History of Hungary. Hungarians - Magyars, who are they? Magyar tribes

The fate of this Ugric people is amazing. Until the 9th century ours, they settled from the Urals to the northern Black Sea region.

The fact that Hungarians belong to the Finno-Ugric ethnic group became clear only in the 19th century. It took a very long time to figure this out. Particularly persistent was the medieval assumption that the Hungarians were descended from the Huns. Hence the word Hungary. Although it has now been proven that this is not so, the Hungarians still really want to consider themselves relatives of the Huns. The Turkic version of the origin of this people was also widespread. The Hungarians have many legends and myths about their early history, which of course greatly embellish everything. They allegedly come from Noah and from Attila and from God knows who else from the greats of this world...

But as linguists say, the Hungarian language belongs to the Uralic family of languages. A Hungarians are relatives of the indigenous Urals. And their most important relatives are the Mansi, Khanty and Samoyed peoples living in the Northern Urals. And this is not at all the kinship that the Hungarians dreamed of in their legends. But this far from honorable relationship was suspected even in the Renaissance. The Italian humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini wrote in the middle of the 15th century about the North Ural relatives of the Hungarians that they use the same language as the Hungarians. But no one supported these assumptions then.

In the second millennium BC. the Finnish and Ugric groups separated, and by the first millennium BC. refers to the appearance of the proto-Magyars. That is, they are three thousand years old. Their habitat at that time was localized as the eastern and western spurs of the South Ural Mountains. Well, in short, the Chelyabinsk region. At SUSU and at the Pedagogical University we have history departments with archeology departments. And every summer, scientists and students go to excavations in the steppe zone of the Southern Urals. Various mounds and burials are found there, dating back to different eras and numerous peoples who trampled our steppes for many centuries. And it is no coincidence that every year their colleagues from Hungary come to us and join these groups. They are looking for their ancestral home.

So, in the Kunashaksky district of the Chelyabinsk region, on the shore of Lake Uelgi, archaeologists uncovered mounds that are about a thousand years old. And they found rich burials of ancient nomads there - they were the ancestors of the Khazars, the Black Sea Bulgars, Danube Magyars and Hungarians. Unfortunately, some of the burials were plundered several centuries ago. But our scientists also got amazing finds: women's and men's jewelry, elements of horse harness, arrowheads, sabers, knives, ceramic vessels. All of them testify to the noble origin of the people buried there.

The burial ground consists of two layers: the lower one dates back to the 9th century, and the upper one to the 10th-11th centuries, says Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Sergei Botalov. - The material found in the lower horizon coincides with 100% accuracy with the finds of the Carpathian Basin in Hungary. This suggests that the burial ground may belong to the Magyar culture.

By the way, world science has few artifacts from the life of the ancient Hungarians (Magyars), who once roamed the South Ural and Bashkir steppes and then moved to Eastern Europe. Therefore, the find interested the staff of the University of Budapest. Archaeologists believe that the traces of the ancient Magyars belong to the period of “finding their homeland,” that is, they date back to the time of their migration to the Carpathian-Danube basin.

In the first millennium BC. Hungarians settled from the Southern Urals and further into Western Siberia up to Tobol and Irtysh. There they were nomadic pastoralists. Their main thing was breeding horses. And this was the case until approximately the 5th century AD. You can call this the Ural period of Hungarian history.

How did linguists prove that Hungarians are relatives of the Finno-Ugric peoples? This is the lowest level of the language. Numbers, states (eat, drink...), movements (walk), names of body parts, natural phenomena. But not only vocabulary, but also the morphology of the language. How are diminutive and negative forms formed? All this proves the relationship. The conclusion is that 88% of the Hungarian language is from the original Ugric vocabulary, 12% is borrowed from the Turkic vocabulary, from the Alan language (Alans are the ancestors of the Ossetians) and plus borrowings from Slavic languages.

From the 4th-5th century AD. there is close communication between the Hungarians and the Turks. This is the time of the great migration of peoples. From the depths of the Asian continent, waves of nomads moved along the Great Steppe from Southern Siberia, rolling through the Southern Urals, to the Caspian steppes and the northern Black Sea region. In the flow of these numerous migrations, the Hungarians found themselves in the orbit of influence of one or another Turkic ethnic group. But the peculiarity of the Hungarians is that, while borrowing a lot from the Turks, they did not lose their original identity. They were forced out from their previous places of residence. They were wrapped and twisted. Neighborhood with the Turks from the 5th to the 7th centuries. In the first half of the 7th century, the Hungarians, as part of the Anagur tribes, were able to get rid of Turkic rule and they are part of the new political union Anaguro-Bulgaria. Later, under the influence of the Khazars, this association disintegrated. Some of the tribes led by Khan Asparukh find themselves on the territory of Bulgaria, this is the beginning of Bulgarian history. The second part moves north and forms Volga Bulgaria, and the third part remains in the area of ​​the Kuban River in the North Caucasus and becomes tributaries of the Khazars. Among them were Hungarians. (The huge Khazar Kaganate in 965 would be defeated by Prince Svyatoslav Igorevich).

In 889, the Hungarians occupied the Etelköz region. Throughout the second half of the 9th century, the Hungarians zealously engaged in predatory raids on Europe. It was a series of blows all the way to Venice and even Spain. In 895, all those offended by the Hungarians: the Bulgarians, the Byzantines, the Pechenegs and others united against them. And the Hungarians had to get out of the territory of Etelköz, where they lived. The Pechenegs pressed them from the east. There is such a law of nomadic tribes - there is no turning back. In 896, the Hungarian tribes moved west. For several decades they continued to rampage, keeping all of Central Europe in fear. Finally they settled in Pannonia and Transylvania, that is, in their current place. They quickly converted to Christianity and became settled, exemplary Europeans.

Interesting story

As a monk, Julian went to the Urals.

