Dénes György: A Bódvaszilasi-medence 700 éves története (Borsodi Kismonográfiák 16. Miskolc, 1983)

George DÉNES A HISTORY OF THE 700 YEARS OLD BÓDVASZILAS BASIN (Abstract) The Bódvaszilas basin is an ever wider part of the valley of River Bódva, stretching from the gorge between Perkupa and Szalonna to the present-day border, surrounded by karstland. Man has inhabited this area ever since ancient times. Archeologists have found remains of paleolitihic, neolithic, bronze-age and iron-age life, as well as finds once belonging to the Scythians, the Celts and the peoples of the Great Migration. From the second half of the 6th century A. D. up to the early 9th century, this region was also inhabited by the Avars. At the beginning of the 9th century, the Avar Empire was overthrown by the Bulgars and the Franks. By the mid-9th century the Bulgars had moved southern slav elements from Balkan areas wich they had taken from the Byzantine Empire into the Carpathian Basin, including the Bódva region. In the course of the Magyar Conquest in the last decades of the 9th century or not long after, the Magyar tribal chieftains settled their servants here. They were mostly Magyars, but there were also subjected Avar and Bulgar-Slav peoples among them. The latter are mentioned by Anonymus in his Gesta Hungarorum written in the late 12th century, which is the only written source for the Hungarian Conquest in the Bódva valley and their settlement from here towards the north. The geographical names of Bulgar-Slav origin and the similar words surviving in the vernacular of the area seem to support his account. Lying outside the territory occupied by the Magyar tribes during the Conquest, the basin became the private estate first of the prince, later of the king (as early as the tenth century or in the first half of the eleventh at the latest), and was called the Torna demesne. The estate encompassed the majority or, at the beginning, perhaps all of the settlements in the Bódvaszilas basin. Other evidence for the early organization of the estate is the fact that by the second half of the 12th century the royal demense, organized by so much work and expense, where forest had been cleared, marshlands drained, roads built and bridges constructed, and where servants of the king paying duties had been living (i. e. ironsmiths) together with alien hospites, was already disintegrating and parts of it were gradually bestowed on the worthy as grants. Before 1171 it was Jászó and its surroundings that were donated to the Premonstratensian Order. The western part of the estate, around Pelsőc and Csetnek, was given by Béla III to his relative and faithful follower, Ban Domonkos de genere Miskolc before 1196, while Torna and its vicinity was given by King Imre to the younger sister of his mother, princess Aliz of Antiochia between 1196 and 1198. Though the latter two donations later reverted to the crown when princess Aliz got married and went to live in Italy and when the son of Ban Domonkos had no heir, this was only a temporary situation. The Mongol invasion of 1141-1142 raided our territory as well, but the majority of the inhabitants fled to the woods and caves in the hills and returned to the villages after the Mongol hords had withdrawn. Thus the continuity of settlement was not broken then and has not been broken ever since. 150