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Post by oszkarthehun on Apr 17, 2008 21:49:30 GMT -5
[,[/quote]
b]I think you are making rather extreme contrast here, and I dont think mainstream Hungarian histiography puts it that way either.
Of course the Hungarian tribes were warriors and raiders but as has been said this does not mean they were not partly akin to agriculture or settled life, its believed they already learned agriculture from Iranian and Turkic contacts before they entered Carpathian Basin. Dont forget they were tribal federation so among them were likely to be tribes with various skills and previous occupations. They had been exposed to many things before entering Carpathian basin there is even some sources that claim some of them had already been Christianised before conquest time.[/b]
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Post by c0gnate on Apr 17, 2008 22:22:15 GMT -5
how can small groups of plunderers dominate such a supposed large population that is not militarily technologically inferior or with less manpower. We've already gone over this. why is there no documentation of such a supposed large population when in the same times we know that Croatia had already been Kingdom and fought several wars and in the north Moravia had been Kingdom, battles with Moravia and Magyars are known so why there isnt documented battles of supposed large population in Carpathians. I said Carpathian basin, not Carpathians: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_Basin
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Post by oszkarthehun on Apr 17, 2008 23:29:47 GMT -5
well all of your examples consisted of more technologically advanced societies dominating less advanced socities as your examples of Spanish vs Indians of Mexico and South America.
I actually wrote "how can small groups of plunderers dominate such a supposed large population that is not militarily technologically inferior or with less manpower."
as it seems you are proposing that the inhabitants of Carpathian Basin greatly outnumbered the Hungarian tribes.
I mean same thing.
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Post by oszkarthehun on Apr 17, 2008 23:53:07 GMT -5
well all of your examples consisted of more technologically advanced societies dominating less advanced socities as your examples of Spanish vs Indians of Mexico and South America. I actually wrote "how can small groups of plunderers dominate such a supposed large population that is not militarily technologically inferior or with less manpower." as it seems you are proposing that the inhabitants of Carpathian Basin greatly outnumbered the Hungarian tribes. I mean same thing. Simon Kézai (1283) calls the moving in of Árpád's Magyars to the Carpathian Basin a "remigration" after the Huns. The Hungarians' ancestors stayed some 45 years in Etelköz, and the exact date of the settlement, as calculated from the Byzantine solar eclipse, was 895. (This statement came before the diet in 1892, but as the preparations of the millennial festivals were not ready, the Austro-Hungarian government appointed 1896 as the year of millennial festivals). The Avar empire in the Carpathian Basin had broken up about a hundred years before the settlement; but some Avars lived strewn about the countryside, calm in their village life. Most of the basin was inhabited by the Slavs. The northern part belonged to Great Moravia, weakened by a civil war. Transylvanian salt mines were guarded by Bulgaria. The Balaton Principality in Transdanubia was occupied first by Great Moravia, then by the Frankish empire. The beginning of the Hungarian settlement was instigated by other factors: in 894 AD an extreme Muslim attack streamed into Eastern Europe; the Byzantines disappointed the Hungarians living in the Balkans; they were hit by a Pecheneg attack; and finally with Svatopluk I's death that year, Great Moravian power started to decline. The settlement itself supposedly took place in May 895, when the Hungarian tribes from their quarters in Etelköz took the closest routes (Verecke, Tömös, Ojtoz, Gyimes, Békás pass, Lower Duna, etc.) and occupied first the Upper Tisza area; then three groups calling themselves kabar ("rioter") split from the Khazars and invaded the Transylvanian salt mines guarded by Bulgarians, and with the claim of finality pushed into the Carpathian Basin. Transdanubia was entered by the Hungarians only after the death of Arnulf, the Frankish ruler, in 890 AD, completing the occupation; thus this year may be taken as the actual end year of the settlement. The real significance of the settlement is that a nation originating in Central Asia, evolved on the border of Europe and Asia, calling themselves Magyar; getting the name "Turk" from the Byzantine Greeks, and "Ungar, Hungarus, Hun"" from other European nations, could create a firm state in the Carpathian Basin, one that was able to form a relatively peaceful symbiosis for the nations under the Holy Crown, and that today has a Constitution guaranteeing rights that is equal to any among the nations of Europe. At the end of May 895 at Ópusztaszer (or from 890 AD, after the Transdanube's occupation), the first Hungarian diet took place -- whence Hungarian prehistory ends, and history begins. [edit] Land conquest in two waves theory A theory reiterated in recent decades by Hungarian archeologist Gyula László[11]. He has argued that the Magyars arrived in two separate waves, centuries apart, a notion which is still controversial. Some evidence: The Primary Russian Chronicle, attributed by some to Nestor, recalls that the Magyars undertook two Conquests of Hungary, first under the name of "White Ugrians", during the time when the Avars occupied the country, and then a second during the reign of the Grand Duke Oleg. Archaeologists of the Rippl-Rónai Museum from Kaposvár (Hungary) have made a sensational discovery near Bodrog-Alsóbû - Temetõ-dûlõ, Somogy County, in 1999. The research-workers dug up a pottery piece that was long-ago part of an ancient furnace bellows, having on its edge a Székely-Magyar type runic text of 4 letters in Hungarian language ("funák" = "they would blow", en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_prehistory