The Dominican monk Julian in the 12th century traveled to the Southern Urals in search of Great Hungary. And he wrote a report about this, which has been preserved. Why did he need this? From ancient sources it was known that somewhere in the east there are relatives of the Hungarians and they vegetate because they do not know the true faith. And it is the sacred duty of the Hungarians to convey to them the correct faith. This Julian was later nicknamed "Columbus of the East." He traveled to Great Hungary twice and then left reports. This was just before the Horde invasion of Rus'. It can be said that Julian paved the way for the Hungarians to move back to Europe.

A group of four tourist monks led by Julian walked through Sofia, Constantinople, Tmutarakan and further to the east. Moreover, these two campaigns were sponsored by King Bela the Fourth. That is, not only the church was interested, but also the royal power. So the monks made a very difficult journey. They didn’t have enough money, probably the king was greedy. Such an incident even happened to them. In order to get money to continue the journey, they decided to sell two of them into slavery (voluntarily? Or maybe by lot?) BUT. Nobody wanted to buy monks, because, as it turned out, they don’t know how to do anything! They are not accustomed to plowing, sowing, or any kind of work. And these two monks, who were not bought, went back. The other two went further. One of them died on the way, and only Julian was able to reach Volga Bulgaria. And there he learned that two days away there lived people who spoke a similar language.
It was on the Belaya River (Agidel in modern Bashkiria). And there he really met the Hungarians, his fellow tribesmen; not all of them went west in the 9th century. To the monk’s sadness, these relatives not only had no idea about the true Catholic faith, but also led a rather wild lifestyle. They did not know agriculture, they were engaged in cattle breeding, and consumed meat, milk and blood of horses. The wild Hungarians of the Urals were very happy to have a brother who spoke their own language and immediately promised him to convert to Catholicism. Moreover, these Hungarians remembered those times when they were with other Hungarians, lived somewhere and came from there to these places. Julian realized that Greater Hungary lay somewhere even further to the east.

