded by the Indo-European sea. Slavs live on one side, Germans and Austrians on the other, Romanians on the third.
And the geographically closest people of the same family lives many kilometers to the north; in the Baltic. These are Estonians. And then the Estonians - in linguistic terms - are by no means the closest relatives of the Magyars. Closer ones (Khanty and Mansi) live in the northeast of the European part of the USSR and in the extreme northwest of Asia - even further than the Estonians.
Today, Hungarian anthropologists, linguists and archaeologists go again and again to the Volga, the Urals, the Arctic, Western Siberia and Central Asia, wanting to find traces of their ancestors and better study the undisputed and alleged relatives. But many hundreds of years ago, the Hungarian kings and bishops also sent their representatives far to the east and for the same purpose. However, the then representatives of the Hungarian crown and the church also pursued political goals, and moreover, they took care of saving the souls of the alleged Asian Magyars. Perhaps the most striking of these expeditions "for the ancestors" was the trip to the east of the Dominican monk Julian. It was both a feat and an adventure.
Julian walked through the lands engulfed by regular extermination wars, crossed the steppes teeming with robbers, more precisely, nomads who did not miss the opportunity to get rich. He lost his companions along the way, lost his money, but, defenseless, lonely and destitute, he went east with the stubbornness of the Julvernian captain Hatteras, who was striving for the North Pole. In order to find at least some food and protection from the steppes, Julian joined the caravans and served their owners, earning the right to go further and further with labor and humiliation.
On the Volga, near the Bulgars, Julian meets an “Asiatic Magyar”, who is married to a Bulgar. With the help of her and her relatives, he discovers "Great Hungary" in the Urals - the ancestral home of his people, hears the Magyar speech, tells these newly discovered relatives, though not countrymen, about the mighty Hungarian state on the Middle Danube, preaches Christianity.
But this remarkable discovery, made more than seven hundred years ago, was already almost belated. The Western Magyars found the eastern "Great Hungary" as if, only to soon find out: it was gone. The terrible Batu invasion also hit the land of the Ural Magyars.
It should also be noted that immediately after the conquest, the Tatar-Mongols included the Magyar warriors, according to their long tradition, in their own army. For some time, in the Tatar Golden Horde, among other “national”, as we would say today, military units, there was also a Magyar one.
The defeated and scattered Magyars, apparently, eventually mixed with the surrounding peoples, mainly with the Bashkirs. However, back in the 12th century, a century before Batu's campaign, some Arab travelers considered the Bashkirs themselves to be Asian Magyars.
Geographical names once again confirm the connection between the Magyars and the Urals. There is, for example, in Bashkiria the Sakmara River, a tributary of the Urals. And the same word, which serves as the name of the Bashkir river, is repeated more than once on the map of modern Hungary.
Little of. Three of the twelve known histories of the main Bashkir clans had the same names as three of the seven Magyar tribes that came to the Danube.
The Magyars also came to the Urals from somewhere. Traces of these Pramadyars are in Western Siberia, and in Kazakhstan, and in Uzbekistan. On the left bank of the Kama, in its lower reaches, an ancient Magyar burial ground was recently discovered.
According to the researcher E. A. Khalikova, the territory of Great Hungary covered the left bank of the Lower Kama, the Southern Cis-Urals, and partly the eastern slopes of the Urals. E. A. Khalikova believes that the Proto-Hungarians appeared in the Southern Cis-Urals at the end of the 6th century - perhaps after some Ugric tribes of the Turkic Khaganate rebelled against his power and suffered a severe defeat.
Insurrection. this covered a number of regions of Central Asia and Kazakhstan.
Before him, E. A. Khalikova believes, the ancestors of the ancient Hungarians “in the second half of the 6th century. most likely they were part of the Western Turkic Khaganate and, together with the Tyuriots, played a big role in the political life of Central Asia and Sasanian Iran (how can one not recall Persia, which is mentioned in the Hungarian chronicles. - Auth.). This era left its mark on the further culture of the ancient Hungarians: in its various elements - mythology, fine arts - Iranian motifs and plots are strong.
The ancestors of the ancient Hungarians came to Central Asia and Kazakhstan as early as the 4th century AD. e., when a stream of nomads swept across Southern Siberia tore them away from their relatives - the Ob Ugrians.
E. A. Khalikova emphasizes that the Ural "Great Hungary" of the late 6th - early 9th centuries maintained ties with the forest-steppe regions of Western Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, where the Ugric tribes, closely related to the ancient Hungarians, remained. This is clearly evidenced by the materials of excavations in the Urals, confirming the exchange between these distant regions.