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Post by c0gnate on Apr 18, 2008 9:46:55 GMT -5
I actually wrote "how can small groups of plunderers dominate such a supposed large population that is not militarily technologically inferior or with less manpower." as it seems you are proposing that the inhabitants of Carpathian Basin greatly outnumbered the Hungarian tribes. I already answered this: Battles in antiquity and the middle ages were fought by usually less than fifty thousand men - frequently less than 10 000 - on either side. The soldiers who didn't do anything other than fight or train for it required an enormous population to feed them. The technology was so primitive that farmers (with the help of their wives and children) could barely feed themselves to survive. It took twenty non soldiers (male and female) to supply one professional soldier with sustenance, clothing and weapons. The so-called barbarians (Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, etc.) that penetrated inside the territories of the Roman empire and the subsequent states or lands were like gangster armies that took food (and any riches available) from a farming population. In essence they competed with the central authority (emperor, king, pope, the nobility and the priests-monks) in dispossessing the (already enslaved) farmers. To succeed the invaders didn't have to be in the hundreds of thousands, but just numerous enough to defeat the soldiers of the empire / states, one battle at a time. Thus even fifty thousand permanently armed fighters would be sufficient. In other words, the Magyars were not "Hungarian tribes" with women, children and the old and enfeebled traveling peacefully in covered wagons through unsettled lands but were groups of armed men mounted on horses -- fighters, plunderers, slave traders -- who wrested control of the population from the pre-existing power structure: the local kings and dukes, who were already lording it over a highly enslaved population of farmers. In this view the agricultural population simply exchanged masters: a new Magyar elite instead of the Slav-speaking nobility. Thus modern Hungarians genetically are mostly the earlier population for whom the new Magyar masters created a new state and taught a new language.
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Post by c0gnate on Apr 18, 2008 12:11:40 GMT -5
who is the rest of the world ? You've answered your own question in an earlier post: [...] they were able to bring down the Moravian empire then raid Western and Central Europe for 100 years not to mention they were so feared by the Italians that they collected yearly Tax from Italy for several years. [...] Hungary [was] a force to be reckoned with dont forget after all the raiding etc they were still able to defeat and conquer Croatia which was already a Kingdom in itself with modern army of the time and significant population also.
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Post by oszkarthehun on Apr 18, 2008 18:21:40 GMT -5
. You are making the asumption they were all pure nomads. I dont think thats the case as their are sources that indicate periods of settlement for several years in various places before they entered Carpathian Basin. It is likely some of the military contingants were from more nomad warrior backgrounds but not necessarily true for the entire tribal federation. Village settlements from the 8th-9th centuries discovered at the Don region show that after the Hungarians' moved to Levedia, this process of settling down may have continued: the majority of Bulgarian-Turk loan-words in the Hungarian language are related to farming: words for wheat, barley, plough, sickle, fruit, apple, wine, hemp and pea. Animal husbandry became intensive: ox, bull, sty, sheepfold. The words meaning hen and pig are the proofs of it, since pigs and chickens could not bear the continuous moving of the nomads. The Hungarians in Etelköz were not just nomadic shepherds. There was also a significant farming layer. Farmers could bring their experience with them to the Carpathian Basin, the westernmost corner of the steppe. mek.oszk.hu/01900/01993/html/index1.html
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Post by c0gnate on Apr 18, 2008 19:23:17 GMT -5
Village settlements from the 8th-9th centuries discovered at the Don region show that after the Hungarians' moved to Levedia, this process of settling down may have continued: the majority of Bulgarian-Turk loan-words in the Hungarian language are related to farming: words for wheat, barley, plough, sickle, fruit, apple, wine, hemp and pea. Animal husbandry became intensive: ox, bull, sty, sheepfold. The words meaning hen and pig are the proofs of it, since pigs and chickens could not bear the continuous moving of the nomads. The Hungarians in Etelköz were not just nomadic shepherds. There was also a significant farming layer. Farmers could bring their experience with them to the Carpathian Basin, the westernmost corner of the steppe. mek.oszk.hu/01900/01993/html/index1.html Tell me, how do farmers move a thousand kilometers while farming? Don't they have to prepare the soil in early spring, plant, till, harvest, store the excess grain and prepare for the next season? Did they travel in winter over the ice and through the snow? The Magyars that farmed stayed in their ancient homeland north-east of the Black and the Caspian seas. Those that made their way west were the excess males who had to resort to plunder and the slave trade in order to survive.