The Hungarians appeared on the pages of written sources only at the end of the 9th - 10th century AD, when Arab geographers and the Byzantine Emperor Constantine mentioned them as one of the nomadic peoples of the Black Sea steppes. In the initial Russian chronicles, a story about the passage was preserved black Ugrians past Kyiv approx. 896 during their movement from the Dnieper-Don steppes to the Carpathians. Apparently, until the 9th century, the ancient Hungarians did not represent an independent association, but were part of alliances where the Turkic (Bulgar) tribes were the dominant force (for example, Constantine Porphyrogenet calls the Hungarians exclusively Turks Such an association, first of all, was the one that existed in the Lower Don and Azov regions in the second half of the 6th - first half of the 7th centuries. Great Bulgaria- an independent state entity led by the Bulgars, which arose on the western periphery of the Turkic Kaganate. This region, obviously, was inhabited by many multilingual tribes (Alans, Bulgars, Khazars, Ugrians, Slavs, etc.), which left several local archaeological complexes, united by researchers in Saltovo-Mayatskaya culture.Great Bulgaria in the second half of the 7th century. became dependent on the Khazar Khaganate, which leads to the migration of part of the Bulgars led by Khan Asparuh to the Danube, where, after the subjugation of the local Slavic population, a state was formed in 681 Danube Bulgaria- a process that was practically repeated by the Hungarians 200 years later. Due to the military defeats that the Khazars suffered from the Arabs in the 30s. VIII century, and later - from the Turks who lived to the east - goose, and the general instability of the political situation in the Kaganate in the 8th-9th centuries. the remnants of the Bulgars moved at this time up the Volga to the north, where they founded a state Volga Bulgaria. Obviously, at the same time and due to the same reasons, somewhere in the Azov steppes, a tribal union headed by the Ugric tribe separated and left the Khazar power magyar / megyer, which, however, certainly included Turkic groups (see below). According to the reports of medieval Hungarian pseudo-historical works (Gesta Hungarorum), which, in addition to the fiction of their unknown authors, contain, presumably, real information, at the time the ancient Hungarians gained “independence” at the beginning of the 9th century, they lived in the country Levedia, which modern researchers localize, as a rule, in the lower Don region. The Khazars, trying to regain power over the Hungarians, used a third force against them - defeated in the Volga-Ural steppes by the same goose Turkic- Pechenegs. In 889, the Pechenegs forced the Hungarians to leave Levedia and move to the country called in medieval Hungarian writings Atelkuza(modern “corrected” Hungarian form – Etelk?z; obviously - from the tune. * etil“Volga; big river” and Hung. k?z“between” – lit. “Mezhdurechye”), which is usually localized in the steppes of the lower Dnieper region. Already at this time, the Hungarians became an active military-political force in Europe, participating in wars on the territory of the Balkan Peninsula and in Moravia. In 895, the Hungarian army was defeated by the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon, which the same Pechenegs did not fail to take advantage of, attacking the Hungarian nomadic camps that remained practically defenseless. The Hungarians had no choice but to leave Atelkuzu and, passing by Kyiv (see above), under the leadership of the leaders Kursana (Kursz?n), who had the title kende(apparently the title of the elder of the two leaders), and Arpada (Arp?d), called gyula, in 896, cross the Carpathians and occupy the territory of Pannonia and Transylvania, where, after the defeat of the Avars by the Franks, scattered Slavic tribes lived, most of them subjugated to new newcomers from the east. This is how the “conquest” or “gaining” of the homeland by the Hungarians took place (Hung. honfoglal's The prehistory of the Hungarians until the 8th century is no longer covered by written sources, and the fact that they were in close contact with the Turkic-speaking (and in an earlier era, judging by the presence of borrowings in the Hungarian language, with the Iranian-speaking) population of the Eurasian steppes limits the possibilities the use of archaeological and paleo-anthropological material in historical reconstructions. According to the work “Gesta Hungarorum”, the origins of the Hungarians were associated with the country Hungaria Major / Hungaria Magna(“Great Hungary”), located further to the east than the later ancestral homelands of the Hungarians - Levedia And Etelk?z. On the other hand, in the works of Arab and Persian geographers and travelers, starting from the 10th century, the names Magyar And Bashkir are used to refer to the same people. These two circumstances led to the fact that already in the Middle Ages Greater Hungary began to be associated in literature with the country of the Bashkirs - for the first time, apparently, with brother John of Plano Carpini (mid-13th century): “ Bascart or Hungaria Magna" In fact, the self-names of Hungarians, magyar, and Bashkirs, bash?ort, have nothing in common with each other, and the confusion of these ethnonyms in Arabic and Persian literature has an explanation in the phonetics of the Turkic intermediary languages ​​and the peculiarities of Arabic graphics. In addition, the addition of tradition about Hungaria Magna in the Volga-Ural region should be associated with the tendency of medieval scientists to look for the ancestral home of all peoples, especially those who are known to have appeared relatively late in Europe, such as the Hungarians, in the East. This trend has found its reinforcement in the real presence in the Middle Volga region Great Bulgaria, corresponding Danube Bulgaria It should be noted that there is a whole layer of tribal names among the Bashkirs, which, without a doubt, have a common origin with the tribal names of the Hungarians (more precisely, with the names of the tribes of that obviously multilingual union led by Arpad, who at the end of the 9th century “conquered his homeland” Hungarians in Pannonia), while most of these names are of Turkic origin. Considering the fact that neither in the culture, nor in the anthropological type, nor in the language of the Bashkirs there are any real traces of Hungarian (or Ugric) influence, and the significance of the Turkic component in the genesis of the Hungarian language and people is beyond doubt, these data can be interpreted as evidence participation in the formation of the Bashkirs and Hungarians of the same, predominantly Turkic, tribal groups, which is quite natural: both of these peoples were formed as unions of nomadic tribes at approximately the same time (in the second half of the 2nd millennium AD) on close territories (Hungarians - between the Volga and Dnieper, Bashkirs - between the Aral region and the Urals). Thus, the problem of “Great Hungary” is rather a subject of historiographical and textual research and should be considered separately from the problem of the ancestral homeland of the Hungarians and the former presence of proto-Hungarian groups in the Urals and Volga region . What deserves real attention is the message of the Hungarian traveler Brother Julian that in the 20s of the 13th century, during his trip to Volga Bulgaria (undertaken specifically to search for the Hungarians “remaining” in the east), he met pagans in one of the cities on the right bank of the Middle Volga, spoke Hungarian. It finds a response in the materials of Russian documents of the 15th-16th centuries concerning the regions of the right bank of the Middle Volga and Prikazanye, which mention the ethnonym mochars / Mozhary- next to the Mordvins, Cheremis, Bashkirs, Besermyans. This ethnonym seems to be irreducible from the self-name of the Tatars - Mishars mish?r and from the title of the chronicle Meshchera, but can be seen as a reflection of the ancient form of the self-name of the Hungarians Magyar and is thus evidence of the presence in this territory, if not of the direct descendants of Julian’s “Hungarians,” then at least of people who still retained the ancient Hungarian self-name. After the “conquest of the homeland” and short-lived (late 9th - mid 10th century) , but during the turbulent period of military campaigns, when Hungarian troops instilled fear in the inhabitants of Europe from France to Constantinople, the Hungarians settled on the territory of Pannonia and Transylvania assigned to them, and their mixing with the local Slavic population began, during which the Hungarian agricultural culture gradually took shape, and In the victorious Hungarian language, a powerful layer of Slavic borrowings was formed, comprising, in particular, agricultural terms. The process of settlement and stabilization found its completion in the adoption of Christianity ( kende Geza converted to Catholicism in 973) and the formation of a single kingdom (St. Stephen received the crown from the Pope in 1000). Christianity was finally established after the suppression of a pagan uprising in 1046, and the kingdom was freed from the suzerainty of the German emperor under King Endre I (1046–1060). With the spread of Christianity and centralized power, the first written monuments of the Hungarian language appeared - at first fragmentary (Charter of Tihany Abbey, c. 1055), then containing fairly extensive coherent texts ("Funeral Oration", late 12th century, etc.) The borders of the state expanded: at the beginning of the 12th century, Croatia and Dalmatia came under the rule of the Hungarian kings. In addition to the Slavs and Hungarians, the Germans took part in the formation of the population of Hungary (in particular, settlers from Saxony to Transylvania in the 12th century under Geza II), the Turks, both those who came with the Hungarians, and later settlers: Khorezmians, Khazars, Bulgars, Polovtsians. The Mongol invasion (1241–1242), although it devastated the country, did not make it dependent on the invaders. Hungary reached its greatest power under the kings of the Angevin dynasty, especially Louis (Hung. L?jos) I (1342–1382). In 1428, the Turks for the first time threatened the borders of Hungary, at the same time the claims of the Austrian Habsburgs to the Hungarian throne increased. During the reign of the Hunyadi dynasty (János Hunyadi became regent in 1446), the country managed to restrain the Turks and Austrians, but after the defeat at Mohács in 1526 and the capture of the country's capital, Buda, by the Turks (1541), Hungary was actually divided into several parts: most of today's Hungary under Turkish control, the independent principality of Transylvania, a chain of “border fortresses” along the northern borders of Hungary in the union, and then under the control of the Austrian Habsburgs. During the joint struggle with the Turks, Transylvania also came under the hands of the Austrian emperors at the end of the 16th century, but under the governor Istvan Bocskai and Prince Zsigmond Rakoczi, it regained independence at the beginning of the 17th century. The movement for the restoration of national unity and independence takes on the character of a people's war (movement Kurutsev, Hung. kuruc). In 1686, Buda was liberated, and in 1699, as a result of successes Kurutsev and the victories of the Austrian prince Eugene of Savoy, Hungary was again recognized as an independent state by the Treaty of Karlowitz. The struggle of the Hungarians under the leadership of Ferenc Rakoczi against Austrian domination did not lead to success: according to the Peace of Santmar in 1711, Hungary was finally included in the Habsburg Empire as an autonomous territory. The movement for national revival especially intensified in Hungary at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. First of all, this affected the revival of the Hungarian language: in 1805 a code of laws was first published in Hungarian, in 1825 the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was founded, in 1839 the Hungarian parliament approved a law giving the Hungarian language official status on the territory of Hungary. Suppression by the Austrians and Russians troops of the national democratic revolution of 1848-1849. led to the establishment of direct rule by the Austrian emperor on the territory of Hungary - only in 1861 did the Hungarian parliament reconvene. The restoration of Hungary's state independence occurred as a result of the revolutionary events of 1918, when, due to the defeat of Austria-Hungary in the First World War, the empire collapsed, and national states arose on its ruins. The current borders of the Hungarian Republic correspond to the decisions of international treaties (Paris and Potsdam), taking into account Hungary’s participation in both world wars on the side of the coalitions that were defeated in these wars, as a result of which a significant number of Hungarians live today in addition to Hungary (more than 10.5 million people) in Serbia (mainly in the Autonomous Region of Vojvodina, more than 400 thousand people), Romania (Transylvania, 1.8 million people), Slovakia (more than 500 thousand people), in Ukraine (Transcarpathia, more than 150 thousand people) and in other countries. The total number of Hungarians in the world appears to be approaching 15 million. Links

