Magyar Hírek, 1988 (41. évfolyam, 1-22. szám)
1988-01-22 / 2. szám
I ON THE I had an opportunity to talk to István Fodor, the Direetor of the Hungarian National Museum, a prominent student of the early history of Hungarians about the current position of scholarship on the origin of our people, the long journey to the present area of settlement and the circumstances of the landtaking. “ What explains the current boom in the study of the origin and ancient history of the Hungária ns which extuds to the general public?” “Interest in the ancient history of their own people is common everywhere and therefore also in Hungary. The medieval chronicles of Hungary invariably begin with the origins of the Hungarians, but interest in the subject reached neverbefore experienced levels at the beginning of the 19th century in the Reform Age, when our writers and politicians wanted to awaken Hungarians to national consciousness to refute Herder’s forecast that this people is doomed and about to vanish. The ancient tale of the origin of Hungarians, the legend of the mythical stag, was handed down to us by Simon Kézais chronicle. According to that legend a stag lead the Hungarians to their new home. Attributing origins to a mythical stag is not exclusive to Hungarians this belief is found also amongst other peoples of the Eurasian steppe.” What characterized Hungarian theories of origin in the Reform Age and erarlier?” “While people lacked scholarly knowledge of their ancient history, they usually substituted that by legends. In the ease of Hungarians the Scythian and Hun origin theory dominated right to the 19th century. According to the view of history of the nobility they were the/lescendants of Hun warriors led by Árpád, while the burghers and serfs were the issue of peoples they found here and made their servants. It was only in the last century t hat linguists proved the Hungarians were not a people without kin, that our language was related to the language of the Finno-Ugrians and that we descended from that community of tribes.” “Where was the ancient home of Hungarians, and since when can we speak of Hungarians?” “According to our present knowledge the ancestors of the Uralians (Finno- Ugrians) lived in the middle and lower Ural region mostly on the Eastern slope in the 4th millennia B.C. By the term ‘ancient home of the Hungarians’ we mean the region, where the Hungarian people evolved and separated from other peoples related to them. That region could well have been east of the southern Urals, on the northern fringes of the steppe country at the time following the disintegration of the ancient Finno-Ugrian common home. Thus the Ob-Ugrians and the Ugrian community that included the ancestors of Hungarians settled on the Eastern slopes of the Urals in the region of the rivers Ob, Irtis and Tobol. The proto-Hungarians almost certainly lived in the southern parts of this region, thus mostly in the northern region of the Eurasian step-__________________________________________Uűtö feaag HIGHWAY OF THE STEPPES 9 9 I f The sabretache from Újfehértó-Micskepuszta pe. Between 1000 and 500 B.C. a new mode of life came into being in the Eurasian steppe, nomad livestock grazing. The ancestors of Hungarians also embraced this mode of life, but most of the other members of the Ugrian community failed to follow them. The new, more mobile ways very likely made the change of location inevitable. The fact that the Hungarians separated from their Ugrian kin and became an independent people could well have been the result of that dual process. Since this time, about 2,500 years ago, we can speak about the Hungarian people.” “There are numerous views about when and from wham our ancestors learned to cultivate the soil.” “Southern peoples, mainly those speaking an ancient Iranian language, transmitted a knowledge of farming, that is agriculture and animal husbandry, to the Finno-Ugrians in the first half of the second millennium B.C. That was the time also, when they became acquainted with the horse, which later played such an important part in the life of our ancestors. We have both linguistic and archeological evidence to prove this.” “Were the ancient Hungarians a demonstrably warlike people?” “Being warlike is true of all nomads. Their principal wealth is their livestock. If that is grabbed from them the people face slow death by famine, since the agriculture of the nomad Hungarians — alt hough they always cultivated the soil around their winter pastures — was not significant. Thus every able bodied nomad was also a soldier. Since horses formed the core of their livestock, they were inseparable from them and used the tactics of horsemen in a masterly way. That applied not only to the men, but also to the young women, who mastered the bow and sabre in battle.” “Was the Conquest a planned campaign or a flight from some enemy?" “According to our present knowledge it was both. After the Uz Patzinak war in 893 the Patzinak crossed the Volga and appeared in the rear of the Hungarians, who at the time lived in the Atelkuzu region, the present Southern Ukraine. Having lost a war, the I’atzinaks, hungry for plunder and disposing over a powerful host, upset the peace of the region. It was very likely then that the Hungarian tribal chiefs