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Magyar tribes

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The appearance of Hungarian tribe names in settlement names. It suggests where arriving Hungarians lived amongst other peoples and helped in reconstructing where arriving tribes settled.

The Magyar or Hungarian tribes (/ˈmæɡjɑːr/ MAG-yar, Hungarian: magyar törzsek) 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.[1][2]

Etymology

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See also: Name of Hungary

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, lit. 'seven Magyars'), as in the Latin phrase, "VII principales persone qui Hetumoger dicuntur" ("seven princely persons who are called Seven Magyars").[3] The word "Magyar" possibly comes from the name of the most prominent Hungarian tribe, called Megyer, which became used to refer to the Hungarian people as a whole.[4][5][6] 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

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Main article: Hungarian prehistory
The blood oath in Etelköz.

According to Hungarian historian and linguist András Róna-Tas, the locality in which the Hungarians, the Manicha-Er group, emerged was between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains.[7] Others propose a region of origin beyond the Ural Mountains, in southwestern Siberia.[8][9][10][11][12] Between the 8th and 5th centuries BCE, the Magyars embarked upon their independent existence, and the early period of the proto-Hungarian language began.[7]

According to one 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 present-day northern Kazakhstan, near remains of the Bronze Age Mezhovskaya archaeological culture. The ancestors of the Hungarian conquerors lived in the steppe zone during the Bronze Age together with the Mansis. During the Iron Age, the Mansis migrated northward, while the ancestors of the Hungarian conquerors remained in the steppe-forest zone and admixed with the Sarmatians. Later, the ancestors of the Hungarian conquerors admixed with the Huns, 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.[13]

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, Megyer [hu], Nyék, and Tarján) formed a confederation in Etelköz, called "Hétmagyar" (lit. 'Seven Magyars').[14][15][16] 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.[17] Presumably, the Magyar tribes consisted of 108 clans.[18]

Before 881 CE, three Turkic 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 On-ogur (Ten Arrows).[14]

Tribes

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Hungarian chroniclers of the 13th century spoke of Magna Hungaria (modern Bashkortostan) and reported that speakers of Hungarian were located there. It is theorized that the Magyars and Bashkirs had close contact before the former's migration west, as there are many parallels between old Hungarian and Bashkir tribal names.[19] 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.[20] Turkologists Gyula Neméth and Peter B. Golden have compared the following names to this end:

Hungarian Bashkir Constantine Porphyrogenitus
Nyék Negmen (tribal name) Νέκη
Gyarmat Yurmatı (tribal name) Κουρτουγερμάτου
Jenő Yeney (tribal name) Γενάχ
Keszi Kese (branch name) Καση
Gyula (title) Yulaman (clan name) Γυλᾶς
Tarján Tarxany (tribal name) Ταριάνου
Megyer/ Mišer-Yurmatı (of the Yurmatı) Μεγέρη
Magyar Možeriane, Možarka, etc., (ethnonym, toponym etc.)

Social organization

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The Hungarian social structure was of Turkic origin.[21]

Genetics

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Magyars 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 Europeans to a limited degree, while no specific Finno-Ugric markers were found.[22] However, a 2008 study done on 10th-century Magyar skeletons did find a few Uralic samples.[23]

See also

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Sources

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  • 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, ISBN 0880334797