This is what some Hungarian scientists think

The Kazakhs, indeed, often use the name Madiyar (Magyar)

Hungarians have Kazakh roots

Kazakhs and Hungarians are brother nations, says the famous Hungarian orientalist scholar and writer Mikhail Beike, author of the book “Turgai Magyars.”

We managed to meet with the famous writer, interviewing him.

We offer fragments of this conversation to the reader.

What is your new book about?

The fact is that the scientific schools existing in the world today give completely different interpretations of where the Hungarian people originate. Some confidently classify us as a member of the Finno-Ugric language group, identifying us with such peoples as the Khanty and Mansi. Other scientists, of which I include myself, suggest that our common ancestors were the Turks of the ancient world. The search for evidence ultimately led me to Kazakhstan. But there is a little backstory here.

The very name of our state, Hungaria, as the Hungarians call it, according to one scientific hypothesis is translated as the country of the Huns, or Huns - in Russian transcription. As is known, it was the Huns, who emerged from the steppes of Central and Central Asia, who are the ancestors of the entire family of Turkic peoples inhabiting the territories from the foothills of the Altai and Caucasus to the borders of modern Europe. But this is just one theory. There are other assumptions. Since ancient times, among our people there has been a legend about two brothers - Magyar and Khodeyar, which tells how two brothers hunting for a deer parted on the road. Khodeyar, tired of the chase, returned home, while Magyar continued the pursuit, going far beyond the Carpathian Mountains. And here's what's interesting. It is here, in Kazakhstan, in the Turgai region, that the Magyars-Argyns live, in whose epic this legend is repeated, as in a mirror. Both we and they identify themselves as one people - the Magyars. Children of Magyar. This is what my book is about.

Is it possible to be more specific?

As scientists suggest, in the 9th century, the united Magyar people divided into two groups, one of which migrated west, to the lands of modern Hungary, the other remained in its historical homeland, presumably somewhere in the foothills of the Urals. But already during the Tatar-Mongol invasion, this part of the Hungarian tribes became part of two large tribal federative unions of Argyns and Kipchaks on the lands of Kazakhstan, while maintaining self-identification. Scientists call them that: Magyars-Argyns and Magyars-Kipchaks. Until now, on the gravestones of the deceased, these people, essentially Kazakhs in all respects, indicate that the deceased belonged to the Magyar clan. Now comes the fun part. If the ancestors of the Magyars who remained in their historical homeland were not related in language, culture and way of life to the peoples included in these tribal formations, do you think they would have been accepted there? And the second question. Why did the Kipchaks, who defended Otrar, flee from the retribution awaiting them from Genghis Khan in 1241-1242 not just anywhere, namely to Hungary, under the protection of King Bel IU? The presence of family ties is clearly visible here.

It is difficult to imagine Hungarians as nomads.

Nevertheless, it is true. Until the 11th century, Hungarians followed a nomadic lifestyle. Our people lived in yurts, milked mares, and raised cattle. And only later, with the adoption of Christianity, our ancestors switched to a sedentary lifestyle. The same Kipchaks living today in Hungary, with regret we have to admit, for the most part do not know folk customs and have forgotten their native language. But at the same time, among Hungarians there is a growing interest in everything connected with our distant history. The collection of Kazakh folk songs, compiled by Janos Shipos, caused a huge resonance in our country. Publications about modern Kazakhstan and its history are increasing. About Kazakhs, Kazakh-Magyars. Back in the distant 13th century, the monk Julian first made an attempt to find his historical roots, equipping two expeditions to the East. Unfortunately, both of them did not bring results. A new wave of interest in the search for one's historical ancestral home erupts in Hungarian society at the turn of the eighteenth century. Searches are being conducted in various regions of the planet, including a large part of Asia, Tibet and India. And only in 1965, the famous Hungarian anthropologist Tibor Toth discovered a Magyar village in the Turgai region of Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to conduct serious research at that time. The Turgai region in those days was closed to foreigners. And only with the collapse of the USSR and the Republic of Kazakhstan gaining independence, long-term scientific expeditions of Hungarian scientists to your country became possible.

It took you about two years to finish your photo-heavy book. Could you tell us about the trip to the Turgai steppe itself? And what particularly stuck with you on this trip?

