István Riba
It Is a Wise Child
The Conquest and Its Riddles
When it comes to the circumstances of the Hungarian Conquest, even the
most basic facts are in dispute. There is controversy about the origins of
the Hungarians, about the area of the steppe that can be associated with them
before they moved into the Carpathian basin, about the time of their possible
arrival, and even about the numbers involved. Similarly, there have been
conflicting theories concerning the origins of the Hungarian language, the
etymology of the names of the Hungarian tribes, as well as the names and
functions of the ruling princes that led the alliance of the seven Hungarian
tribes, and the order in which they ruled.
Most historians agree that the Ancient Hungarians began their occupation
and settlement of the Carpathian Basin in A.D. 895, despite the fact that this
particular date was in fact first stipulated by the Hungarian government, in 1892.
With the thousandth anniversary of Hungarian statehood approaching (1000),
the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was given the task of setting a date for the
Conquest, and with that a go-ahead for the millennial celebrations. The
Academy’s scholars were unable to decide on a particular year, agreeing only
that it must have occurred between 888 and 900. The year 1895 was chosen
though there was no consensus amongst scholars. To complicate matters, for
budgetary reasons Hungary was finally able to celebrate only in 1896, which
made an impact on historiography, too, as for many years 1896 figured as the
accepted date and was taught in schools. At present, though, most historians
accept 895 as the year when the Conquest took place.
The Ancient Hungarians travelled a long road before reaching the
Carpathian Basin. Where this journey started and the route taken are still
disputed. According to the linguists and, in their wake, the great majority of
historians too, Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language. In other words, the forebears of the Hungarians must at some point have shared the area they
occupied with other Finno-Ugrians. This cohabitation may have taken place in
the 4th-3rd millennium B.C., after which time the populations speaking Ugric
languages parted company with the speakers of Finno-Permic languages.
Linguists have attempted to find their way back to this early homeland via
language, wishing to match words of Finno-Ugric origin with the occurrence
of particular plants and animals. According to some historians, the early
homeland was on the European side of the Ural Mountains, others argue that
plants with Finno-Ugric names were indigenous only on the Siberian side of
the range. All we know about the Ugrian period, which lasted approximately
until 500 B.C., is similarly through language, by way of comparison with the
vocabularies of Vogul and Ostyak, languages which likewise belong to the
same family. In this period, the Ancient Hungarians probably lived in western
Siberia; according to others who disagree, they always lived to the west of the
Ural Mountains, in other words in Europe.
After the dispersal of the Ugrians, the presumptive ancestors of the Hungarians
disappear from history for more than a thousand years. We do not know where
they were living at that time. As it is not possible to attribute to them specific
artifacts on the Asian steppe there is no way to locate them there on
archaeological evidence. Of course, occasional finds unearthed on that huge
territory often display parallels with Conqest-period specimens in the Carpathian
Basin, a definitive attribution however is impossible. One territory where such
finds crop up is Bashkiria, and accordingly many have surmised that at one time
the Ancient Hungarians lived there. At one point, they came into contact with
Turkic peoples, first and foremost with the Volga Bulgars, and acquired a good
number of Bulgar-Turkic loanwords which are still part of present-day Hungarian.
Critics of this ancient homeland theory claim that it was not necessary for the
Ancient Hungarians to migrate in order to acquire loanwords. It is conceivable,
too, that different populations merged, each retaining some of its own vocabulary,
and that this led to the formation of Hungarian. If the above hypothesis is correct
then the territory from which the Ancient Hungarians started out need not be
linked to the one-time Finno-Ugric and then to the Ugric language area.
[...]
István Riba
is a historian on the staff of HVG, an economic weekly.
