György Györffy-Bálint Zólyomi
The Carpathian Basin and Atelkuzu a Thousand Years Ago
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A dry period started in the 8th century and lasted over three hundred years. In Inner Asia, chiefly in the Tarim basin and in ancient Khorezm in the Lake Aral area, the running waters, irrigation channels and lakes ebbed and the wells dried up, towns and cities were depopulated and much human habitation was covered by sand. This was accompanied by a shift in vegetation zones, the growth of the desert, and a high mortality amongst domestic animals. It was a catastrophe for a population that fed on both. Lacking food and water, the settled population suffered famine. Those who could afford it, moved on. When their empire collapsed around 750, the Uighurs moved to more grassy areas, onto the lands of other nomads. This may well have been one of the causes that triggered off the late period of migrations, as many students of Central Asia argue. One aspect may well have been the tribal mobility apparent on the West Siberian steppes in mid 8th century, which possibly prompted the Magyars to move west of the river Don, but it certainly induced a not insignificant number of the Muslim Khwarezmiens, whom the Hungarians called kaliz, to leave their homes in depo-pulated towns near Lake Aral and move to Etil, the capital of the Khazars, at the mouth of the Volga.
Fluctuations in the level of the Caspian Sea give us some idea of climatic conditions in the lower Volga steppes. On two occasions in the Age of Migrations, the level sank in a manner that indicated a drought. Around 300 A.D. it sank steeply, and, following a temporary improvement around 450, it only rose to its old high level between 600 and 650. The second dry period started between 750 and 800 and although the level rose considerably in the 10th century, the old high level was only approached some time in the 13th century. The rise in the level of the Caspian, however, depends primarily on precipitation in the huge catchment area of the Volga, and not on the steppe zone.
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This post mid-8th-century catastrophic drought contributed to the fall of the Avars much as it had to that of the Maya. As the Slav proverb has it: "they disappeared like the Avars, without heirs or remains." The "true Avars" were worst affected, the semi-nomad warrior caste, and the Gepides, Slavs and Old Bulgars who shared the plains within the Carpathians with them. The perishing of their stock condemned them all to famine. Thus the Franks met with little resistance on their three campaigns, (except for the first, in 791) in the area of Austria and Slovenia. The Avar leaders fought each other between 792 and 795, but the kaghan and the yugrush, his fellow ruler, were killed by their own men, who blamed them for the natural catastrophe, as explained by a 10th century note on kaghanicide: "If the Khazar lands are stricken by drought or some other catastrophe" the kaghan is killed, but so is a viceroy who loses a battle.
The seat of the kaghan and his warlords east of the Danube, known as the Rhing, already showed no sign of human habitation when the Frankish host reached it in 796, but 90 per cent of Charlemagne's horses that advanced as far as Gyõr in 791 also perished.
Stock perished, famine ensued, and the hungry fled to the wooded hills well before the Frankish wars, starting in mid-8th century, when the steppe zone of Central Asia dried out, at a time when the Avar administration and ruling caste were still in place. A letter from the learned monk of Auxerre, Remigius, to Bishop Dado of Verdun (880-923) on the origins of the hitherto unknown Hungri refers to this. Folk etymology derived their name from "hunger," so he added traditional lore concerning the famine motivated emigration of the inhabitants of what had been the lands of the Avars: "I have heard from old men that there was a time when the whole of Pannonia, Istria, Illyria and peoples dwelling nearby suffered a dreadful famine." This precisely covers the former Avar Empire, thus the tradition may well refer to the condition of the Avars in the 8th century.) "When commoners were already dying in droves, the lords of the regions decreed that every house be counted, and that only as many men be retained who could be saved from starving to death, all the others, without number, of all ages and both sexes were expelled into empty regions and the unknown vastness. All those who wished to return were put to death by their leaders. The exiles, travelling through vast deserts (per vasta solitudines) arrived at the Maeotis swamps, where the stronger and more skilful of the much-travailed multitude, thriving in a region rich in fish and game, multiplied.
Those who survived the famine were called Hungri and it was under that name that they emerged from the Maeotis."
Perhaps Hunger - Hungri is mere folk-etymology and not a real explanation of one of the names of the Magyars who mig-rated from Maeotis to Pannonia, but the description of the famine that ravaged the Avar lands in the Danube valley is based on authentic tradition.
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The Magyars lived east of the Dnieper and only crossed that river around 837, occupying the steppe as far as the Danube by the year 860. Atelkuzu, as this area was known (largely consisting of the Ukraine, Moldavia and Eastern Wallachia) favoured survival at the time of the warming. As the drought spread, it was possible to move the flocks up-river to cooler, wooded regions, where fishing provided an extra source of food for semi-nomads. Thus the Magyar tribes, and chiefly the ruling caste, moved up river as far as Charkov, Kiev and Halich. But it also follows that those who dwelt in Southern Moldavia and Wallachia may well have moved up river with their herds and flocks to summer pastures, reaching the Csik basin between the Carpathians and the Hargita and the Barca and Feketeügy basins further south, even before the Magyar Conquest proper.
A climatic feature which may well have influenced the Conquest indirectly was the catastrophically cold winter of 892-893 which interrupted a milder period. Even the major rivers froze up. Eastern Frankish chronicles noted that the winter lasted well into April, with much snow. Sheep and bees perished. There was such a famine in the whole of Bavaria after eighteen months that many died of starvation. At the time the Bavarian marches extended to much of Pannonia. No doubt such a severe winter was felt in Eastern Europe as well. One result may have been the freezing of the Volga and the Don above the bend. This made it possible for the Pechenegs whom the Uzes had attacked, to flee across the frozen rivers into Atelkuzu, although some of them were stuck east of the Ural river. The Pechenegs no doubt stopped at the Dnieper at the time of the first attack, since the last winter camp in Atelkuzu (known under the name of Levedia) of the first chieftain in 894 was somewhere near the mouth of the river Bug. It was only after the 895 invasion of the Carpathian Basin by Árpád's host that the Pechenegs, in alliance with the Bulgarians, forced the Magyar tribes by their second attack, to move into Transylvania and the Upper Tisza region, thus bringing the second stage of the Conquest or, rather, land-taking to a close.
The improved precipitation around 900 helped the transhumant Hungarians coming from the dry steppes north of the Pontus, to find pastures in the Carpathian Basin; that is natural conditions which favoured their life-style. The Magyars about to settle and their associated tribes were able to take into possession animals native to the wooded hilly country, but those who brought stock with them that was used to drier steppes avoided the wetter pastures of the Carpathian fringe. A contributing factor was the higher mortality on wet pastures of their lambs which were used to drier grazing. Very likely, because of the Pecheneg attacks, the landtakers only drove flocks to their new homeland from the neighbouring areas of Moldavia and Wallachia, but they were well aware what kind of pasture they - especially sheep - needed, mutton being a staple of all dwellers in the steppe. That may well have been one reason why raiding warriors, who owned more stock, chose to strike camp in the driest areas of the Hungarian Plains, where, however, they were able to water their sheep and cattle at rivers and in wetlands.
The climatic and vegetative zones of this area assured a living, even in times of drought, to the tribes of the conquering landtakers and the Iranian Alan and Slav associates who had fled with them from similar regions in Atelkuzu.
György Györffy
is a historian whose fields of study are the pre-Conquest Magyars, the Conquest period, diplomatics, and medieval chronicles.
Bálint Zólyomi
is a botanist specializing in plant ecology, the typology of forests, environmental biology, and pollen statistics.