We know much more about the fate of the Magyars who left the Urals for the west, although also relatively little.
Apparently, in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. part of the Ural Magyar tribes left their native places. Maybe because the Magyars were pushed by another wave of the Great Migration of Nations. Maybe because after the Hun invasion and plunder, many fertile lands to the west of the Urals turned out to be relatively sparsely populated. Maybe because the climate has changed in the Urals. One way or another, but for the nomadic Magyars, resettlement to new places could not be too difficult.
In the middle of the 1st millennium, the Magyars already lived in the Volga basin. This Magyar new country on the right bank of the Volga bears a beautiful name - Levedia Etelkuza. Soon, the local tribes recognize the authority of the Khazar Khagan, then the ruler of a great power that covered the North Caucasus, part of the Volga region and neighboring lands and soon joined the Arabs in the struggle for Transcaucasia. At that time, the Magyar association included and adopted the Magyar language from several Khazar tribes roaming nearby.
In the same era, apparently, a new ethonym was added to the ancient self-name of one of the tribes - "Magyars" - "Hungarians" on behalf of the Turkic people of the Onogurs, on whose lands the Magyars lived for about a century.
Gradually, the center of settlement of the Magyars shifted to the west. Novaya Levedia is already located on both sides of the Don, located approximately on the territory from Kyiv to Voronezh. The Magyars live among the Slavic tribes, perhaps even interspersed with them. The Magyar union of tribes maintains friendly relations with Byzantium, and this power draws nomads into its wars.
Fulfilling an agreement with Byzantium, the Magyars dealt a heavy blow to the Bulgarian kingdom on the Lower Danube in the 9th century. The severely defeated Bulgarians a few years later responded with a ruthless raid on Levedia, undertaken in alliance with the Pechenegs, who had appeared shortly before in the same Black Sea steppes where the Magyars lived. The Bulgarians and Pechenegs chose a very convenient moment for the attack. The Magyar army, almost all men capable of carrying weapons, was at that time on a long campaign. Levedia was defenseless.
When the army returned to their homeland, they saw that they were left without people. The Pechenegs not only ravaged the country as best they could, they also captured or killed all the young women.
And the Magyars decided to leave the lands where they could no longer feel safe. Where were they to go? Legends say that the resettlement was by no means spontaneous. Even the address seems to have been mapped out in advance: a country in the middle reaches of the Danube, the area where the Roman province of Pannonia was once located. Later there, on the Middle Danube, there was the center of the great Hun state (and even later - the Avar Khaganate).
Strange as it may sound, it is possible that the Magyars were brought to Pannonia by the legend that they lead their own family. from Attila. Until now, after all, there is a legend among the Hungarian people, according to which the Magyars descend from the Huns. Historians usually shrug their shoulders in response and say that, of course, a number of Ugric tribes were involved in the great migration of peoples, that the Magyars were probably part of Attila's armies, but that the Huns themselves, like their leaders, were, of course, not Magyars. were.
However, it must be said that, firstly, after the death of Attila and the defeat of his armies, the remnants of the Huns, led by one of the surviving sons of the formidable king, left for the Northern Black Sea region. Here they existed as a separate nationality for about two more centuries, until they finally dissolved among the then population of these places. The Huns could, which by no means can be considered proven, meet the Magyars in the Black Sea region and mix here with them. It is possible that this could become the basis of the legend about the relationship between the Huns and the Magyars.
It is worth adding, secondly, that individual Hungarian scholars now believe that the first Magyars appeared in the Carpathians and to the west of them as early as the 7th century. If this is so, the bulk of the Magyars at the end of the 9th century did indeed go west along the path that had already been trodden by their relatives.
It was also hypothesized that this group of Onogur Türks, from whom, as you know, the name passed to the Hungarians, appeared on the Danube around 670 together with the Bulgar Türks.
Scientists of our day argue, and in the Hungarian medieval chronicles it is directly reported that the Magyars went to the Danube in order to seize the legacy of the first leader of the Almus (Almos) clan - Attila. At the same time, Almus is declared a descendant of "King Magog". Taken from the Bible, the names of the giants Gog and Magog were often called in the Middle Ages by nomadic tribes, formidable for sedentary Europeans. The legend associated Magogy with the Huns; The chronicler, who was proud of his descent from the Huns, reflected the Hungarian tradition already established in his time, according to. whom the name Magog did not frighten, but, on the contrary, one could boast of such an ancestor.