We, I and the Scientific Secretary of the Central Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Babakumar Sinayat uly, who accompanied me on the trip, visited there in September. We talked to many people. We visited the grave of the famous Kazakh political figure Mirzhakup Dulatov from the Magyars-Argyns family, paying tribute to the man who openly opposed the tyranny committed during Stalin’s times. And this is what struck me to the depths of my soul - how many Magyars-Argyns in those years fell under the rink of repression. And how few of them are left today. Many of these people served seventeen, twenty-five years in Stalin’s camps and learned to remain silent. It was very difficult to get them to talk. And I consider the legend I heard here, in the steppes of Turgai, about two brothers, Madiyar and Khodeyar, told to me by old people, to be a genuine scientific find. Repeating its Hungarian version word for word.

Is this your fourth book on a Kazakh theme?

Yes. Previously, I published your President’s book “On the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century,” translated into Hungarian. In 1998, the book “Nomads of Central Asia” by Nursultan Nazarbayev was published. In 2001, the book “In the footsteps of the monk Julian.” And finally, my last scientific work, “The Torgai Magyars,” was published in 2003 by the TIMP KFt publishing house in Budapest.

P.S. Let us add that this book was published in four languages: Hungarian, English, Russian, Kazakh, and was released in a trial edition of 2500 copies. Presumably it will be republished.

How many ethnic groups and ethnic groups, besides the Magyars themselves, “worked” for many centuries so that the Hungarian people would eventually emerge!
Photo by Reuters

Talented poets can sometimes say a lot in one or two lines about subjects to which scientists devote an endless number of scientific reports, articles, and books. Sergei Yesenin, who, I think, had never even heard of a single discussion on the problem of relations between the Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes during the early Russian Middle Ages, made, however, his artistic contribution to its understanding in two short lines: “Rus was lost” / in Mordva and Chud..."

Danube interfluve

The impetus for writing this essay was the unexpectedly remembered verses of the famous Soviet poet Evgeny Dolmatovsky: “Europe, full of worries, / And here, in the Danube interfluve, / Here is Hungary, like an island, / With such non-European speech...” “Danube interfluve” - so the poet designated the location of this country in the basin of the Middle Danube and its main tributary, the river. Yews. Well, the “speech”, the language of the Hungarians (self-name – magyar(ok), Magyars) is indeed very “non-European”. And in the countries bordering it (Austria, Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Ukraine), and in most other European countries, the main population speaks languages ​​​​belonging to the Indo-European family. The Hungarian (Magyar) language is part of the Ugric subgroup of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family.

The peoples closest to the Hungarians in language are the Ob Ugrians, the Khanty and Mansi, who live mainly in Western Siberia. As they say, where is Hungary and where is the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug in the Asian part of Russia. However, they are relatives, and very close ones at that. More distant - by language, not geographically - Finnish-speaking peoples: Udmurts, Komi, Mordovians, Mari, Karelians, Estonians, Finns. But the linguistic proximity of peoples speaks of their once common origin, of their genetic and historical kinship.

About 60% of all words in the modern Hungarian language are Finno-Ugric in origin (the rest are borrowings from Turkic, Slavic and other languages; many, in particular, Iranian and German). Finno-Ugric are such basic verbs as live, eat, drink, stand, go, look, give and others; many words describing nature (for example, sky, cloud, snow, ice, water) related to communal, tribal and genealogical vocabulary.

To this day, the Hungarians prepare their famous fishermen's soup, holasle, in the same way as the Khanty and Mansi did and do - without removing the blood from the fish. You will not find this among any other European people; Some other Hungarian dishes are prepared in the same way as, for example, Komi or Karelians (it is known that food and its preparation belong to the most conservative areas of folk culture).

How did the West Siberian Ugric tribes become a Central European people, the Hungarian nation?

Disintegration of the Ugric community

Many realities of the early stages of the ethnic and socio-political history of the Magyar ethnos are very hypothetical to this day: sources are few and fragmentary, the first written data appear only at the end of the 1st millennium AD. Hence all the reservations - “possibly”, “presumably”, “not excluded”, etc.

Most researchers agree that the ancestral home of the Ural peoples is the northern part of Western Siberia, the territory between the Ural ridge and the lower reaches of the Ob. In the 4th–3rd millennium BC. the proto-Ural community disintegrated; Finno-Ugric tribes, having separated from the Samoyeds (the future Nenets, Enets, Nganasans, Selkups, etc.), occupied lands on both sides of the Ural Mountains. These were hunters, fishermen, gatherers who used stone tools and weapons; but skis and sleds were already in their use (rock paintings discovered in the Urals tell us about this).

In the modern Hungarian language, words related to the field of hunting and fishing are from the most ancient all-Ural layer of vocabulary. Presumably at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Finno-Ugric tribes also began to disperse and become isolated. Around the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Until that time, the more or less unified Ugric community had disintegrated: the ancestors of the Magyars separated from the Ob Ugrians.

Gradually they migrate to the southern zone of Western Siberia, roaming across the vast territory between the river. Ural and Aral Sea. Here the proto-Magyars came into contact with peoples of Iranian origin (Sarmatians, Scythians), under whose influence they began to master such forms of management as cattle breeding and agriculture (Hungarian words meaning horse, cow, milk, felt and a number of others from this area are Iranian-language in origin).

The horse begins to play a particularly important role in the life of the proto-Magyars (including their religious beliefs). This is evidenced by excavations of Ugric burials, in particular such a significant fact: in the grave of a rich Ugric archaeologist almost certainly find the remains of a horse, which was supposed to serve its master in another life. The same Iranian peoples, apparently, introduced the future Hungarians to metals - copper and bronze, and later to iron.

It is possible that for some time they were in the sphere of influence of Sasanian Iran. A possible trace of this stage in the historical memory of the Hungarians are legends that say that some “relatives of the Magyars live in Persia.” These relatives were sought in the 1860s by Arminius Vambery, an outstanding Hungarian traveler and orientalist of Jewish origin, in his travels through Iran and Central Asia.