References

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  1. ^ George H. Hodos, The East-Central European region: an historical outline, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, p. 19
  2. ^ 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
  3. ^ Gyula Decsy, A. J. Bodrogligeti, Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher, Volume 63, Otto Harrassowitz, 1991, p. 99
  4. ^ György Balázs, Károly Szelényi, The Magyars: the birth of a European nation, Corvina, 1989, p. 8
  5. ^ Alan W. Ertl, Toward an Understanding of Europe: A Political Economic Précis of Continental Integration, Universal-Publishers, 2008, p. 358
  6. ^ Z. J. Kosztolnyik, Hungary under the early Árpáds: 890s to 1063, Eastern European Monographs, 2002, p. 3
  7. ^ a b András Róna-Tas, Hungarians and Europe in the early Middle Ages: an introduction to early Hungarian history, Central European University Press, 1999, p. 319
  8. ^ Zemplényi, Lili (2023-07-08). "The Khanty and the Mansi, the Closest Linguistic Relatives of the Hungarians | Hungarian Conservative". www.hungarianconservative.com. Retrieved 2024-02-10.
  9. ^ "A magyarság nyugat-szibériai gyökerei nyomában". www.btk.elte.hu (in Hungarian). Retrieved 2024-02-10.
  10. ^ Tambets, Kristiina; Yunusbayev, Bayazit; Hudjashov, Georgi; Ilumäe, Anne-Mai; Rootsi, Siiri; Honkola, Terhi; Vesakoski, Outi; Atkinson, Quentin; Skoglund, Pontus; Kushniarevich, Alena; Litvinov, Sergey; Reidla, Maere; Metspalu, Ene; Saag, Lehti; Rantanen, Timo (2018-09-21). "Genes reveal traces of common recent demographic history for most of the Uralic-speaking populations". Genome Biology. 19 (1): 139. doi:10.1186/s13059-018-1522-1. ISSN 1474-760X. PMC 6151024. PMID 30241495.
  11. ^ "Hungarian | History, Culture & Language | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2024-01-31. Retrieved 2024-02-10.
  12. ^ Szeifert, Bea; Gerber, Dániel; Csáky, Veronika; Langó, Péter; Stashenkov, Dmitrii A; Khokhlov, Aleksandr A; Sitdikov, Ayrat G; Gazimzyanov, Ilgizar R; Volkova, Elizaveta V; Matveeva, Natalia P; Zelenkov, Alexander S; Poshekhonova, Olga E; Sleptsova, Anastasiia V; Karacharov, Konstantin G; Ilyushina, Viktoria V (2022-09-29). "Tracing genetic connections of ancient Hungarians to the 6th–14th century populations of the Volga-Ural region". Human Molecular Genetics. 31 (19): 3266–3280. doi:10.1093/hmg/ddac106. ISSN 0964-6906. PMC 9523560. PMID 35531973.
  13. ^ Maróti, Zoltán; Neparáczki, Endre; Schütz, Oszkár; Maár, Kitti; Varga, Gergely I.B.; Kovács, Bence; Kalmár, Tibor; Nyerki, Emil; Nagy, István; Latinovics, Dóra; Tihanyi, Balázs; Marcsik, Antónia; Pálfi, György; Bernert, Zsolt; Gallina, Zsolt; Horváth, Ciprián; Varga, Sándor; Költő, László; Raskó, István; Nagy, Péter L.; Balogh, Csilla; Zink, Albert; Maixner, Frank; Götherström, Anders; George, Robert; Szalontai, Csaba; Szenthe, Gergely; Gáll, Erwin; Kiss, Attila P.; Gulyás, Bence; Kovacsóczy, Bernadett Ny.; Gál, Sándor Szilárd; Tomka, Péter; Török, Tibor (25 May 2022). "The genetic origin of Huns, Avars, and conquering Hungarians". Current Biology. 32 (13): 2858–2870.e7. Bibcode:2022CBio...32E2858M. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.093. PMID 35617951. S2CID 246191357.
  14. ^ a b Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009, pp. 163-164.
  15. ^ Paul Lendvai, The Hungarians: a thousand years of victory in defeat, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2003, p. 15-29, p. 533
  16. ^ Carl Waldman, Catherine Mason, Encyclopedia of European peoples, Volume 1, Infobase Publishing, 2006, p. 508
  17. ^ http://www.kislexikon.hu/hetmagyar.html (Hungarian)
  18. ^ John P. C. Matthews, Explosion: the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Hippocrene Books, 2007, p. 69
  19. ^ Peter Benjamin Golden. The Migrations of the Oghuz. pp. 65–67.
  20. ^ Denis Sinor (1990). The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Vol. 1. p. 245.
  21. ^ Makkai 2001, pp. 415-416.
  22. ^ 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 Archived 2018-07-19 at the Wayback Machine) Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. doi:10.1007/s00438-016-1267-z
  23. ^ Csányi, B.; Bogácsi-Szabó, E.; Tömöry, Gy.; Czibula, Á.; Priskin, K.; Csõsz, A.; Mende, B.; Langó, P.; Csete, K.; Zsolnai, A.; Conant, E. K.; Downes, C. S.; Raskó, I. (1 July 2008). "Y-Chromosome Analysis of Ancient Hungarian and Two Modern Hungarian-Speaking Populations from the Carpathian Basin". Annals of Human Genetics. 72 (4): 519–534. doi:10.1111/j.1469-1809.2008.00440.x. ISSN 1469-1809. PMID 18373723.
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