The exodus of the Magyars from the Don took place around 895, when Prince Oleg ruled in Russia. The Hungarian chronicles here do not contradict Old Russian information. The Old Russian chronicler placed under the year 898. message about the peaceful departure of the Magyars through the Kievan lands to the west.
On the way, by the way, they took with them and kept to this day. old Russian names for fishing tackle, and at the same time they began to call - and still call - in the old Russian manner of the Poles.
Through the mountain passes in the Carpathians, the nomads finally reached the expanses of Pannonia. Their main strength was made up of seven tribes, among them tribes with "Bashkir" names: Yurmaty, Kese, Yeney. The seven leaders of these tribes bound themselves and their tribes with an eternal treaty of alliance, sealed with blood.
According to the Hungarian legend, the Magyars allegedly bought Pannonia from the Slavic prince of Moravia for a white horse, a saddle and a bridle, but the prince then violated the agreement, and the Hungarians "had" to reconquer the country.
Historians are still debating how much of a role purely military actions played in deciding the fate of Pannonia. The three-volume "History of Hungary" states that often, probably, the matter was dispensed with without bloodshed. At the moment when the Magyars came to the Middle Danube, there was no real political force capable of preventing them from seizing this territory.
The reports of some chroniclers about the ancients, even for them, and very heroic battles between the aliens and the natives of the country, according to many historians, are exaggerated. In the Middle Ages, people liked to glorify the past and, as a rule, exaggerated the role of military operations in history.
We must not forget that the number of aliens was relatively small. After all, the Magyars were nomads, and nomadic peoples are usually much smaller in number than settled ones, occupying an equal territory. On the fertile land near the Danube, there was a place for new tribes, who quickly settled on the ground. The Magyars easily mixed with the local population, mostly Slavic - the people from the Don, in fact, had no choice here, since after the Bulgarian-Pecheneg strike, the Magyars were left almost without women. And, I must say, in the Hungarian language, almost all the words related to housing and food, to agricultural labor and government, are Slavic in origin.
Mixing with the Slavs, of course, was reflected in the Magyar language. The Hungarian historian E. Molnar wrote: “If a Hungarian peasant looks out the window, goes out into the hallway, goes to the cellar, to the kitchen or to the room, to the closet, goes out into the yard or to the street, if he speaks, calls his godfather, looks for his neighbor , turns to a friend, feasts in a tavern, dances chardash, looks around on the plain or in the steppe, goes to shepherds, to robbers, carries food supplies with him, lives on a farm, throws a rope around the neck of a foal, harnesses an ox to a yoke, drives home The herd picks up a scythe, stacks a haystack, feeds the cattle, pulls a wheelbarrow if it works or finishes work. he does things that are expressed in words adopted from the Slavic language.
It is worth noting that the excavations of the Hungarian burial grounds of the 10th century on the Middle Danube showed that the ancient Magyars at that time were anthropologically similar to the Sarmatians who lived at the beginning of our era in the Lower Volga region, in Ukraine and near the southern shores of the Aral Sea. That is, the Hungarians came to the Danube already as fairly typical Caucasians. Meanwhile, the Ugrians who left Southern Siberia possessed many Mongoloid features. The Magyar ethnos gradually lost most of them, mixing along the way to the west with Caucasoid-looking tribes.
So, the new homeland of the Magyars - already forever - was Pannonia.
This area in the center of Europe has an amazing history. (However, what country does not have an amazing history behind it?) At the very beginning of the 1st millennium AD. e. the lands on the Middle Danube were conquered by the Romans. But the inhabitants of the new Roman province did not obediently obey the "masters of the world" for long. Soon they rebelled and forced the Roman Empire to strain all its forces in the fight against the "rebels". The Romans of that time considered the war with the Pannonians to be the hardest for themselves after the Punic Wars, in which Carthage opposed Rama, which once put the state of its enemies on the brink of death. The world power still won here, but until the end of the existence of the Roman Empire, Pannonia, with its recalcitrant inhabitants, remained one of the weak points in the possessions of the Augusts.
During the Great Migration of Peoples, Pannonia freed itself from Roman domination, but not foreign domination. As its owners, the Sarmatians and Goths, Vandals and Roxolans, Iazygs and Karps, Bastarns and Marcomanni and many other tribes succeeded each other (or divided the country with each other). These tribes, now mostly known only to specialists, once made the hearts of the rulers of Rome and Constantinople tremble. Then the Huns reigned here, but they were knocked out by the end of the 5th century AD. e. Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugii and Squiri.
