A Herman Ottó Múzeum Évkönyve 32. Kunt Ernő emlékére. (1994)

TANULMÁNYOK - FODOR István: A magyar őstörténet vázlata (magyar és angol nyelven)

the pastoralists to abandon their domains. Such enormous movements were initiated by the Huns during the 3rd to 4th centuries, and the westward migration of the Onogur people during the 5th century. These were followed in the next century by the Avar migration and the expansion of the Inner-Asian Turkic Empire westwards, as far as the Caucasian Mountains. It may have been one of these population movements which forced the Hungarians to leave their Western-Siberian habitation area westbound during the 4th to 5th centuries. At that time they moved to the western slopes of the southern Ural region, largely to the area between the Ural Mountains and the Volga river. (This corresponds approximately to the area later called Bashkiria.) This was the time of major reorganizations over the steppe. The place of the mostly Iranian-speaking people was taken by population groups from Asia Minor who predominantly spoke Turkic languages and represented the Oriental racial division in terms of their physical anthropology. Thus, the Hungarians found themselves in a new linguistic, racial and, in part, cultural environment. Hungarians as a whole, inhabited this area until around 700 A.D. as revealed by the archaeological finds. They were organized into tribes as is shown by two Hungarian tribal names (Jenő and Gyarmat) that survived in Bashkiria. Around 700 A.D., the majority of Hungarians migrated towards the southwest to the region of the Volga and Don rivers and settled there. Some of them, however, remained in Bashkiria. Such subdivisions were relatively common among pastoralists as mentioned by Arabian sources and reflected in archaeological finds (for example the cemetery near Bolshie Tigani) and also described in the records of Julianus, a Dominican monk, whose travels from Hungary to the East took place during 1235-1236. In 1236, Julianus met Hungarians whose language he understood, in an area which was twodays walking distance from the capital of the Volga-Burgars, east of the Volga and south of the Kama rivers. He called this habitation area Magna Hungária which corresponds to „Old Hungary". The country of the Volga-Bulgars was devastated by the Tartar invasion within the same year and the remaining Eastern-Hungarian community in this area dispersed. Levedia After 700 A.D., the majority of Hungarians moved into the region of the lower Volga, Don and Doniec rivers and the Azov Sea. Most of this area fell within the boundaries of the Khazar Empire. A number of Arabian and Byzantine sources carry abundant information on this period. From an ethnic point of view, the Khazar Empire was very colourful. In addition to the Khazar people, neighbours of the Hungarians included Onogur (also known as Onogur-Bulgarian) and Iranian-speaking Alan groups. The Onogur people moved from the east into the steppe area north of the Caucasus Mountains in 463. They created an independent empire under the leadership of the sovereign Kuvrat. This empire, however, was brought down by the Khazar around 650. At that time, one of the Onogur groups migrated northwards to the junction of the Volga and Kama rivers. The other group moved into the lower Danube region under the leadership of Asparuh and created an independent state. A significant part of the population, however, remained in the Don-Kuban area and acknowledged the Kazar rule. Arabian offensives during the 720s and 730s forced the Alan people to move from north of the Caucasus Mountains into the parklandsteppe area of the Don and Doniec rivers' region. A very important economic process took place in the Khazar Khanate during the 8th to 9th centuries. The khan's military force had stopped the westbound mi119