Miklós Kásler - Zoltán Szentirmay (szerk.): Identifying the Árpád Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church. Applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research (Budapest, 2021)

CHAPTER TWO – Historical background

Holy Kings”. This dynasty was only called the “House of Árpád

” by

historians after 1779.

The founder of the dynasty, Grand Prince Álmos,

organized

the monarchical form of government around 850, when the Hungarians were in the Etelköz,

a

northern region of the Black Sea. The governmental-political entity which he created should be referred to as the Principality of Hungary considering that several foreign contemporary sources used terms that translate to “Grand Prince” (megás arkhon

in Greek and senior magnus

in

Latin) to refer to the sovereign. The Principality of Álmos

and

his descendants was in every way in accordance with the criteria of statehood of his age, since a given territory was governed by an institutional, sovereign authority that could exert its political will (Pohl 2003; Szabados

2011).

Between 862 and 895, the Hungarians systematically conquered the Carpathian basin under the leadership of Álmos

and

his son, Grand Prince Árpád.

The

Hungarians, relatives of the steppe peoples and Hunnic-Turkic in culture, quickly and peacefully integrated the population of the Carpathian basin, while launching numerous offensive campaigns against Western and Southeastern European countries out of state interests. The Principality of Hungary represented the model of Eurasian steppe empires from 862 to 1000 in Central Europe (Szabados

2011;

Szőke

2014;

Szabados

2018).

The fifth descendant of Grand Prince Álmos,

István reorganized

the Hungarian state in terms of both domestic and foreign policy. On the one hand, he wanted to preserve power in the hands of the dynasty’s Christian line, while on the other hand he wanted his country to be accepted into Christendom. István

I,

later canonized as Saint István,

was

the last Hungarian Grand Prince (977-1000) and 38