The Magyar or Hungarian tribes ( , ) or Hungarian clans were the fundamental political units within whose framework the Hungarians (Magyars) lived, before the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin and the subsequent establishment of the Principality of Hungary.[George H. Hodos, The East-Central European region: an historical outline, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, p. 19][S. Wise Bauer, The history of the medieval world: from the conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010, p. 586]
Etymology
The origin of the term "Hungary", the
ethnonym of the Hungarian tribal alliance, is uncertain. According to one view, following the description in the 13th-century chronicle,
Gesta Hungarorum, the federation was called "Hetumoger" (modern Hungarian:
hét magyar, ), as in the
Latin phrase, "
VII principales persone qui Hetumoger dicuntur" ("seven princely persons who are called Seven Magyars").
[Gyula Decsy, A. J. Bodrogligeti, Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher, Volume 63, Otto Harrassowitz, 1991, p. 99] The word "Magyar" possibly comes from the name of the most prominent Hungarian tribe, called
Megyer, which became used to refer to the
Hungarians as a whole.
[György Balázs, Károly Szelényi, The Magyars: the birth of a European nation, Corvina, 1989, p. 8][Alan W. Ertl, Toward an Understanding of Europe: A Political Economic Précis of Continental Integration, Universal-Publishers, 2008, p. 358][Z. J. Kosztolnyik, Hungary under the early Árpáds: 890s to 1063, Eastern European Monographs, 2002, p. 3] Written sources called Magyars "Hungarians" before the conquest of the Carpathian Basin when they still lived on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. For example, Georgius Monachus used "Ungri" to refer to them in 837, the
Annales Bertiniani used "Ungri" in 862, and the
Annales ex Annalibus Iuvavensibus used "Ungari" in 881. The English term "Hungarian" is a derivative of these Latin forms.
History
According to Hungarian historian and linguist András Róna-Tas, the locality in which the Hungarians, the
Manicha-Er group, emerged was between the
Volga and the
Ural Mountains.
[András Róna-Tas, Hungarians and Europe in the early Middle Ages: an introduction to early Hungarian history, Central European University Press, 1999, p. 319] It is proposed that most of the early Hungarian tribes originated from the Volga-Kama and
Southern Ural,
or the Southern Urals and
Western Siberia, where they were composed of a mixed population.
Fóthi et al. 2022 suggests that they originated from three distinct regions on the
Eurasian Steppe: the
Lake Baikal-
Altai Mountains region, spanning present-day northwestern
Mongolia and southern
Siberia, the
Southern Ural-
Western Siberia and the
Black Sea-
North Caucasus.
Meanwhile, Neparáczki et al. 2018 proposes that over a third of the Hungarian conquerors’ maternal lineages derive from
Inner Asia, concentrated in present-day eastern Mongolia and southeastern Siberia, while the remainder is derived from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe.
According to genetic study, the proto-Ugric groups were part of the Scytho-Siberian societies in the late Bronze Age to early Iron Age steppe-forest zone in the northern Kazakhstan region, near of the Mezhovskaya culture territory. The ancestors of the Hungarian conquerors lived in the Eurasian Steppe during the Bronze Age together with the Mansi people. During the Iron Age, the Mansis migrated northward, while the ancestor of Hungarian conquerors remained at the steppe-forest zone and admixed with the Sarmatians. Later the ancestors of the Hungarian conquerors admixed with the Huns, this admixture happened before the arrival of the Huns to the Volga region in 370. The Huns integrated local tribes east of the Urals, among them Sarmatians and the ancestors of the Hungarian conquerors.
Around 830 CE, when Álmos, the future Grand Prince of the Hungarians, was about 10 years old, the seven related tribes ( Jenő, Kér, Keszi, Kürt-Gyarmat, , Nyék, and Tarján) formed a confederation in Etelköz, called " Hétmagyar" ().[Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009, pp. 163-164.][Paul Lendvai, The Hungarians: a thousand years of victory in defeat, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2003, p. 15-29, p. 533][Carl Waldman, Catherine Mason, Encyclopedia of European peoples, Volume 1, Infobase Publishing, 2006, p. 508] Their leaders, the Seven chieftains of the Magyars, besides Álmos, included Előd, Ond, Kond, Tas, Huba and Töhötöm, who all took a blood oath swearing eternal loyalty to Álmos.[http://www.kislexikon.hu/hetmagyar.html (Hungarian)] Presumably, the Magyar tribes consisted of 108 .[John P. C. Matthews, Explosion: the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Hippocrene Books, 2007, p. 69]
Before 881 CE, three Turkic peoples tribes rebelled against the rule of the Khagan of the Khazars, but they were suppressed. After their defeat they left the Khazar Empire and voluntarily joined the Hétmagyar confederation. The three tribes were organised into one tribe, called Kabar, and later they played the roles of vanguard and rear guard during the joint military actions of the confederation. The joining of the three tribes to the previous seven created the Onogurs ( Ten Arrows).
Tribes
Hungarian chroniclers of the 13th century spoke of
Magna Hungaria (modern
Bashkortostan) and reported that speakers of Hungarian were located there. According to 20th century turanists and turkologists the
Hungarians and
Bashkirs had close contact before the former's migration west, as there are many parallels between old Hungarian and Bashkir tribal names.
Further, most of these names do not have such similarities with Central or Inner Asian languages, implying they may be a unique product of a local Bashkir-Magyar symbiosis.
Gyula Neméth and Peter B. Golden have compared the following names to this end:
|
|
| Νέκη |
| Κουρτουγερμάτου |
| Γενάχ |
| Καση |
| Γυλᾶς |
| Ταριάνου |
| Μεγέρη |
| |
Social organization
The Hungarian
social structure was of
Turkic peoples origin.
[Makkai 2001, pp. 415-416.]
Genetics
Hungarians comprised seven clans, and later three more clans made of
Kabar people. Recent genetic research has shown that the first-generation Magyar core
gene pool originated in Central Asia/South Siberia and, as Magyars migrated westward, admixed with various European peoples and peoples of the Caucasus. Burial samples of the Karos-Eperjesszög Magyars place them genetically closest to
Turkic peoples, modern south Caucasian peoples, and modern
Western Europe to a limited degree, while no specific Finno-Ugric markers were found.
[Juhász, Pamjav, Fehér, Csányi, Zink, Maixner, Pálfi, Molnár, Pap, Kustár, Révész, Raskó, Török (July 15, 2016). "Genetic structure of the early Hungarian conquerors inferred
from mtDNA haplotypes and Y‑chromosome haplogroups
in a small cemetery]." ( PDF ) Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. doi:10.1007/s00438-016-1267-z] However, a 2008 study done on 10th-century Magyar skeletons did find a few
Uralic people samples.
See also
-
Álmos
-
Grand Prince of the Hungarians
-
Hungarians
-
Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin
-
Ügyek
-
Zoltán of Hungary
Sources
-
Korai Magyar Történeti Lexikon (9-14. század), főszerkesztő: Kristó, Gyula, szerkesztők: Engel, Pál és Makk, Ferenc (Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1994)
-
Kristó, Gyula: A Kárpát-medence és a magyarság régmúltja (1301-ig) (Szegedi Középkortörténeti Könyvtár, Szeged, 1993)
-
Magyarország Történeti Kronológiája I. – A kezdetektől 1526-ig, főszerkesztő: Benda Kálmán (Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1981)
-
Makkai, László (2001). Transylvania in the medieval Hungarian kingdom (896-1526), In: Béla Köpeczi, HISTORY OF TRANSYLVANIA Volume I. From the Beginnings to 1606, Columbia University Press, New York, 2001,
