The Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, also known as the Hungarian conquest or the Hungarian land-taking (Hungarian: honfoglalás, lit. 'taking/conquest of the homeland'), was a series of historical events ending with the settlement of the Hungarians in Central Europe in the late 9th and early 10th century. Before the arrival of the Hungarians, three early medieval powers, the First Bulgarian Empire, East Francia, and Moravia, competed for control of the Carpathian Basin following the collapse of the Avar Khaganate. They occasionally hired Hungarian horsemen as soldiers. Therefore, the Hungarians who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe east of the Carpathian Mountains were familiar with what would become their homeland when their conquest started.
The Hungarian conquest started in the context of a "late or 'small' migration of peoples". The Hungarians took possession of the Carpathian Basin in a pre-planned manner, with a long move-in between 862–895. Other theories assert that the Hungarians crossed the Carpathian Mountains following a joint attack by the Pechenegs and Bulgarians in 894 or 895. They first took control over the lowlands east of the river Danube and attacked and occupied Pannonia (the region to the west of the river) in 900. They exploited internal conflicts in Moravia and annihilated that state sometime between 902 and 906.
The Hungarians strengthened their control over the Carpathian Basin by defeating the Bavarian army in a battle fought at Brezalauspurc on 4 July 907. They launched a series of campaigns to Western Europe between 899 and 955 and also targeted the Byzantine Empire between 943 and 971. However, they gradually settled in the basin and established a Christian monarchy, the Kingdom of Hungary, around 1000.
Background
Pre-conquest Hungarians
The Hungarians arrived in the Carpathian Basin, a geographically unified but politically divided land, after acquiring thorough local knowledge of the area from the 860s onwards. After the end of the Avar Khaganate (c. 822), the Bulgarians asserted intermittent influence in Transylvania and parts of the Great Hungarian Plain, and the Eastern Franks and Moravians asserted intermittent influence in parts of Transdanubia, while the stateless Avar population remained dispersed across the basin. Archaeological evidence supports that Avars persisted in the Carpathian Basin into the period of the Hungarian conquest, and it is theorised that there was continuity between the Avars and conquering Hungarians. Due to the subsequent power vacuum that existed in the Carpathian Basin, the Hungarian conquering elite are believed to have been able to adopt surviving elements of the former Avar Khaganate’s system. There is no trace of massacres and mass graves, and it is believed to have been a peaceful transition for local residents in the Carpathian Basin. Other scholars dismiss the continuity between late Avar and Hungarian Conquerors and/or the "double-conquest" (kettős honfoglalás) of the Carpathian basin. According to historian Bálint Csanád, "Not one single element (of the original theory) is tenable" and that a "compelling piece of evidence is that a genuine similarity between the Avar- and Conquest-period skeletal material could only be demonstrated in 4.5% of the theoretically potential cases".
The Continuation of the Chronicle by George the Monk contains the earliest certain reference to the Hungarians. It states that Hungarian warriors intervened in a conflict between the Byzantine Empire and the Bulgarians on the latter's behalf in the Lower Danube region in 836 or 837. The first known Hungarian raid in Central Europe was recorded in the Annals of St. Bertin, which writes of "enemies, called Hungarians, hitherto unknown" who ravaged King Louis the German's realm in 862. Victor Spinei and other historians argue that Rastislav of Moravia, at war with Louis the German, hired Hungarians to invade East Francia. Archbishop Theotmar of Salzburg clearly states in his letter of around 900 that the Moravians often allied with the Hungarians against the Germans.
For many years [the Moravians] have in fact perpetrated the very crime of which they have only once falsely accused us. They themselves have taken in a large number of Hungarians and have shaved their own heads according to their heathen customs and they have sent them against our Christians, overcoming them, leading some away as captives, killing others, while still others, imprisoned, perished of hunger and thirst.
