How many ethnic groups and ethnic groups, besides the Magyars themselves, “worked” for many centuries so that the Hungarian people would eventually emerge!
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Talented poets can sometimes say a lot in one or two lines about subjects to which scientists devote an endless number of scientific reports, articles, and books. Sergei Yesenin, who, I think, had never even heard of a single discussion on the problem of relations between the Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes during the early Russian Middle Ages, made, however, his artistic contribution to its understanding in two short lines: “Rus was lost” / in Mordva and Chud..."

Danube interfluve

The impetus for writing this essay was the unexpectedly remembered verses of the famous Soviet poet Evgeny Dolmatovsky: “Europe, full of worries, / And here, in the Danube interfluve, / Here is Hungary, like an island, / With such non-European speech...” “Danube interfluve” - so the poet designated the location of this country in the basin of the Middle Danube and its main tributary, the river. Yews. Well, the “speech”, the language of the Hungarians (self-name – magyar(ok), Magyars) is indeed very “non-European”. And in the countries bordering it (Austria, Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Ukraine), and in most other European countries, the main population speaks languages ​​​​belonging to the Indo-European family. The Hungarian (Magyar) language is part of the Ugric subgroup of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family.

The peoples closest to the Hungarians in language are the Ob Ugrians, the Khanty and Mansi, who live mainly in Western Siberia. As they say, where is Hungary and where is the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug in the Asian part of Russia. However, they are relatives, and very close ones at that. More distant - by language, not geographically - Finnish-speaking peoples: Udmurts, Komi, Mordovians, Mari, Karelians, Estonians, Finns. But the linguistic proximity of peoples speaks of their once common origin, of their genetic and historical kinship.

About 60% of all words in the modern Hungarian language are Finno-Ugric in origin (the rest are borrowings from Turkic, Slavic and other languages; many, in particular, Iranian and German). Finno-Ugric are such basic verbs as live, eat, drink, stand, go, look, give and others; many words describing nature (for example, sky, cloud, snow, ice, water) related to communal, tribal and genealogical vocabulary.

To this day, the Hungarians prepare their famous fishermen's soup, holasle, in the same way as the Khanty and Mansi did and still do - without removing the blood from the fish. You will not find this among any other European people; Some other Hungarian dishes are prepared in the same way as, for example, Komi or Karelians (it is known that food and its preparation belong to the most conservative areas of folk culture).

How did the West Siberian Ugric tribes become a Central European people, the Hungarian nation?

Disintegration of the Ugric community

Many realities of the early stages of the ethnic and socio-political history of the Magyar ethnos are very hypothetical to this day: sources are few and fragmentary, the first written data appear only at the end of the 1st millennium AD. Hence all the reservations - “possibly”, “presumably”, “not excluded”, etc.

Most researchers agree that the ancestral home of the Ural peoples is the northern part of Western Siberia, the territory between the Ural ridge and the lower reaches of the Ob. In the 4th–3rd millennium BC. the proto-Ural community disintegrated; Finno-Ugric tribes, having separated from the Samoyeds (the future Nenets, Enets, Nganasans, Selkups, etc.), occupied lands on both sides of the Ural Mountains. These were hunters, fishermen, gatherers who used stone tools and weapons; but skis and sleds were already in their use (rock paintings discovered in the Urals tell us about this).

In the modern Hungarian language, words related to the field of hunting and fishing are from the most ancient all-Ural layer of vocabulary. Presumably at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Finno-Ugric tribes also began to disperse and become isolated. Around the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Until that time, the more or less unified Ugric community had disintegrated: the ancestors of the Magyars separated from the Ob Ugrians.

Gradually they migrate to the southern zone of Western Siberia, roaming across the vast territory between the river. Ural and Aral Sea. Here the proto-Magyars came into contact with peoples of Iranian origin (Sarmatians, Scythians), under whose influence they began to master such forms of farming as cattle breeding and agriculture (Hungarian words meaning horse, cow, milk, felt and a number of others from this area are Iranian-language in origin).

The horse begins to play a particularly important role in the life of the proto-Magyars (including their religious beliefs). This is evidenced by excavations of Ugric burials, in particular such a significant fact: in the grave of a rich Ugric archaeologist almost certainly find the remains of a horse, which was supposed to serve its master in other life. The same Iranian peoples, apparently, introduced the future Hungarians to metals - copper and bronze, and later to iron.

It is possible that for some time they were in the sphere of influence of Sasanian Iran. A possible trace of this stage in the historical memory of the Hungarians are legends that say that some “relatives of the Magyars live in Persia.” These relatives were sought in the 1860s by Arminius Vambery, an outstanding Hungarian traveler and orientalist of Jewish origin, in his travels through Iran and Central Asia.