It was from Pannonia that Odoacer, the leader of the union of Rugians and Squires, went to Italy and, after many victories over a powerless empire, deposed the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus. So Pannonia nevertheless "took revenge" on Rome - less than five centuries had passed. Later, Pannonia was the center of the Avar state, founded by newcomers from Central Asia in the 6th century. At the beginning of the 9th century, the army of Emperor Charlemagne came here, who placed a baptized kagan on the shattered Avar throne. Here the last Avars were dissolved by the Slavs. And here the Magyars included local Slavs in their composition.
Arpad, the son of Almus, the leader of the strongest of the seven tribes, called "Medier", founded the Arpadovichi dynasty, and the whole people accepted the name of his tribe. But the formation of the Kingdom of Hungary has not yet put an end to the migration of new and new tribes to the land of Pannonia.
The Hungarian kings, having forgotten past grievances, accepted on their land in the 11th century the Pecheneg Turks, expelled from the Northern Black Sea region by their own relatives, the Polovtsy, also Turkic in language. And two hundred years later, in the 13th century, the hospitable Danube valley also received a wave of Polovtsians who had gone west from the Mongol invasion (some of them later left Pannonia, moving to other lands, primarily to Bulgaria). Until now, among the Hungarian people, an ethnic group of their direct descendants, the Palocei, stands out.
Nomads were probably attracted to the famous Hungarian steppe - Pashto, and the Hungarian kings needed warriors to fight their own large vassals.
From century to century, the fertile land on the Middle Danube retained its attraction for more and more peoples. How many roads that began in the center of Asia ended here, in the center of Europe!
At times, the Kingdom of Hungary became in size and influence one of the great powers of medieval Europe. Hungarian kings sometimes also occupied the thrones of Poland, Naples in Italy, extended their influence to the Czech, Romanian, Croatian, Ukrainian and Serbian lands.
At the beginning of the 16th century, part of the Magyar lands fell under the rule of the Turkish Empire, later Hungary was part of the Habsburg state along with Austria and the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia, part of Ukraine and part of Serbia, etc.
Coexistence with other peoples as part of one power was reflected, of course, both in culture and in language, and to some extent in the appearance of the Magyars. But the Magyars have not changed their homeland over the past millennium. And between the Yenisei and the Danube, archaeologists, linguists, anthropologists and historians together specify the location of at least three ancestral homes of the Magyars: Don, Volga and Ural, plus they are looking for traces of a fourth, even more ancient ancestral home, Central Asian or West Siberian.
The migration of the Magyars began at the time, which is called the time of the Great Migration of Nations, and ended at the end of this era.
From the second third of the ninth century the Slavic population of the Don and the entire forest-steppe zone was attacked by the Magyars, whom the Slavs called the Ugrians, the Arabs and Byzantines called the Turks, and in Central and Western Europe they became known as the Hungarians.
It was a people speaking a language that belonged to the Finno-Ugric language family. The ancestral home of the Magyars - Great Hungary - was located in Bashkiria, where back in 1235 the Dominican monk Julian discovered people whose language was close to Hungarian.
Having broken through in time between the Volga and Don rivers, the Magyars then settled in the areas that in their legends are called Levedia (Swans) and Atelkuza. Researchers usually believe that we are talking about the Lower Don and the Dniester-Dnieper interfluve, respectively.
The entire Magyar horde numbered no more than 100,000 people and, according to contemporaries, could field from 10,000 to 20,000 horsemen. Nevertheless, it was very difficult to resist them. Even in Western Europe, which not so long ago defeated the Avars, the appearance of the Magyars caused panic. These nomads - short in stature, with three braids on their shaved heads, dressed in animal skins, sitting firmly on their small but hardy horses - terrified by their very appearance. The best European armies, including the Byzantine one, were powerless in the face of the military tactics of the Magyars, which were unusual for them. Emperor Leo the Wise (881 - 911) described it in detail in his military treatise. When setting out on a campaign, the Magyars always sent horse patrols forward; during camps and overnight stays, their camp was also constantly surrounded by guards. They began the battle by showering the enemy with a cloud of arrows, and then with a swift raid they tried to break through the enemy system. In case of failure, they turned into a feigned flight, and if the enemy succumbed to the trick and began to pursue, then the Magyars turned around at once and the whole horde fell upon the enemy’s battle formations that had become disordered; an important role was played by the reserve, which the Magyars never forgot to set up. In the pursuit of the defeated enemy, the Magyars were tireless, while there was no mercy for anyone.
