The Battle of Wlndr was fought in 934 between the allied Hungarian-Pecheneg army and an army composing of the forces of the Byzantine Empire and First Bulgarian Empire, somewhere in the territory which belonged to the Bulgarian empire, near a large city called W.l.n.d.r (perhaps Belgrade), recorded by the Arab historian and geographer Al-Masudi. The battle resulted in a great victory for the Hungarian-Pecheneg forces, which they followed with a devastating raid up to the walls of Constantinople, forcing the Byzantine Empire to pay them tribute for many years (until 957). Al-Masudi's account of the battle is "one of the greatest descriptions of the nomadic war tactics."
Preliminary explanations
Al-Masudi is the only source that writes about the battle. His information about the location of the battle and the participants is a little confused. First, there is confusion about the place designated by the name W.l.n.d.r. Second, it is unclear precisely who participated in the battle on the side opposing the Byzantines, and how numerous they were. There are also questions about the Pecheneg involvement in the battle, and their number of troops.
Location
Al-Masudi, as an Arab, wrote in the Arabic alphabet, which does not use letters for short vowels (although there are special diacritics for short vowels, called ḥarakāt, but they are not generally used, and they were not used by Al-Masudi). As a result, when he wrote down names of foreign tribes, towns and countries, it is hard to know how these names sounded, because only consonants are known. This is the case with ولندر = W.l.n.d.r (و - W, ل - l, ن - n, د - d, ر - r). In the translated editions of his work, Latin transcriptions of W.l.n.d.r appear with vowels chosen by the editors (Walendar in the French translation of Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille from 1838, Valandar or Vanandar in the Turkish edition from 2004), in order to make it easier to pronounce. The Hungarian translation of the part of al-Masudi's work which refers to the battle, writes the name correctly, putting points in the place of the vowels (ex. W.l.n.d.r).
Al-Masudi wrote his accounts about northern countries based on verbal information from people who visited these regions. As a result, some of his information has to be handled with care. For example, he writes that W.l.n.d.r was a Greek town between the mountains and the sea, but historians such as György Györffy and Gyula Kristó – accepting the claim of Josef Marquart – believe that it was not a city but a derivation of the old name of the Bulgarians: Onogur/Onogundur (Ten Oghur Tribes), which sounded *wnondur, which in old Hungarian became nándor, from which the old Hungarian name of Belgrade, Nándorfehérvár (White castle of the Bulgarians) originates, and in the works of the Arab geographer Ahmad ibn Rustah and the Persian geographer Abu Saʿīd Gardēzī, appears as W.n.n.d.r. So the historians conclude that W.l.n.d.r in reality was not a town, like al-Masudi believed, but the old name of the Bulgarians, so the battle was somewhere in the territory of the First Bulgarian Empire. Therefore, the battle was not fought around a town between the Byzantines and the Hungarian-Pecheneg army, but rather it was a battle between the Bulgarian Empire and the Byzantines against the Magyars and Pechenegs.
It is possible that the exact location of the battle was Belgrade, as orientalist Mihály Kmoskó considered, due to the fact that its old Hungarian name has in it the old, Turkic name of the Bulgarians in the form used by the Hungarians: nándor, and although is not near to a sea, but it is on the Danube's bank, which could be understood as sea, plus the Carpathian Mountains and Dinaric Alps are also close, and the mountain of Avala, and it was on the Hungarian border, so for its inhabitants would have been easy to attack their territories, as al-Masudi wrote. So in al-Masudi's text W.l.n.d.r could designate both the Bulgarians and the city of Belgrade, in some sentences designating the country, while others the city. But these are only suppositions. Josef Marquart identified the settlement with the fort Develtos laid near Burgas. Hansgerd Göckenjan and István Zimonyi considered Bulgarophygon (Babaeski) as the place of battle, based on the data that the relief army reached the besieged city in eight days from Constantinople.
Belligerents
Al-Masudi writes about four Turkic nations (a term designate the nomadic culture and lifestyle), who took part in the battle against the Byzantines:
- b.dʒ.n.k (بجناك), which can be identified with the name of the Pechenegs,
- y.dʒ.n.i (يجنى) or b.dʒ.n.i (بجنى) believed by the historians that also designates the Pechenegs,
- b.dʒ.g.r.d (بجغرد), which can be identified with the name Badjgird, used very often by the Arab historians and geographers to designate the domestic name of the Hungarians: Magyar (Ahmad ibn Fadlan, Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, Abū Hamid al-Gharnāti, etc.) in the 9th–12th centuries. This name in the 10–13th centuries was used by the Arab geographers for two groups: the Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin, and the Hungarians who lived between the Kama River and the Ural Mountains in the place called Magna Hungaria, who remained there and maybe they became the ancestors of the today Bashkirs, like some believe. Maybe this is why the Hungarians and the people living in the early Middle Ages in today's Bashkortostan were named the same.
- nu.k.r.da (نوكردة), which original reading is probably Unkaríya, derives from the name Onogur/Ungar, designating the other name of the Magyars, in which they are known in the majority of the European languages: Hungarian/Ungar/венгерский/húngaro/hongrois. So, the historians think that, in the same way as for the b.dʒ.n.k and b.dʒ.n.i/y.dʒ.n.i (for the Pechenegs), al-Masudi mistakenly thought that the two names of the same tribal confederation (Magyar and Hungarian) designate two different nations.
