Who were our ancestor Hungarians? What did they look like? Where did they come from? Why did they leave and settle in the Carpathian Basin?

Who were they?

First of all they were Nomadic Horsemen, breeders of animals who followed green pastures in a constant move. Their hair was braided into pigtails held together on two sides by brass disks, those of the chiefs by gold ones. On their shoulders, reflex bows composed of layers of sheets of horn cemented together with glue rendered from fish, and bone. On their left side, bundles of iron-tipped arrows; on their right, oriental sabers with curved, single-edged blades. Their saddles were high and rose sharply in front and back. This saddle made it possible for both hands to be free in battle and shoot a shower of arrows in an attack on their enemy or, half-turned on their horses, to do so backwards fleeing from a superior force.

They were the ones about whom the chant of supplication fearfully concluded at this time in the monasteries and churches of Christian Europe: "From the arrows of the Hungarians spare us, Oh Lord!"

They were forging ahead from the east toward the west, meanwhile having to cross the mountain range from north to south.

Árpád's Hungarians.

They came to settle down. That part of the Hungarian armies led by Árpád -as we know and believe today- crossed the Verecke Pass and parallel passes in A.D. 895 and descended to the fields of the Carpathian Basin which seemed to be defendable.

But why did they have to leave their original home behind? Where was this home? Well, the answer to these questions is not easy and is still debated among scientists, historians and linguists.

Where did they come from?

We have a few pieces of fact to rely on. One of these is a report that a Dominican friar, Julianus (Julianus barat) sends us from the past. In 1235 Julianus set out from the new homeland to find Magna Hungaria, the original home of the Hungarians in the Eurasian plains. He knew that the Hungarians had split in two before the Conquest, and that only the smaller group - with army men, women, elderly and children the number is estimated around half a million - came west and the larger remained in the east, in the Great Ancestral Land.

The bold Julianus eventually reached on his own the people he was searching for. He actually came across Hungarians beyond the Volga, in the area of today's Bashkiria in Russia, whom he could clearly understand. From them he obtained knowledge about the approach of the Tatar (Mongolian) forces, and he immediately returned home with the news.

In 1237, he took to the road again to "summon home" this very small, yet significant number of people in Magna Hungaria, to persuade them to relocate in the Carpathian Basin. But by the time he reached Suzdal he had learned that the Mongolians had already swept away these remaining relatives in the Volga region. His attempt to unify the separate groups failed.

Today we can only guess as to when they split up at the Volga's bend in today's Kuibyshev area. Certainly not close to the time before the Conquest; we can put the date at any time between the fourth and the eighth century.

Why did they leave?

Well, because they had to. In this period the domino principle prevailed for centuries from one end of the vast Eurasian plains to the other. What do you do if you don't have enough money to buy you things? You either settle with less, or you expand your income circle by getting a second job, or a better paying one. These folks back than didn't have jobs to hop around, and because of the lack of agriculture - which would have allowed them to produce more at the same location -, the economic basis of the existence of these nomadic peoples was expansion, expansion of the land they used for breeding more and more animals. The leading ranks of various nomadic peoples acquired ever-greater power; they crushed the neighboring and then the more distant peoples.

It may have been the Avars who drove the Hungarians away from their original home in Bashkiria beyond the Volga. Our ancestors moved to the west and spent a long period of time around the middle of the first millennium A.D. some distance on this side of the Volga along the middle reaches of the Don, above the Sea of Azov. They called it Levedia after one of the Hungarian chiefs. They were still largely nomadic breeders of animals, but it was here that they encountered agriculturists using heavy plows with iron fittings, a rich horticulture and livestock, buildings and fortified towns indicating permanent residence.

After about three hundred years, yet again they had to move westward due to the attack of a new Turkish people. This time a large group of people joined them and it was them, who would, under the name of Kabars, make up the eighth tribe of the Conquest, in addition to Árpád's seven Hungarian tribes; they were the "black" Hungarians beside the "white" Hungarians.

They moved on westward and then finally, in A.D. 895, they were standing high on the ridge of the Carpathians in the Verecke Pass. On the border of an unfamiliar world? Definitely not. They had roamed there before. We know for certain that they had been in this area during the preceding year and the years before. The scene spreading out below was familiar to them. Down below awaited water they had tasted, grazing meadows for the cattle they had tested, and land for their plows and vegetable seed?beds they had found to be rich and fertile. They liked what they saw and decided to stay. Because they did, we - as Hungarians of today - have one of the most beautiful pieces of land that we can call Home.

By Peter Vali

Source: István Lázár: HUNGARY - A Brief History. Budapest: Corvina, 1993