In the steppe zone, on the plains east of the Southern Urals, the Magyars became nomadic pastoralists (nomads), with primitive agriculture and hunting as an aid to the economy. In the first centuries AD. they still live here, but around the middle of the 1st millennium AD. migrate to the west, to the lands of present-day Bashkiria or to the basin of the lower reaches of the Kama, thus moving to Europe (ancient Magyar burial grounds were discovered on the left bank of the Kama, in its lower reaches).

This territory in the Hungarian historical tradition is called “Magna Hungaria” - “Great Hungary”. The memory of the distant ancestral home was preserved among the Hungarian people for centuries. In the 30s of the 13th century, the Hungarian Dominican monk Julian went in search of her and found people in the Urals who understood his Magyar language, told them about the Hungarian kingdom on the Danube, and preached Christianity among them.

However, soon “Eastern Hungary” was gone: the lands of the Ural Magyars were devastated by the crushing Tatar-Mongol invasion led by Batu. Some Magyars (young male warriors) were included in the army of the conquerors; the rest of the Magyar population of the Urals (more precisely, that part of it that survived) gradually mixed with neighboring peoples, mainly with the Bashkirs, with whom the Magyars were closely associated during the previous centuries. This is evidenced by identical geographical names in Bashkiria and modern Hungary; what is even more significant is that three of the seven Magyar tribes that came to the Danube at the end of the 9th century had the same names as three of the twelve Bashkir clans known to science. By the way, in the notes of some Arab travelers of the 12th century, the Bashkirs are called “Asian Magyars.”

Hungarians instead of Magyars

Meanwhile, in the 7th–8th centuries, the main part of the Magyar tribes moved westward, to the Black Sea steppes. Here they live interspersed with the Turkic-speaking Bulgars, Khazars, Onogurs, who were more “advanced” in socio-cultural terms. Words denoting such concepts as reason, number, law, sin, dignity, forgive, write passed from the Turks into the Magyar language; like the plow, sickle, wheat, ox, pig, chicken (and many others).

The Magyars' social structure, legal norms, and religious beliefs are gradually becoming more complex. Partial mixing with the Onogurs had another significant consequence: in addition to the ethnonym Magyars (as one of their tribes, as well as the entire tribe was called from ancient times), they acquired a new ethnonym - Hungarians: in European languages ​​it comes precisely from the ethnonym Onogurs: Lat. ungaris, English hungarian(s), French hongroi(s), German ungar(n), etc. The Russian word “Hungarian” is a borrowing from the Polish language (wegier).

In early medieval European texts, the Magyars were called turci or ungri (Turks or Onogurs). That’s exactly what they are called – ungri – in the Byzantine chronicles of 839, which talks about the participation of the Magyars in the Bulgarian-Byzantine conflict of 836–838. At this time they lived on the lands between the river. Don and the lower reaches of the Danube (this territory was called Etelköz in Hungarian).

In the middle of the 6th century, the Magyars, together with the Onogurs, who then lived in the lower reaches of the Don, were included in the Turkic Kaganate. A century later they became subjects of the Khazar Khaganate, from whose power the Magyars got rid of it around 830.

And migration to the west continued. In the Dnieper region, Magyars-Hungarians live next to Slavic tribes. Byzantium actively draws them into its orbit of influence and participates in its wars. In 894, in alliance with Byzantium, the Magyars carried out a devastating raid on the Bulgarian kingdom on the Lower Danube. But a year later, the Bulgarians, in alliance with the Pechenegs, brutally took revenge, ravaging the lands of the Magyars and taking almost all the young women captive (the men were on another campaign at that time).

When the Magyar squads returned and saw what was left of their country, they decided to leave these places. At the end of the 9th century (895–896), the Magyars crossed the Carpathians and settled in the lands along the middle reaches of the Danube. The leaders of the seven Magyar tribes bound themselves and their tribes with an oath of an eternal alliance.

The 10th century, when the Hungarians conquered and developed new territory, is solemnly called in Hungarian historiography the time of “Finding a Motherland” (Honfoglalas); This is also the name of this entire laborious, multicomponent process. At the same time, in the 10th century, the Hungarians developed a writing system based on the Latin alphabet.

It was here, on the Middle Danube, that there was the center of the huge, but very fragile power of the Huns, and later the Avar Kaganate.

