Slike stranica
PDF
ePub

liturgy against the Greeks, by disciples of Methodius, who utilised facts which they had learned from him. The Lives were also intended to serve theological instruction; to teach the Bulgarians methods of apologetic and controversy (against Jews, Saracens, and the Latin Church). We cannot regard as historical the disputations (in V.C.) with John the ex-Patriarch or with the Mohammadans; and the arguments against the Jews and Khazars are the work of the biographer. Brückner dwells on what he calls schematism in the missions to the Mohammadans, the Khazars, and the Moravians; in each case Constantine is represented as being sent by the Emperor. The Mohammadan episode is unhistorical, the others are historical; but the part assigned to the Byzantine government is probably a misrepresentation of fact.

But incidental bits of information, not necessary to the writer's pragmatical purposes, are trustworthy with some reservations. We may accept the statement about the parentage of the apostles, the patronage accorded to Constantine by the logothete (Theoktistos), his appointment as librarian of the Patriarch. His friendship with Photius is known from Anastasius. If he was appointed librarian by Photius, the date could not be earlier than 859, and it would follow that, if the order of events in V.C. is correct, the visit to the Khazars could hardly have been earlier than 860. But we can hardly accept the statement that he was educated with the son of Theophilus, for he was at least ten years older than Michael III.1

1 Leger (Cyrille et Méthode, 58) suggests that Constantine, the Emperor's son who died in childhood, may be

meant. But his death occurred far too early to suit the dates implied by the narrative in V.C.

APPENDIX XII

THE MAGYARS

1. Date of the Second Magyar Migration (to Atelkuzu)

WESTBERG has put forward a new view as to the date of the migration of the Hungarians to Atelkuzu (in K anal. ii. 49-51) which he places c. A.D. 825. His argument is based on a passage in Constantine, De adm. imp. 175, relating to the four sons and four grandsons of Arpad. The descent may conveniently be represented in a table.

[blocks in formation]

When Constantine was writing (A.D. 950-952), Phalitzis was the Hungarian king (ròv vvvì äpɣоvтa), Tebeles was dead, and his son Termatzus was adult and had recently visited Constantinople on an embassy (ὁ ἀρτίως ἀνελθὼν φίλος mistranslated by Westberg, as by most others).1 Westberg infers that Tebeles died not later than 945, and that the surviving grandsons of Arpad, Phalitzis and Taxis,2 were advanced in years. Reckoning thirty years to a generation, he goes on to place the death of Tarkatzus about 915, that of Arpad c. 885, that of Salmutzes c. 855. At the time of the elevation of Arpad, Salmutzes was alive and considered (by Lebedias) capable of ruling the Magyar nation. Therefore the election of Arpad must belong to the second quarter of the ninth century, not later than A.D. 850. But the migration to Atelkuzu occurred not long before Arpad's election (De adm. imp. 16914); so 1 I have pointed this out in B.Z. xv. 562.

2 I assume that Taxis and Tasês are the same. Pecz, however, has conjectured that Tasês was a son of Liuntis or Levente,

who, he thinks, was the eldest son of Arpad (B.Z. vi. 587-588). But the passage implies that Tasês has been already mentioned, and the identification with Taxis seems inevitable.

the presence of the Magyars in Atelkuzu covers the period from approximately 825 to 895."

This argumentation carries no conviction. We can readily accept 885 as the approximate date of Arpad's death, for c. 889 his son Levente (who is not mentioned in this passage) was king. But this does not necessitate the inference that Arpad was elected before 850, or even before 860. Suppose that he was sixty years old when he died; then he would have been born in 825. Suppose that Salmutzes, his father, was then twenty-five years old, he would have been sixty, a "bodrii starik," in 860. This hypothesis, which might be varied (there is no reason to suppose that Arpad was old when he died; he may have been much younger than sixty), is sufficient to show that Westberg's reasoning is arbitrary, and that the data admit of no such conclusion as he draws.

Our fixed date ante quem for the first migration of the Magyars is A.D. 862, the year in which they invaded the empire of the Franks, for it is improbable that this invasion was undertaken before they had settled west of the Dnieper. Our fixed date post quem is the time of the visit of Constantine the Philosopher to Cherson and the Khazars, which we can only define approximately as before A.D. 863 (see above, p. 396). At that time, as we learn from the Vita Constantini, the Magyars were still in the neighbourhood of the Crimea. Although there are many unhistorical details in this Vita, the episode of the Hungarians evidently preserves a genuine fact, for when the Vita was written the Hungarians were far away, and no inventor of fiction would have dreamed of introducing them on the scene. Westberg (ib. 51) admits the genuineness of the notice, but seems to think that the Hungarians invaded the Crimea from Atelkuzu. This is possible, but less probable; once they left their old seats, they were not likely to return across the Dnieper and trespass on the hunting grounds of the Patzinaks, whom they dreaded.

As the mission of Constantine was probably about A.D. 860, we can deduce A.D. 860-861 as a probable date for the first historical migration of the Magyars. Their second migration, to their abiding home, occurred about 895, so that their period in Atelkuzu was about forty years. The election of Arpad may be placed roughly about A.D. 860.

The appearance of the Magyars west of the Dnieper c. A.D. 837 (see above, p. 371) proves only that, as we should expect, they made predatory expeditions into Atelkuzu long before they occupied it.