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Post by oszkarthehun on Apr 18, 2008 21:09:32 GMT -5
Village settlements from the 8th-9th centuries discovered at the Don region show that after the Hungarians' moved to Levedia, this process of settling down may have continued: the majority of Bulgarian-Turk loan-words in the Hungarian language are related to farming: words for wheat, barley, plough, sickle, fruit, apple, wine, hemp and pea. Animal husbandry became intensive: ox, bull, sty, sheepfold. The words meaning hen and pig are the proofs of it, since pigs and chickens could not bear the continuous moving of the nomads. The Hungarians in Etelköz were not just nomadic shepherds. There was also a significant farming layer. Farmers could bring their experience with them to the Carpathian Basin, the westernmost corner of the steppe. mek.oszk.hu/01900/01993/html/index1.html There were Hungarian speaking tribes that were later found in Bashkiria region in 13th century so some stayed behind but the point is the Hungarians who went to Carpathian Basin maintained these BulgarTurkic words relating to farming which shows they were familiar with agriculture and settled life not only nomadic warfare. Its not simply the case they all had to be warriors or even that some were not capable of agriculture and warfare too and again there are still differeing theories about the settlement process and when and how it occured. I have already mentioned the 2 wave migration theory and the sources in Russian chronicle that also mention it. Even the Gesta mentions Szekely were already in Hungary before Magyars arrived and when they arrived they already recognised them as brothers, this may also relate to the 2 wave migration theory. Dont forget Hungarian tribes were pushed out of their previous region by Petcheneg attacks this shows they were not only moving around for plunder and warfare they were also in search of new homeland so why wouldnt they move as much of their tribes including women, farmers,Priests etc as much as they could.
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Post by c0gnate on Apr 18, 2008 22:05:30 GMT -5
There were Hungarian speaking tribes that were later found in Bashkiria region in 13th century so some stayed behind but the point is the Hungarians who went to Carpathian Basin maintained these BulgarTurkic words relating to farming which shows they were familiar with agriculture and settled life not only nomadic warfare. As I said earlier, knowing terms such "credit" or "interest" or "principal" or "amortization" doesn't make one a banker. Sure, the Magyars knew words for millet, barley and other grains as well as simple farming implements and rudimentary animal husbandry. Some indeed were farmers. But the farmers stayed behind. Its not simply the case they all had to be warriors or even that some were not capable of agriculture and warfare too and again there are still differeing theories about the settlement process and when and how it occured. As Yeni mentioned, the Magyars were polygamous. Polygamy always produces excess males, who either must be killed, or sold into slavery or chased away. The Magyar warriors that made their way into the Carpathian basin were such excess males.
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Post by oszkarthehun on Apr 18, 2008 23:14:51 GMT -5
We dont know that they being specifically only farmers or non warrior class stayed behind show me where any source states that, why do people think migration has to take place in one foul sweep, it possibly occured over several years. Infact after the conquest period there was always a constant influx into Hungary from eastern and western peoples again if there wasnt a singular stable language spoken by majority of population its hard to believe language would have surived or that newcomers would have assimilated to it.
[/quote]
Seriously how many excess males do you think they were and if this were the case then it would seem the population that stayed behind would be even more numerous.
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Rhezus
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Post by Rhezus on Apr 19, 2008 7:08:44 GMT -5
Haha... I recognize such "theories", they were writen in same modus for the steppe-bulgars. To justify them for things they actually never did or for facts who were not real. When different theories are coming, means they are nothing more than just theories.
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Post by pagane on Apr 19, 2008 7:15:52 GMT -5
It is well known that those Szekely came with the Avars. There are several theories about their origin but they were here for sure. I hope you are not going to deny the existence of the Avar state, are you?
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Post by c0gnate on Apr 19, 2008 7:34:48 GMT -5
No, it's not well known when the Szekely came, nor is it well known under what conditions.
Regarding the Avars, it's also questionable that they came into central and eastern Europe as peaceful families, rather than military organizations of men. There is a good chance that what is known about the much better documented Mongol empire -- it took place so much later -- is also true of the Avar state.