In the steppe zone, on the plains east of the Southern Urals, the Magyars became nomadic pastoralists (nomads), with primitive agriculture and hunting as an aid to the economy. In the first centuries AD. they still live here, but around the middle of the 1st millennium AD. migrate to the west, to the lands of present-day Bashkiria or to the basin of the lower reaches of the Kama, thus moving to Europe (ancient Magyar burial grounds were discovered on the left bank of the Kama, in its lower reaches).

This territory in the Hungarian historical tradition is called “Magna Hungaria” - “Great Hungary”. The memory of the distant ancestral home was preserved among the Hungarian people for centuries. In the 30s of the 13th century, the Hungarian Dominican monk Julian went in search of her and found people in the Urals who understood his Magyar language, told them about the Hungarian kingdom on the Danube, and preached Christianity among them.

However, soon “Eastern Hungary” was gone: the lands of the Ural Magyars were devastated by the crushing Tatar-Mongol invasion led by Batu. Some Magyars (young male warriors) were included in the army of the conquerors; the rest of the Magyar population of the Urals (more precisely, that part of it that survived) gradually mixed with neighboring peoples, mainly with the Bashkirs, with whom the Magyars were closely associated during the previous centuries. This is evidenced by identical geographical names in Bashkiria and modern Hungary; what is even more significant is that three of the seven Magyar tribes that came to the Danube at the end of the 9th century had the same names as three of the twelve Bashkir clans known to science. By the way, in the notes of some Arab travelers of the 12th century, the Bashkirs are called “Asian Magyars.”

Hungarians instead of Magyars

Meanwhile, in the 7th–8th centuries, the main part of the Magyar tribes moved westward, to the Black Sea steppes. Here they live interspersed with the Turkic-speaking Bulgars, Khazars, Onogurs, who were more “advanced” in socio-cultural terms. Words denoting such concepts as reason, number, law, sin, dignity, forgive, write passed from the Turks into the Magyar language; like the plow, sickle, wheat, ox, pig, chicken (and many others).

The Magyars gradually become more complex in their social structure, legal norms, and religious beliefs. Partial mixing with the Onogurs had another significant consequence: in addition to the ethnonym Magyars (as one of their tribes, as well as the entire tribe was called from ancient times), they acquired a new ethnonym - Hungarians: in European languages ​​it comes precisely from the ethnonym Onogurs: Lat. ungaris, English hungarian(s), French hongroi(s), German. ungar(n), etc. The Russian word “Hungarian” is a borrowing from the Polish language (wegier).

In early medieval European texts, the Magyars were called turci or ungri (Turks or Onogurs). That’s exactly what they are called – ungri – in the Byzantine chronicles of 839, which talks about the participation of the Magyars in the Bulgarian-Byzantine conflict of 836–838. At this time they lived on the lands between the river. Don and the lower reaches of the Danube (this territory was called Etelköz in Hungarian).

In the middle of the 6th century, the Magyars, together with the Onogurs, who then lived in the lower reaches of the Don, were included in the Turkic Kaganate. A century later they became subjects of the Khazar Khaganate, from whose power the Magyars got rid of it around 830.

And migration to the west continued. In the Dnieper region, Magyars-Hungarians live next to Slavic tribes. Byzantium actively draws them into its orbit of influence and participates in its wars. In 894, in alliance with Byzantium, the Magyars carried out a devastating raid on the Bulgarian kingdom on the Lower Danube. But a year later, the Bulgarians, in alliance with the Pechenegs, brutally took revenge, ravaging the lands of the Magyars and taking almost all the young women captive (the men were on another campaign at that time).

When the Magyar squads returned and saw what was left of their country, they decided to leave these places. At the end of the 9th century (895–896), the Magyars crossed the Carpathians and settled in the lands along the middle reaches of the Danube. The leaders of the seven Magyar tribes bound themselves and their tribes with an oath of an eternal alliance.

The 10th century, when the Hungarians conquered and developed new territory, is solemnly called in Hungarian historiography the time of “Finding a Motherland” (Honfoglalas); This is also the name of this entire laborious, multicomponent process. At the same time, in the 10th century, the Hungarians developed a writing system based on the Latin alphabet.

It was here, on the Middle Danube, that there was the center of the huge, but very fragile power of the Huns, and later the Avar Kaganate.

Following Attila

According to the legends of the Magyars, the arrival of their ancestors to the lands along the Middle Danube was by no means accidental. The ancient Magyar chronicles claim that the Magyars are close relatives of the Huns, since the ancestors of these peoples were the twin brothers Gunor and Magor (Magyar). In another version of the legend, these brothers managed to capture two daughters of the Alan king (the Alans are one of the Iranian-speaking Sarmatian peoples): it was from them that the Huns descended, “they are Hungarians” (that is, the identity of these peoples is already spoken about here).

There is even a legend that Attila (?–453), the famous leader of the Hunnish tribal union, was the ancestor of the Magyars. In his footsteps, they say, the Magyars came at the end of the 9th century (let me remind you that the nomadic people of the Huns formed in the first centuries of our era in the Urals from local Ugrians and Sarmatians and Turkic-speaking Xiongnu. Their mass migration to the west from the 70s of the 4th century became impetus for the Great Migration).

Hungarian historians, like all others, reject the assumption of Magyar-Hun kinship. Some Hungarian scholars believe that individual groups of Magyars migrated to the Carpatho-Danube region as early as the 7th century, so that two centuries later the Magyar tribes walked west along the path of their pioneer kinsmen.