The dominance of the Magyars in the Black Sea steppes lasted about half a century. In 890 a war broke out between Byzantium and the Danube Bulgarians. Emperor Leo the Wise attracted the Hungarians to his side, who crossed to the right bank of the Danube and, devastating everything in their path, reached the walls of the Bulgarian capital Preslav. Tsar Simeon asked for peace, but secretly decided to take revenge. He persuaded the Pechenegs to attack the Hungarians. And so, when the Hungarian cavalry left for another raid (apparently, on the Moravian Slavs), the Pechenegs attacked their nomad camps and massacred the few men and defenseless families left at home. The Pecheneg raid put the Hungarians in the face of a demographic catastrophe that threatened their very existence as a people. Their first concern was to make up for the lack of women. They moved beyond the Carpathians and in the fall of 895 settled in the valley of the upper Tisza, from where they began to make annual raids on the Pannonian Slavs in order to capture women and girls. Slavic blood helped the Hungarians survive and continue their race.
Crossing of Prince Arpad through the Carpathians. The cyclorama was written for the 1000th anniversary of the conquest of Hungary by the Magyars.
The Magyar dominion made me remember the times of the Avar yoke. Ibn Ruste compared the position of the Slavic tribes subordinate to the Magyars with the position of prisoners of war, and Gardizi called them slaves who were obliged to feed their masters. In this regard, GV Vernadsky gives an interesting comparison of the Hungarian word dolog - "work", "labor" and the Russian word "duty" (meaning "duty"). According to the historian, the Magyars used the Slavs for "work", which it was their "duty" to perform - hence the different meaning of this word in the Hungarian and Russian languages. Probably, the borrowing by the Hungarians of the Slavic words “slave” - rab and “yoke” - jarom ( Vernadsky G. V. Ancient Russia. pp. 255 - 256).
Probably during the ninth century. the Slavic tribes of the Dnieper and Don regions also experienced the heavy onslaught of the Hungarian cavalry more than once. Indeed, “The Tale of Bygone Years” notes under 898: “the Ugrians went past Kyiv as a mountain, the hedgehog is now called Ugorskoe, and having come to the Dnieper, stacked with vezhas [tents] ...”. However, on closer examination, this fragmentary report is hardly credible. Firstly, the date of the invasion is incorrect: the Hungarians left the Lower Dnieper region for Pannonia no later than 894. Secondly, the absence of a continuation of the story about the “standing” of the Ugrians near Kiev indicates that the chronicler-local historian in this case only wanted to explain the origin the name of Ugric, which actually goes back to the Slavic word eel- "high, steep bank of the river" ( Fasmer M. Etymological Dictionary. T. IV. S. 146). Thirdly, it is not clear where the Ugrians could go, going “past Kyiv as a mountain” (that is, up the Dnieper, along its right bank), not to mention the fact that, fleeing from the Pechenegs, they moved from their Atelkuza not at all to north, and straight west into the Pannonian steppes.
The latter circumstance again makes us suspect that the chronicler here also dated a legend related to one of the historical reality of Kyiv on the Dnieper. In a more complete form, it can be read in the "Acts of the Hungarians" (an unnamed chronicle written at the court of King Bela III in 1196 - 1203), which says that the Hungarians, retreating from Atelkuza, "reached the region of the Rus and, without meeting any or resistance, went all the way to the city of Kyiv. And when they passed through the city of Kyiv, crossing (on ferries. - S. C.) the Dnieper River, they wanted to subjugate the kingdom of the Rus. Upon learning of this, the leaders of the Rus were very frightened, for they heard that the leader Almosh, the son of Yudek, comes from the family of King Attila, to whom their ancestors paid an annual tribute. However, the prince of Kyiv gathered all his nobles, and after conferring, they decided to start a battle with the leader Almosh, wanting to die in battle rather than lose their kingdom and, against their will, submit to the leader Almosh. The battle was lost by the Russians. And "the leader Almosh and his soldiers, having won, subjugated the lands of the Rus and, having taken their estates, for the second week went to attack the city of Kyiv." The local rulers considered it best to submit to Almos, who demanded that they give "him their sons as hostages", pay "ten thousand marks in the form of an annual tax" and, in addition, provide "food, clothing and other necessary things" - horses " with saddles and bits "and camels" for the transport of goods. The Rus obeyed, but on the condition that the Hungarians leave Kyiv and leave "to the west, to the land of Pannonia", which was done.
In Hungary, this tradition was apparently intended to justify Hungarian dominance over the "Kingdom of the Rus", that is, over the subordinate area of the Carpathian Rusyns, thanks to which the heir to the Hungarian throne bore the title "Duke of the Rus".
In view of all this, we can say that the period of Magyar domination in the Northern Black Sea region passed almost without a trace for the initial Russian history.
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