The Mongol empire was created by Mongol men: fighters, plunderers and slave traders. They did not bring along their original Mongol women but took from the conquered peoples whatever women they wanted.
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wbb
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Post by wbb on Apr 19, 2008 9:19:54 GMT -5
according to the article what Oskar has posted some time around 1 months ago, it´s says so that Magyars were indengenious to Pannonia but went to Russia then camed back, i think that source is quite common sense enough. Only minority of magyars had asian blood, all those asians had assimilated and lost their asian root, the rest of Magyars were european-blooded same like the Basque.
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yeni
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Post by yeni on Apr 19, 2008 10:23:51 GMT -5
well actually i said "polygamy was not prohibited i think". now searching more about it i didn't find source which support that it was common, like about the main Magyar tribal leaders there is no mention they had more wives usually only one wife mentioned (or i didn't find it) so its more likely polygamy could be rare if it existed. but now i'm not sure in this so if anybody have infos about polygamy among early Magyars tell me.
edit: now i found in the Gesta Hungarorum its says that Mén-marot (Menumarot) the chief of the kozars in Bihar had more wives. we don't know if this guy really existed or made up by Anonymous but its really interesting question how common was the polygamy that time. I don't know.
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Post by oszkarthehun on Apr 21, 2008 10:15:46 GMT -5
Haha... I recognize such "theories", they were writen in same modus for the steppe-bulgars. To justify them for things they actually never did or for facts who were not real. When different theories are coming, means they are nothing more than just theories. The source-Gesta was written in 14th century todays politics and the time this was written is 2 different things. The Szekely themselves in their own folklore believe they are direct ancestors of Attila's Huns. Not to mention just because you recognise theories about Steppe Bulgars that doesnt qualify you on Hungarian history. The Avars were a mixed people apparently even anthropolgical data shows this. It is believed by archeologist Gyula Laszlo that what is known as the second wave of Avars whom went into Hungary in 6th-7th century and whom Russian chronicle refferred to as White Ugrians were actually the first wave of Hungarians that entered Carpathian Basin.
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Post by c0gnate on Apr 21, 2008 10:38:29 GMT -5
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Rhezus
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Post by Rhezus on Apr 21, 2008 17:17:58 GMT -5
Those Szekely ppl do not represent the majority of today Hungarians. They were a small group only.
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Post by oszkarthehun on Apr 22, 2008 18:41:49 GMT -5
the extract below is written by English Historian Mcartney.Even if we disregard the high mountains and Transylvania, which usually lived its own life, the fates of the two parts of the plain in early times and the Dark Ages were often very different, sometimes sharply opposed. The western half was usually peopled and intermittently controlled from its immediate or remoter central European, or Italian, hinterlands; for several centuries it belonged to Rome. By contrast, the Great Plain was recurrently occupied by waves of nomadic horsemen, the overspill from the seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of these peoples which then filled the Pontic, Caspian and central Asiatic steppes. Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns (with their Germanic subjects), Bulgars and Avars all successively sought in it a refuge from more powerful neighbours, and a home. These two elements - Europe and Asia - strove for mastery, and neither ever achieved it quite completely. The horsemen, when they arrived, were usually the stronger in the field and some of them carried their conquests across the Danube and as far as the western forests, but in time they always weakened, their empires collapsed and Europe reasserted itself. On the other hand, the Europeans seldom ventured beyond what was for them the greatest of natural defensive lines, the Danube; the Romans themselves, who for a while held Transylvania as well as the west, left the Great Plain alone, even during a long period when its nomadic population was exceptionally weak. There were other times when neither Asia nor Europe was present in force, and when the whole Basin was little more than a no-man's land, and the end of the ninth century AD. was one of these times. The Avars, the last invaders to enter the Basin in force, had ruled the whole of it for the unprecedented span of over two centuries, but their power, too, bad decayed with time, and at the opening of the century Charlemagne had destroyed it utterly. The German Empire had, however, limited its subsequent extension of its political frontiers to the old Pannonia and the areas flanking it north and south, and even there it had done no more than set up a series of dependencies, governed by Slavonic 'dukes', whose allegiance was often insecure. One of these vassal states, Croatia, had made itself fully independent in 869, and Sviatopluk, Duke of Moravia, which then included the: area between the Danube and the Gran, had been in open defiance of his overlord for as long. The East Roman Empire, of which the Serbia of the day was a loose dependency, disputed Syrmia with the Western Empire, but did not look across the Danube-Drava