2. Date of the First Magyar Migration (to Lebedia)

The question of the date of the migration of the Magyars into their earlier home between the Don and Dnieper is more difficult.

According to Constantine (op. cit. 168) they called this territory Lebedia, after the name of their most important tribal leader, Lebedias. I take this to mean that in later times, when they were in Atelkuzu and Hungary, they described this territory, having no other name for it, as the country of Lebedias—the country which they associated with his leadership. According to the text of Constantine, ib., they occupied this country, on the borders of the land of the Khazars, for three years (éviavroùs Tрeîs). This is certainly an error; and we can indeed refute it from Constantine himself, who goes on to say that during this period the Magyars fought for the Khazars "in all their wars," a statement which naturally presupposes a much longer period. The probability is that there is a textual error in the number. Westberg (ib. 51) proposes to read τριάκοντα τρείς οι τριάκοντα. If we adopted the former, which is the less violent, correction, we should obtain c. 822-826 as the date of the arrival of the Magyars in Lebedia.

It must be considered doubtful whether they had come to Lebedia from beyond the Caucasus, where there were Magyars known to the Armenians as the Sevordik. See above, p. 410. Constantine indeed says that they were still known by this name (Zaßáρτoi ao paλo) in Lebedia. It is true that the troubles which distracted Armenia and the adjacent regions in the reign of Mamun (see the account of Yakubi, apud Marquart, Streifzüge, 457 sqq.) might have forced a portion of the Sevordik to seek a new habitation under the protection of the Khazars.

We can say with certainty that the Magyars did not arrive in Lebedia at a later period than in Mamun's reign, and there is perhaps a probability that if they had been there long before that period, some indication of their presence would have been preserved in our sources. The conjectural restoration of Constantine's text (thirty-three years) cannot be relied on; but it may be noted that the Bulgarian warfare on the Dnieper in Omurtag's reign (see above, p. 366), if it was provoked by the presence of the Magyars, would be chronologically compatible.

Constantine does not tell us the source of his information about the Magyars and their earlier history. We can, however, form a probable opinion. While he was engaged in writing his treatise known as De administrando imperio, or just before he had begun it, an Hungarian embassy arrived at Constantinople (referred to above, p. 489) consisting of Termatzus, a grandson of Arpad, and Bultzus, who held the dignity of karchas (the third dignity in the realm, after the king and the gylas). It seems very likely that Constantine derived much of what he tells us about the Magyars from this friendly embassy. Compare my paper on "The Treatise De adm. imp." B.Z. xv. 562-563.

3. The names Magyar, Hungarian, Turk

While they were in Lebedia, the Hungarians seem already to have called themselves Magyars, for they were known by this name to an Arabic writer (before A.D. 850), who reproduced it as Bazhghar (cp. Marquart, op. cit. 68).1 In their own ancient chronicles the name appears as Mogor. It is obviously identical

with the name of one of their tribes, the Meyépn, mentioned by Constantine.2 We may conjecture that this was the tribe of which Lebedias was chieftain, and that his pre-eminence was the cause of its becoming a name for the nation.

To the Slavs and Latins, the Magyars were known by the more comprehensive name of the Ugrian race, to which they belonged: Ungri, whence Hungari; and the Greek chronicle, which describes their appearance west of the Dnieper in the reign of Theophilus, likewise calls them Ovyypot (Add. George 818). But this designation in a Greek writer of the ninth and tenth centuries is exceptional, for the Greeks regularly applied to them the term Τούρκοι, and even in this passage they are also called Τούρκοι 3 and Ovvvo. Why did the Greeks call them Turks? The simplest answer is that the name came into use after the union of the Magyars with the Kabars who were Turks.

Marquart has put forward an ingenious but hardly convincing explanation of Τούρκοι. He identifies it with the 'Iúрkaι of Ἰύρκαι Herodotus 4. 22, who seem to appear in Pliny, vi. 19, as Tyrcae, and in Pomponius Mela, i. § 116, as Turcae. He supposes that Iurkai is the same word as Iugra, Ugrian, with metathesis of r, that the word afterwards acquired an initial t in Scythian dialects, and that the Greeks borrowed it from the Alans as a designation of the Magyars (op. cit. 54 sqq.) before their union with the Kabars. According to this theory, the Turks are false "Turks," and the Magyars are true "Turks," according to the original denotation of the name; in fact, the Ugrian name, in its Scythian form, came in the course of history to be transferred from the Ugrian to the Turanian race.

1 The Arabs used the same name to designate the Bashkirs, and this led to confusions, for which see Marquart, 69 and 515.

2 It has been supposed that Mášapoi in Const. De adm. imp. 16410 means Magyars; so Hunfalvy, Roesler. The Patzinaks are said to have had as their neighbours, when they dwelled between the Volga and Ural (Teńx), TOÚS TE Μαζάρους καὶ τοὺς ἐπονομαζομένους Οὔζ. The context, however, renders it highly

improbable that these Májapo are the same as the Toûρko (Magyars) who are mentioned a few lines below. Some eastern people is meant-I suspect the Bashkirs, who lived between the Patzinaks and the Bulgarians of the Kama. Probably we should read Βαζάρους (an instance of the frequent confusion of μ and ẞ in eleventh-century MSS.).

3 But this does not prove that the Greeks called them Toûpкo in the reign of Theophilus (as Marquart argues, p. 54).

« PrethodnaNastavi »