Following Attila

According to the legends of the Magyars, the arrival of their ancestors to the lands along the Middle Danube was by no means accidental. The ancient Magyar chronicles claim that the Magyars are close relatives of the Huns, since the ancestors of these peoples were the twin brothers Gunor and Magor (Magyar). In another version of the legend, these brothers managed to capture two daughters of the Alan king (the Alans are one of the Iranian-speaking Sarmatian peoples): it was from them that the Huns descended, “they are Hungarians” (that is, the identity of these peoples is already spoken about here).

There is even a legend that Attila (?–453), the famous leader of the Hunnish tribal union, was the ancestor of the Magyars. In his footsteps, they say, the Magyars came at the end of the 9th century (let me remind you that the nomadic people of the Huns formed in the first centuries of our era in the Urals from local Ugrians and Sarmatians and Turkic-speaking Xiongnu. Their mass migration to the west from the 70s of the 4th century became impetus for the Great Migration).

Hungarian historians, like all others, reject the assumption of Magyar-Hun kinship. Some Hungarian scholars believe that individual groups of Magyars migrated to the Carpatho-Danube region as early as the 7th century, so that two centuries later the Magyar tribes walked west along the path of their pioneer kinsmen.

In the 10th century, the Magyars in the Middle Danube region became a settled people. Well organized, with vast military experience, they relatively easily and quickly subjugated the local population - the Slavs and Turks, mixed with them, and adopted a lot of their economic, social, and everyday culture. Thus, a lot of words in the Hungarian language that relate to agricultural labor, housing, food, and everyday life are of Slavic origin. For example, ebed (lunch), vachora (dinner, supper), udvar (yard), veder (bucket), shovel (shovel), kaza (braid), szena (hay), the words “corn” sound almost identical to the Slavic ones, “cabbage”, “turnip”, “porridge”, “fat”, “hat”, “fur coat” and many others.

However, the Hungarians not only preserved their language (more precisely, the basic vocabulary and grammar), but also imposed it on the subject population. It is believed that there were 400–500 thousand Hungarians who came to the Danube; in the 10th–11th centuries they assimilated about 200 thousand people. This is how the Hungarian ethnos was formed, which in 1000 created its own state - the early feudal kingdom of Hungary. In addition to the territory of modern Hungary, it included the lands of modern Slovakia, Croatia, Transylvania and a number of other Danube regions.

Hungarian kings

Árpad, chief of the Medier tribe, the strongest of the seven tribes, became the first king and founder of the Árpadovich dynasty (1000–1301); the name of his tribe passed on to the whole people. Meanwhile, more and more new ethnic groups came to the lands of the kingdom. In the 11th century, the Hungarian rulers allowed the Pecheneg Turks to settle here, who were expelled from the Northern Black Sea region by the Polovtsians (also Turks by language); and in the 13th century, the Cumans fled to the Danube valleys from the Mongol invasion (some of them later moved to Bulgaria and other countries). To this day, the Hungarian people preserve the ethnographic group of Palocians - the descendants of those same Polovtsians.

The Hungarian kings had their own reason for such “hospitality” - they needed brave, loyal, obliging warriors (which men - the Pechenegs and Cumans - willingly became) - both to repel external threats and to pacify large feudal lords within the state. Nomads were attracted here by the Danube steppe expanses and the famous Pashta.

In the 11th century (under King Stephen the Saint), the Hungarians adopted Christianity (Catholicism). In the 16th century, during the Reformation, some Hungarians became Protestants, mostly Calvinists, and Lutherans.

In the Middle Ages, there were periods when the Kingdom of Hungary became one of the strongest, largest, and most influential countries in Europe. Under King Matthias Corvinus (second half of the 15th century, the heyday of medieval Hungary), about 4 million people lived in the country, of which at least 3 million were Hungarians. The population grew due to both immigrants from European countries (Germans, French, Walloons, Italians, Vlachs) and immigrants from the east (Gypsies, Iranian-speaking Alans-Yas, various Turkic-speaking groups). A significant part of them were assimilated by the Hungarians.

Of course, living together – as part of one state, one country – with peoples of different cultures and languages ​​also affected the culture and language of the main people. The very complex ethnic history of Hungary and the Hungarians, the peculiarities of the natural conditions of different regions of the country determined the formation of a number of subethnic and ethnographic groups within the Hungarian people.

Millennia of migration, mixing with many peoples in different regions of Eurasia could not but affect the anthropological type of the Magyars. Today's Hungarians belong to the Central European race of the large Caucasoid race, only a small part of them has Mongoloid admixture. But their ancestors, the Ugrians, who once left Western Siberia, had many (and pronounced) Mongoloid features. On their long journey to the west, the Magyars lost them, mixing with Caucasian tribes. By the time they arrived on the Danube, they were already completely Caucasoid: this is demonstrated by the Hungarian burial grounds of the 10th century on the Middle Danube.