— Letter of Archbishop Theotmar of Salzburg and his suffragans to Pope John IX from around 900
Porphyrogenitus mentions that the Hungarians dwelled in a territory that they called "Atelkouzou" until their invasion across the Carpathians. He adds that it was located in the territory where the rivers Barouch, Koubou, Troullos, Broutos and Seretos run. Although the identification of the first two rivers with the Dnieper and the Southern Bug is not unanimously accepted, the last three names without doubt refer to the rivers Dniester, Prut and Siret. In the wider region, at Subotsi on the river Adiamka, three graves (one of them belonging to a male buried with the skull and legs of his horse) are attributed to pre-conquest Hungarians. However, these tombs may date to the 10th century.
The Hungarians were organized into seven tribes that formed a confederation. Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentions this number. Anonymous seems to have preserved the Hungarian "Hetumoger" ("Seven Hungarians") denomination of the tribal confederation, although he writes of "seven leading persons" jointly bearing this name instead of a political organization.
The Hetumoger confederation was strengthened by the arrival of the Kabars, who (according to Constantine) joined the Hungarians following their unsuccessful riot against the Khazar Khaganate. The Hungarians and the Kabars are mentioned in the longer version of the Annals of Salzburg, which relates that the Hungarians fought around Vienna, while the Kabars fought nearby at Culmite in 881. Madgearu proposes that Kavar groups were already settled in the Tisza plain within the Carpathian Basin around 881, which may have given rise to the anachronistic reference to Cumans in the Gesta Hungarorum at the time of the Hungarian conquest.
The Hetumoger confederation was under a dual leadership, according to Ibn Rusta and Gardizi (two Muslim scholars from the 10th and 11th centuries, respectively, whose geographical books preserved texts from an earlier work written by Abu Abdallah al-Jayhani from Bukhara). The Hungarians' nominal or sacred leader was styled kende, while their military commander bore the title gyula. The same authors add that the gyula commanded an army of 20,000 horsemen, but the reliability of this number is uncertain.
Regino of Prüm and other contemporary authors portray the 9th-century Hungarians as nomadic warriors. Emperor Leo the Wise underlines the importance of horses to their military tactics. Analysis of horse skulls found in Hungarian warriors graves has not revealed any significant difference between these horses and Western breeds. Regino of Prüm states that the Hungarians knew "nothing about fighting hand-to-hand in formation or taking besieged cities", but he underlines their archery skills. Remains indicate that composite bows were the Hungarians' most important weapons. In addition, slightly curved sabres were unearthed in many warrior tombs from the period. Regino of Prüm noted the Hungarians' preference for deceptions such as apparent retreat in battle. Contemporaneous writers also recounted their viciousness, represented by the slaughter of adult males in settlement raids.
[The Hungarians] are armed with swords, body armor, bows and lances. Thus, in battles most of them bear double arms, carrying the lances high on their shoulders and holding the bows in their hands. They make use of both as need requires, but when pursued they use their bows to great advantage. Not only do they wear armor themselves, but the horses of their illustrious men are covered in front with iron or quilted material. They devote a great deal of attention and training to archery on horse-back. A huge herd of horses, ponies and mares, follows them, to provide both food and milk and, at the same time, to give the impression of a multitude.
Inhabitants of the Carpathian Basin
Based on extant Hungarian chronicles, it is clear that more than one (occasionally extended) list existed of the peoples inhabiting the Carpathian Basin at the time of the Hungarian landtaking. Anonymus, for instance, first writes of the "Slavs, Bulgarians, Vlachs and the shepherds of the Romans" as inhabiting the territory, but later he refers to "a people called Kozar" and to the Székelys. Similarly, Simon of Kéza first lists the "Slavs, Greeks, Germans, Moravians and Vlachs", but later he adds that the Székelys also lived in the territory. According to Macartney, those lists were based on multiple sources and do not document the real ethnic conditions of the Carpathian Basin around 900. Ioan-Aurel Pop says that Simon of Kéza listed the peoples who inhabited the lands that the Hungarian conquered and the nearby territories.