decided to look for a quieter homeland. There was good reason why their choice fell on the Carpathian Basin. The sources show that they had regularly crossed that area then shared by Franks, Bulgarians and Moravians since 862, and that a large part of the Great Plain was then a border territory, a kind of no-man’s land. In the spring of 895 Árpád with the main army descended upon the Great Plains through the Verecke Pass. Then, the Bulgarians, who feared for the safety of their salt mines and gold fields in Southern Transylvania, formed an alliance with the Patzinaks and attacked the Hungarians who had been left behind. They killed many and drove off most of the livestock. But the bulk of the Hungarians could still reach the new home, although not via the Northern roundabout, but directly to Transylvania through more southerly passes over the Carpathians.” “Why did the dual principality develop?” “This developed on the Khazar pattern. There was a chief king, the kende or kündü, and a viceroy, the man actually in charge of public affairs and the leader of the armies, whom they called gxfula. According to some theories Árpád was the gyula at the time of the Conquest, and Kurszán was the kende. Others reached the opposite conclusion. Hungarian princely power emerged at the head of the Hungarians back in Levadia and became the first institution of the Hungarian statehood.” “There was much talk earlier about the dual conquest. What is your opinion of that?” “According to Gyula László, the archeologist, some of the Hungarians had already settled in the country in the late Avar period. So far, however, neither archeological findings nor linguistic evidence support the view that the late Avars might have been Hungarian speakers. After having been separated from their related peoples — and even before that — the Hungarians were in contact with numerous other peoples. That applies in particular to the fifteen hundred years before the Conquest, when they lived in the vicinity of mostly Iranian, then Turkish-speaking peoples of the Eurasian steppes. Several other peoples joined them in that period (for instance the Kabars in the first half of the 9th century) and a number of groups were torn out of them, thus the group left in Magna Hungária (whom Frater Julianus found in 12'.16 in the region, where the Kama joined the Volga), or the Savard-Hungarians, who moved to the Southern slopes of the Caucasus. In that time not only the mode of living of the Hungarians, but also their culture assumed the colours of the steppe. In that sense, therefore, the steppe peoples of the age are also the relatives of the Hungarians, and their memory was preserved by words the Hungarians borrowed from Iranian and mostly from Bulgarian Turkic. Our ancestors also intermarried with these neighbours, but assimilated the newcomers.” “It is difficult to speak of the new theory of the Uigur connection, since no more then newspaper articles have appeared so far; nothing in a scholarly journal, nor is there a book. The evidence he advances does not convince me. In my opinion not only could we not be in a linguistic or genetic relationship with the Uigurs, but even in the cultural community of the steppe we lived a long way apart.” “In conclusion, would you tell us about the latest research results?” “I believe one of the important achievements is that in the study of our ancient history younger kindred disciplines, such as archeology, anthropology, ethnology etc. are playing increasingly important roles, not to mention linguistics. Today results can only be achieved in this field with the help of complex methods, by the comparison of the achievements of various branches of knowledge. It is fortunate that Hungarian archeologists find their way to Soviet museums with increasing frequency, and that, they have the opportunity of participating in excavations and research with their Soviet colleagues. Thus they can become directly acquainted with excavations at the ancient settlements of our ancestors.” “We are going to republish the description of the archeological material of the age of the Conquest discovered in Hungary — supplemented with the latest findings — in order to make it more accessible to Hungarian and international research. Our archeologists excavated important new burial places in recent years and these offer evidence that our forebears were not only herdsmen and proud horsemen, but that a very significant agricultural population also moved in with them into the Carpathian basin. The summing up of the Transylvanian finds from the age of the Conquest is another important new achievement in the recently published three-volume History of Transylvania. In the light of that it is hardly debatable that the Hungarians took possession of Transylvania in the first year of t he Conquest, and not later, as earlier research assumed. But the achievements must not make us forget how much still has to be done. Further anil planned excavations of burial places and remains of settlements are still necessary, these must be meticulously analysed with the application of modem scientific methods. It is also necessary to make our achievements known not only to the scientific world but to the general public at home and abroad.” LÁSZLÓ PUSZTASZERI 31