line. Bulgaria may have exercised suzerainty over the Alföld, and perhaps Transylvania, but its rule over either area was at best shadowy. Thus a number of Powers claimed rule over parts of the Basin, but all of them were peripheral to it, their own centres far distant from it. The native populations ruled by these Powers were as various as they.There were Moravian Slavs in the north-west, Slovenes in Pannonia; in the north, and along the banks of the Tisza, some more Slav settlements, and roaming the plains of the Alföld, a nomadic people of Eastern origin, perhaps akin to the Magyars themselves: the Szekels. The ethnic appurtenance of the then inhabitants of Transylvania is acrimoniously disputed between Roumanian and Hungarian historians, the former maintaining that a Roman, or alternatively, Romanised Dacian, population had survived the Dark Ages, the latter pointing to the fact that all the pre-Magyar place-names of Transylvania are Slav, except four river-names, which are not Latin; also that the first mention of 'Vlachs' in Hungarian documents comes in the thirteenth century, when they figure only as roving shepherds, and not numerous. In any case, all these populations were sparse. The most densely populated area was probably the foothills and open valleys of the north-west. The upper valleys and mountains of the Carpathians were practically uninhabited. There were only one or two places larger than hamlets in Pannonia, or in the Alföld. Transylvania, too, whatever the ethnic appurtenance of such inhabitants as it possessed, consisted at that time mostly of unpenetrated forest. Such was the situation in the Basin when the Magyars appeared on the further side of the Carpathian Gate.According to this tradition, the decision to migrate was motivated by pressure of population on the feeding grounds; foreign sources reveal that in fact the Magyars had suffered defeat at the hands of a nation newly arrived from the East, the Petchenegs, who had evicted them from their feeding grounds. This was in A.D. 889, and Árpád now led his people westward in quest of a new home. The Kavars came with them, as did half a dozen small hordes of Turki or Ugrian origin.[1] Their journey brought them to the outer slopes of the Carpathians, and by the favour of fortune, to a new life beyond them. For had the passes been held strongly against them, this would have been the end of their national existence; those not destroyed by the Petchenegs would gradually have lost their national identity, as refugees in foreign lands and mercenaries in foreign armies. But far from finding their road barred, they were actually invited to enter on it. In 892 the Emperor Arnulf enlisted a contingent of them to help him against his rebellious vassal, Sviatopluk. The weakness of the land was revealed to them. In 894 they were back, raiding Pannonia on their own account, and in the autumn of 895 or the spring of 896 the entire nation, with their auxiliaries, crossed the mountains for good. A little fighting left them in possession of the Alföld (where the Szekels submitted themselves voluntarily) and put an end to any resistance from Transylvania. The Germans and Moravians patched up their differences in view of the common danger, but by A.D. 900 Frankish rule in Pannonia had vanished. The final destruction of Moravian rule in the north-west came in 906. In 907 a Bavarian army was annihilated at Ennsburg and the Magyars' rule extended up to the Avars' old frontier where the Enns runs into the Danube. The Magyars had thus entered on possession of their new homes speedily and completely, far more so than, as far as we know, any of their predecessors. It is important to emphasise that what had been done was indeed to establish a nation in a new home, not, as the Normans did in England or Russia, to impose the rule of a relatively small band of conquerors on a subject people. The invaders did not, of course, exterminate the indigenous populations, and may even have admitted some of their chieftains into their own ranks, with their status unimpaired; but most usually, they were allotted as subjects or tributaries to one or another of the Magyar tribal chiefs, or at best, given a semi-free status. The polity was exclusively that of the Magyars and their confederates. We have no certainty as to the invaders' numbers; one of their chroniclers gives the number of the Magyar clans at 108, which reads like genuine tradition, but his statement that each of the 108 could produce 2,000 armed men seems more dubious. The Magyars and their allies were, however, numerous enough to occupy in sufficient force all the then habitable parts of their new home, viz. the plain, using the term in its widest sense. Árpád's own horde settled in the Dunántúl, between Székesfehérvár, on the site of which, or near it, he made his headquarters, and Buda. Of the six other Magyar hordes, three settled respectively north-west, west and south-west of the leading tribe, one on the middle Tisza and one on the upper. The seventh, the tribe of Gyula, after first settling in the west, moved to the approaches of Transylvania. The plain of the lower Tisza and its tributaries was allotted to the Kavars, while the 'Kuns' took the northern fringes of the Great Plain.The invaders did not then attempt to occupy the mountains, which were not adapted to their economy. These, and certain marshlands, were deliberately left as an uncultivated and impenetrable belt, known as 'gyepü', the passages across which were watched by permanent guards, a service to which most of the Szekels were assigned. Beyond this again, there were perhaps isolated outposts. www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/macartney/macartney01.htm
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