However, what an odyssey in time and space the Magyars made before they found, forever, their current homeland... How many ethnic groups and ethnic groups, besides the Magyars themselves, with their cultures and languages, external characteristics and mentalities (etc., etc.) .d.) “worked” for many centuries so that in the end the Hungarian people appeared, “turned out” - hardworking, beautiful, talented, who created a beautiful country, the capital of which, Budapest, standing on both banks of the blue Danube, is rightfully considered one of most beautiful cities in the world. The people who gave humanity the great composers and musicians Franz Liszt and Bela Bartok, the great poets Sandor Petőfi and Janos Arany, and many other wonderful people.

In conclusion - a summary that he made, summing up very interesting notes about the Hungarians and their language (in one of his books about the peoples of the world), a great expert on this people and this language (as well as many other peoples and languages), a talented ethnographer, writer and scientific journalist Lev Mints (alas, who left us on the last day of November 2011): “...Hungarians are a people descended from different tribes and peoples. One of them - very important, of course - is the nomadic Magyars, who came from the east and brought their language (...), like a millstone, grinding the roots and words of other languages ​​(...) Grinded by the harsh Finno-Ugric grammar, they became completely Hungarian. But no less than the ancestors of today's Hungarians did not come from any Greater Hungary: they lived here long before the horse of forefather Arpad drank water from the Danube.

But all of them - plus many other components - are together Hungarians because they consider themselves as such and others consider them Hungarians. Everything is complicated in this world. The ethnogenesis of the Hungarians is no exception here.”

Lev Mironovich did not like quotes, especially long ones. But I wanted, in memory of this very extraordinary man and good comrade, to end this text with his words.

October 12th, 2012 , 05:16 pm

Migration of peoples and history of the Magyars.

It is not customary to call the modern era, like, say, the period at the beginning of our era, the time of the Great Migration of Peoples. Today's ethnic groups have, for the most part, occupied their geographic territories for a long time. This does not mean, however, that mass migrations are not taking place even now. Tens of millions of people in our century alone have moved from Europe and, to a lesser extent, from Asia to the countries of America, from China, to South and Southeast Asia, etc. In our country, only over the last three decades, millions of Russians and Ukrainians moved to Kazakhstan. None of us will be surprised to meet a Georgian beyond the Arctic Circle, or to meet a Yakut, Mordvin or Azerbaijani in Kushka.

And history knows cases when an entire people or a large part of it moves from its place at once. For examples of this, it is not at all necessary to look back to the very distant past. In 1916, during the First World War, the authorities of the Turkish Empire began to exterminate the Assyrian people (Aisors) living in the eastern part of Asia Minor and Iran. The chauvinistic leaders of the empire, Muslim fanatics, took advantage of the war frenzy in the country to try to destroy the Assyrian Christians, as well as the Armenian Christians. The Assyrians resisted desperately, took up a perimeter defense, and for two years “repelled, retreating, the attacks of the regular Turkish army and “free” detachments of thugs. And then they left their homeland, or more precisely, from that part of it that belonged to Turkey. This is how Assyrians appeared in Russia, the USA, Iraq, Syria and many other countries.