In contrast, Gyula Kristó argued that these two names actually designate the two main components of the Principality of Hungary, forming the core of the Hungarian Nation: Magyars and Onogurs. Many sources (Vita Hrodberti episcopi Salisburgensis, Vita St. Paulini, Epitaphium Liutprandi regis Langobardorum, Annales Alamannici. Codex Modoetiensis, the Diploma of Louis the German from 860) prove that the Avars in the Middle and Late Avar period (670–804) and after the Carolingian conquest from 804 were often called Onogurs. Therefore, the b.dʒ.g.r.d could refer to the newly settled Magyars (895) and nu.k.r.da (Onogurs) to the descendants of the Avars, which survived during the Caroling and Bulgarian occupation of much of the Carpathian Basin (804-900), becoming the components of the Magyars, and in the same time gave the name which the Europeans use for denominating this nation. It is not excluded, that in 934, when the battle took place, the Onogurs in Hungary still had a kind of autonomy, with their own leaders, which may explain the fact that al-Masudi sees them as a separate political entity with its own king. About the Hungarian campaign in the Duchy of Saxony from 906, Annalista Saxo writes that of the two raiding Hungarian armies one was Avar and the second Magyar. This account could refer to the different ethnic component of the two armies which came from Hungary, and the fact that the successors of the Avars/Onogurs fought as separate armies under their own commanders, or the chronicler could not make difference between the Hungarian and Avar, and used when the one when the other name.
So as a response, to the question of who and how many were the nations who fought the Byzantines and the Bulgarians, the historians conclude that they were two nomadic political entities: the Principality of Hungary and the Pecheneg Tribal Confederation.
Involvement of the Pechenegs
Al-Masudi writes that the Pechenegs were stronger and more warlike than the Hungarians. He also writes that in the battle of W.l.n.d.r participated the kings of the Pechenegs and the Hungarians, and, because the unsuccessfulness of the fights of the first day, in the second day of the battle, the lead of the troops was taken by the Pecheneg king, who led to victory the allied nomadic troops. This information could be correct if there was no contradictory data from Byzantine chroniclers, about the campaign of 934, who write about the attack of the Τούρκων (Turks), the name in which they name the Hungarians in the 9–10th centuries, but do not mention anything about the Pecheneg (called by the Byzantine historians Moesians, Sarmatians, or Scythians, but never as Turks) participation in it. The fact that Byzantine chroniclers do not mention about the Pechenegs in this campaign, shows that their involvement was less important than al-Masudi writes. The Byzantines were directly implied in the events, and of course were much closer than al-Masudi who never traveled north to Caucasus, and took his information from others verbal accounts. Because the Hungarians were the westernmost participants of the events, it is probable that al-Masudi's informants did not met with them, and the information which they related to the Arab geographer, were taken from Pechenegs, who, of course, exaggerated their strength and importance in the battle. However the participation of the Pecheneg troops is confirmed by al-Masudi, but the information about the greater strength of the Pechenegs, their great scale participation, and the decisive importance of their leader in achieving the victory we have to take cautiously. The fact that the Pechenegs were not the leaders of this army is proven even by al-Masudi, when he writes that after the first day of the battle, the Pecheneg king asked for permission to make the battle plan for the second day, which request was granted to him. If the Pecheneg leader would be in charge, he would not had to ask permission to take over the lead of the army after the first day. The conclusion is that the campaign and the battle was led by a Hungarian commander, and the lead was given to the Pecheneg "king" only for the second day of the battle, after a common agreement. So, the Pecheneg commanders taking over the troops was only an exceptional case, and this contradict al-Masudi's affirmation about the Pecheneg superiority.
Some historians, basing on the accounts from De Administrando Imperio of Constantine VII, believe that the Hungarians were afraid of the Pechenegs, because the events from 895, when the Pechenegs, called by the Bulgarians, drove away the Hungarians from their old lands, forcing them to move to the Carpathian Basin, and starting the Hungarian Conquest. And the same writing claims that the Hungarians were terrorized even to think about the possibility of a war between them and the Pechenegs. But in the last years this question was researched by historians, and the conclusion was that the Byzantine accounts about the crushing defeat and the fear of the Hungarians from Pechenegs are overreacted, and sometimes even false. Al-Masudi's account too contradicts these claims from De Administrando Imperio: if the Hungarians were so terrorized by the Pechenegs, why would they enter in a war with them because the banal case of a foreign merchant? And if the Pechenegs felt so superior, why would they forgive the Hungarians for entering in a war with them, conclude peace with them in equal terms, moreover help them to avenge the Bulgarian attack on the Hungarian lands, letting them also to lead the campaign? In another contemporary work of a Byzantine emperor, Tactica of Leo VI the Wise written around 904, writes about the nations which use nomadic warfare: "The Scythian peoples ..., usually live a nomadic life. [Among them] only the Bulgarians and the Turks [Hungarians] care about the battle order, which is similar by [the both of] them, and because of this, they fight the close combat with greater strength, and [only they] are ruled by a single person". So, according to this work, which because, unlike the De Administrando Imperio, which is about politics, is a book about war strategy, so is more relevant from the point of view of the question in discussion, the Pechenegs were weak in battle organisation and close combat, in which the Hungarians are presented as good. Also, according to Leo the Wise, the Hungarians had the advantage of having a single ruler, while the Pechenegs never united and obeid to their own tribe chiefs. This shows again that Al-Masudi and Constantine VII were wrong when they wrote that the Hungarians were weaker than the Pechenegs.