The Hungarians adopted the ancient (Celtic, Dacian or Germanic) names of the longest rivers in the Carpathian Basin from a Slavic-speaking population. For instance, the Hungarian names of the rivers Danube (Duna), Dráva, Garam, Maros, Olt, Száva, Tisza and Vág were borrowed from Slavs. The Hungarians also adopted a great number of hydronyms of Slavic origin, including Balaton ("swamp"), Beszterce ("swift river"), Túr ("aurochs' stream") and Zagyva ("sooty river"). Place names of Slavic origin abound across the Carpathian Basin. For instance, Csongrád ("black fortress"), Nógrád ("new fortress"), Visegrád ("citadel") and other early medieval fortresses bore a Slavic name, while the name of Keszthely preserved the Latin word for fortress (castellum), with Slavic mediation.
Besides the Slavs, the presence of a German-speaking population can be demonstrated, based on toponyms. For example, the Hungarians adopted the Germanized form of the name of the river Vulka (whose name is of Slavic origin) and the document known as the Conversion of the Bavarians and the Carantanians from around 870 lists Germanic place names in Pannonia, including Salapiugin ("bend of the Zala") and Mosaburc ("fortress in the marshes"). The name of the Barca, Barót and other rivers could be either Turkic or Slavic in origin.
According to Béla Miklós Szőke's theory, the detailed description of the Magyars by western contemporary sources and the immediate Hungarian intervention in local wars suggest that the Hungarians had already lived on the eastern territories of the Carpathian Basin since the middle of the 9th century. Regarding the right location of early Hungarian settlements, the Arabic geographer al-Jayhani (only snippets of his work survived in other Muslim authors' papers) in the 870s placed the Hungarians between the Don and Danube rivers. Szőke identifies al-Jayhani's Danube with the middle Danube region, as opposed to the previously assumed lower Danube region because, following al-Jayhani's description, the Christian Moravians were the western neighbors of the Magyars.
Borderland of empires
The Carpathian Basin was controlled from the 560s by the Avars, a Turkic-speaking people. Upon their arrival in the region, they imposed their authority over the Gepids, who had dominated the territories east of the river Tisza. However, the Gepids survived up until the second half of the 9th century, according to a reference in the Conversion of the Bavarians and the Carantanians to their groups dwelling in Lower Pannonia around 870.
The Avars were initially nomadic horsemen, but both large cemeteries used by three or four generations and a growing number of settlements attest to their adoption of a sedentary (non-nomadic) way of life from the 8th century. The Avars' power was destroyed between 791 and 795 by Charlemagne, who occupied Transdanubia and attached it to his empire. Archaeological investigation of early medieval rural settlements at Balatonmagyaród, Nemeskér and other places in Transdanubia demonstrate that their main features did not change with the fall of the Avar Khaganate. New settlements appeared in the former borderlands with cemeteries characterised by objects with clear analogues in contemporary Bavaria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Moravia and other distant territories. A manor defended by timber walls (similar to noble courts of other parts of the Carolingian Empire) was unearthed at Zalaszabar.
Avar groups who remained under the rule of their khagan were frequently attacked by Slav warriors. Therefore, the khagan asked Charlemagne to let his people settle in the region between Szombathely and Petronell in Pannonia. His petition was accepted in 805. The Conversion of the Bavarians and the Carantanians lists the Avars among the peoples under the ecclesiastic jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Salzburg around 870. According to Pohl, it "simply proved impossible to keep up an Avar identity after Avar institutions and the high claims of their tradition had failed." The growing number of archaeological evidence in Transdanubia also presumes Avar population in the Carpathian Basin at the eve of the 10th century. Archaeological findings suggesting that there is a substantial late Avar presence on the Great Hungarian Plain, but it is difficult to determine the proper chronology.