In the 10th century, the Magyars in the Middle Danube region became a settled people. Well organized, with vast military experience, they relatively easily and quickly subjugated the local population - the Slavs and Turks, mixed with them, and adopted a lot of their economic, social, and everyday culture. Thus, a lot of words in the Hungarian language that relate to agricultural labor, housing, food, and everyday life are of Slavic origin. For example, ebed (lunch), vachora (dinner, supper), udvar (yard), veder (bucket), shovel (shovel), kaza (braid), szena (hay), the words “corn” sound almost identical to the Slavic ones, “cabbage”, “turnip”, “porridge”, “fat”, “hat”, “fur coat” and many others.

However, the Hungarians not only preserved their language (more precisely, the basic vocabulary and grammar), but also imposed it on the subject population. It is believed that there were 400–500 thousand Hungarians who came to the Danube; in the 10th–11th centuries they assimilated about 200 thousand people. This is how the Hungarian ethnos was formed, which in 1000 created its own state - the early feudal kingdom of Hungary. In addition to the territory of modern Hungary, it included the lands of modern Slovakia, Croatia, Transylvania and a number of other Danube regions.

Hungarian kings

Árpad, chief of the Medier tribe, the strongest of the seven tribes, became the first king and founder of the Árpadovich dynasty (1000–1301); the name of his tribe passed on to the whole people. Meanwhile, more and more new ethnic groups came to the lands of the kingdom. In the 11th century, the Hungarian rulers allowed the Pecheneg Turks to settle here, who were expelled from the Northern Black Sea region by the Polovtsians (also Turks by language); and in the 13th century, the Cumans fled to the Danube valleys from the Mongol invasion (some of them later moved to Bulgaria and other countries). To this day, the Hungarian people preserve the ethnographic group of Palocians - the descendants of those same Polovtsians.

The Hungarian kings had their own reason for such “hospitality” - they needed brave, loyal, obliging warriors (which men - Pechenegs and Polovtsy - willingly became) - both to repel external threats and to pacify large feudal lords within the state. Nomads were attracted here by the Danube steppe expanses and the famous Pashta.

In the 11th century (under King Stephen the Saint), the Hungarians adopted Christianity (Catholicism). In the 16th century, during the Reformation, some Hungarians became Protestants, mostly Calvinists, and Lutherans.

In the Middle Ages, there were periods when the Kingdom of Hungary became one of the strongest, largest, and most influential countries in Europe. Under King Matthias Corvinus (second half of the 15th century, the heyday of medieval Hungary), about 4 million people lived in the country, of which at least 3 million were Hungarians. The population grew due to both immigrants from European countries (Germans, French, Walloons, Italians, Vlachs) and immigrants from the east (Gypsies, Iranian-speaking Alans-Yas, various Turkic-speaking groups). A significant part of them were assimilated by the Hungarians.

Of course, living together – as part of one state, one country – with peoples of different cultures and languages ​​affected the culture and language of the main people. The very complex ethnic history of Hungary and the Hungarians, the peculiarities of the natural conditions of different regions of the country determined the formation of a number of subethnic and ethnographic groups within the Hungarian people.

Millennia of migration, mixing with many peoples in different regions of Eurasia could not but affect the anthropological type of the Magyars. Today's Hungarians belong to the Central European race of the large Caucasian race, only a small part of them has Mongoloid admixture. But their ancestors, the Ugrians, who once left Western Siberia, had many (and pronounced) Mongoloid features. On their long journey to the west, the Magyars lost them, mixing with Caucasian tribes. By the time they arrived on the Danube, they were already completely Caucasoid: this is demonstrated by the Hungarian burial grounds of the 10th century on the Middle Danube.

However, what an odyssey in time and space the Magyars made before they found, forever, their current homeland... How many ethnic groups and ethnic groups, besides the Magyars themselves, with their cultures and languages, external characteristics and mentalities (etc., etc.) .d.) “worked” for many centuries so that in the end the Hungarian people appeared, “turned out” - hardworking, beautiful, talented, who created a beautiful country, the capital of which, Budapest, standing on both banks of the blue Danube, is rightfully considered one of most beautiful cities in the world. The people who gave humanity the great composers and musicians Franz Liszt and Bela Bartok, the great poets Sandor Petőfi and Janos Arany, and many other wonderful people.

In conclusion - a summary that he made, summing up very interesting notes about the Hungarians and their language (in one of his books about the peoples of the world), a great expert on this people and this language (as well as many other peoples and languages), a talented ethnographer, writer and scientific journalist Lev Mints (alas, who left us on the last day of November 2011): “...Hungarians are a people descended from different tribes and peoples. One of them - very important, of course - is the nomadic Magyars, who came from the east and brought their language (...), like a millstone, grinding the roots and words of other languages ​​(...) Grinded by the harsh Finno-Ugric grammar, they became completely Hungarian. But no less than the ancestors of today's Hungarians did not come from any Greater Hungary: they lived here long before the horse of the forefather Arpad drank water from the Danube.

But all of them - plus many other components - are together Hungarians because they consider themselves as such and others consider them Hungarians. Everything is complicated in this world. The ethnogenesis of the Hungarians is no exception here.”

Lev Mironovich did not like quotes, especially long ones. But I wanted, in memory of this very extraordinary man and good comrade, to end this text with his words.

From the second third of the 9th century. The Slavic population of the Don and the entire forest-steppe zone was attacked by the Magyars, whom the Slavs called Ugrians, the Arabs and Byzantines called Turks, and in Central and Western Europe they became known as Hungarians.

They were a people speaking a language belonging to the Finno-Ugric language family. The ancestral home of the Magyars - Great Hungary - was in Bashkiria, where back in 1235 the Dominican monk Julian discovered people whose language was close to Hungarian.

Having broken through between the Volga and Don rivers, the Magyars then settled in areas that in their legends are called Levedia (Swans) and Atelkuzy. Researchers usually believe that we are talking about the Lower Don and the Dniester-Dnieper interfluve, respectively.

The entire Magyar horde numbered no more than 100,000 people and, according to contemporaries, could field from 10,000 to 20,000 horsemen in the field. Nevertheless, it was very difficult to resist them. Even in Western Europe, which had recently defeated the Avars, the appearance of the Magyars caused panic. These nomads - short, with three braids on their shaved heads, dressed in animal skins, firmly sitting on their short but hardy horses - terrified with their very appearance. The best European armies, including the Byzantine, turned out to be powerless against the Magyars’ unusual military tactics. Emperor Leo the Wise (881 - 911) described it in detail in his military treatise. When setting out on a campaign, the Magyars always sent horse patrols ahead; during stops and overnight stays, their camp was also constantly surrounded by guards. They began the battle by showering the enemy with a cloud of arrows, and then with a swift raid they tried to break through the enemy formation. If they failed, they turned to feigned flight, and if the enemy succumbed to the trick and began pursuit, then the Magyars turned around at once and attacked the enemy’s battle formations with the whole horde; An important role was played by the reserve, which the Magyars never forgot to deploy. In pursuit of the defeated enemy, the Magyars were tireless, and there was no mercy for anyone.

The dominance of the Magyars in the Black Sea steppes lasted for about half a century. In 890, a war broke out between Byzantium and the Danube Bulgarians. Emperor Leo the Wise attracted the Hungarians to his side, who crossed to the right bank of the Danube and, devastating everything in their path, reached the walls of the Bulgarian capital Preslava. Tsar Simeon asked for peace, but secretly decided to take revenge. He persuaded the Pechenegs to attack the Hungarians. And so, when the Hungarian cavalry went on another raid (apparently against the Moravian Slavs), the Pechenegs attacked their nomads and massacred the few men and defenseless families remaining at home. The Pecheneg raid confronted the Hungarians with a demographic catastrophe that threatened their very existence as a people. Their first concern was to fill the lack of women. They moved beyond the Carpathians and in the fall of 895 settled in the valley of the upper Tisza, from where they began to carry out annual raids on the Pannonian Slavs in order to capture women and girls. Slavic blood helped the Hungarians survive and continue their family line.

Prince Arpad's crossing of the Carpathians. The cyclorama was written for the 1000th anniversary of the conquest of Hungary by the Magyars.

Magyar rule made us remember the times of the Avar yoke. Ibn Ruste compared the position of the Slavic tribes subordinate to the Magyars with the position of prisoners of war, and Gardizi called them slaves obliged to feed their masters. In this regard, G.V. Vernadsky makes an interesting comparison between the Hungarian word dolog - “work”, “labor” and the Russian word “debt” (meaning “duty”). According to the historian, the Magyars used the Slavs for “work”, which was their “duty” to perform - hence the different meaning of this word in Hungarian and Russian. Probably, the Hungarians borrowed the Slavic words for “slave” - rab and “yoke” - jarom ( Vernadsky G.V. Ancient Rus'. pp. 255 - 256).

Probably during the 9th century. The Slavic tribes of the Dnieper and Don regions also more than once experienced the heavy onslaught of the Hungarian cavalry. Indeed, “The Tale of Bygone Years” notes under 898: “the Ugrians marched past Kyiv along the mountain, which is now called Ugorskoe, and when they came to the Dnieper they stash with vezhas [tents]…”. However, upon closer examination, this fragmentary message is hardly credible. Firstly, the date of the invasion is incorrect: the Hungarians left the Lower Dnieper region for Pannonia no later than 894. Secondly, the lack of continuation of the story about the “standing” of the Ugrians near Kiev indicates that the chronicler-local historian in this case just wanted to explain the origin name Ugric, which actually goes back to the Slavic word eel- “high, steep bank of the river” ( Vasmer M. Etymological dictionary. T. IV. P. 146). Thirdly, it is not clear where the Ugrians could be heading, walking “past Kyiv by the mountain” (that is, up the Dnieper, along its right bank), not to mention the fact that, fleeing from the Pechenegs, they moved from their Atelkuza by no means to north, and straight to the west - into the Pannonian steppes.

The last circumstance again makes us suspect that the chronicler here, too, timed a legend relating to one of the Dnieper to the historical reality of Kyiv on the Dnieper. In a more complete form, it can be read in the “Acts of the Hungarians” (an unnamed chronicle written at the court of King Béla III in 1196 - 1203), where it is said that the Hungarians, retreating from Atelkuza, “reached the region of the Rus and, without meeting any or resistance, marched all the way to the city of Kyiv. And when we passed through the city of Kyiv, crossing (on ferries. - S. Ts.) the Dnieper River, they wanted to subjugate the kingdom of the Rus. Having learned about this, the leaders of the Rus were greatly frightened, for they heard that the leader Almos, the son of Yudjek, was descended from the family of King Attila, to whom their ancestors paid an annual tribute. However, the Kiev prince gathered all his nobles, and after consulting, they decided to start a battle with the leader Almosh, wanting to die in battle rather than lose their kingdom and, against their will, submit to the leader Almosh. The battle was lost by the Russians. And “the leader Almosh and his warriors, having won, subjugated the lands of the Rus and, taking their estates, in the second week went to attack the city of Kyiv.” Local rulers considered it best to submit to Almos, who demanded that they give “him their sons as hostages”, pay “ten thousand marks as an annual tax” and, in addition, provide “food, clothing and other necessary things” - horses “ with saddles and bits" and camels "for transporting goods." The Russes submitted, but on the condition that the Hungarians leave Kyiv and go “to the west, to the land of Pannonia,” which was fulfilled.

In Hungary, this legend was obviously intended to justify Hungarian dominance over the “kingdom of the Rus,” that is, over the subordinate region of the Carpathian Rusyns, thanks to which the heir to the Hungarian throne bore the title “Duke of the Rus.”

In view of all this, we can say that the period of Magyar domination in the Northern Black Sea region passed almost without a trace for early Russian history.
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