Our planet has a turbulent past; more than once or twice, peoples found themselves in the same position as the Isors in 1916 - under the threat of destruction or enslavement. And they walked away from this threat.
Even the Huns, who later became formidable conquerors of half the world, rushed west from their Mongolia after being defeated by the Chinese armies there. Along the way, they, in turn, became a threat to many tribes, also forced to move - sometimes as part of the Hunnic hordes, sometimes ahead of them, sometimes these tribes “spread to the sides”, went north and south from the path of the ferocious conquerors.
After the Mongols conquered the Middle Volga region, the Volga Bulgars who lived here largely moved north, becoming one of the parts of the emerging Chuvash people. Many similar examples can be given here.
But often the migrations of tribes and peoples have other reasons. Thousands of people, who are not at all threatened by an external enemy, rise up and seek a better life in new places. This is how the North of the European part of Russia and Siberia were developed by the Russian people. This is how the Scythians once came to the Northern Black Sea region, expelling or dissolving the Cimmerian tribes that lived here before them. This is how the German tribes of the Goths moved from the Northern Baltic to the south, to the Black Sea, at the beginning of our era.
At the same time, the settlement of the people itself can occur slowly, stretching over centuries?
In our country, forest hunters and reindeer herders—Evenks—live in small groups throughout almost the entire vast Siberia. The impenetrable taiga became their homeland within a few hundred years, after the Evenks, who had previously lived only in the south of Siberia, managed to find ways of hunting and transportation that made them masters of the forests.
In the preface to the book of the Soviet Evenki scientist-historian A.S. Shubin, Professor E.M. Zalkind writes: “It seems almost incredible how tribes at such a level of development could conquer colossal spaces, overcome the difficulties of many months, and sometimes many years of travel . But in fact, the further into history, the less important the distance factor is. Wherever the Evenk went in his taiga wanderings, he found moss moss for his reindeer, animals for hunting, bark and poles for tents. And it was all the easier for him to set off on a long journey, since at that time the time factor did not play any role. years spent in one place, years spent traveling to new places, all this did not change anything in the usual way of life.”
Of course, words about the role of time and distances can be applied not only to the Evenks, but also to many other nomads.
Isn’t it true, this explains a lot about the relative ease with which the ancient tribes moved from this place in search of better – or at least not worse – places on the face of the earth.
The Kipchaks (Polovtsians) march from Siberia in the 9th-11th centuries in a single strike wedge to the west, become masters of most of Central Asia and the Northern Black Sea region, the Oghuz Turks pushed back by them move to Iran, the Caucasus, and Asia Minor.
The creation of a single state in Norway forced part of the freedom-loving nobility there to go to Iceland with their households. The unification of the former Castile, Aragon, Leon in the Spanish Kingdom and its conquest of the south of the Iberian Peninsula led to the mass expulsion of the Muslim Arab-speaking population from there to Africa.
In the 16th century, a strange story happened, but only at first glance. From the west of Central Asia, nomadic tribes rushed into its eastern part. They won and expelled its ruler, Emir Babur, from Fergana (and they themselves, having mixed with the local settled population, became one of the ancestors of modern Uzbeks). The unfortunate exiled emir, by the way, a descendant of both Genghis Khan and Timur, forced to abandon both his native places and hereditary possessions, fled with the remnants of his army to the south, to Afghanistan and India. and became the founder of a grandiose empire, which received the name of the Mughal power.
We will talk in more detail here about the centuries-old movement of the Magyar people, and then about the resettlement of the Gypsies.
From the Yenisei to the Danube In 1848, a year of rapid revolutionary upsurge in almost all European countries, the Hungarians rebelled against the Austrian monarchy that ruled their land. The Hungarian revolution was crushed, despite the heroic resistance of its defenders. A teenager runs away with a limp from a city occupied by Austrian soldiers, cursing these warriors as executioners in all the languages ​​he knows. And he knew a lot of languages, because he had studied them since childhood. This homeless lame boy's name was Arminius Vamberi. A name that will become big, at least for geographers, historians, orientalists and linguists around the world. Arminius Vamberi, a remarkable linguist and passionate explorer, will make amazing journeys, disguised as an Arab dervish, a Turk, or a Persian; he will amaze Western ministers with his knowledge. eastern emirs. And then. “In a field near the Danube he met several soldiers who had escaped captivity. They were dusty, and defeat was visible on their faces.
“It’s all over,” they said, “we’ll lie down and die.” Our freedom is disappearing!
Then the old shepherd stood up and croaked to them in a voice shaking with age:
- Stop, children! Always, when we are in trouble, the old Magyars from Asia come to our aid: after all, we are their brothers, rest assured, they will not forget us now.”
This is how the Soviet poet and prose writer Nikolai Tikhonov described this scene in the story “Vambery”.
In his wanderings through Central and Central Asia, through mysterious and often forbidden places for Europeans at that time, Arminius Vambery tried to find these “old Magyars from Asia,” the memory of whom lived in the heart of the Hungarian shepherd.
Ancient Hungarian chronicles speak of the Magyars as relatives of the Huns and claim that other relatives of the Magyars live in Persia.
It is clear that for the ancient chronicler the word Persia could mean not only the country that we know by this name, but a significant part of Asia.
During their wanderings, the legendary brothers Hunor and Magyar captured two daughters of the Alan king (the Alans, as you remember, are one of the Sarmatian tribes). From these women, says the chronicle of Simon Kazai, all the Huns, “they are Hungarians,” descended.
In Hungary, for many hundreds of years, not only scientists, but also the people remembered the arrival of their ancestors here from afar, from the east, from Asia, and they not only remembered, but associated special hopes with their distant homeland and unknown relatives. Perhaps precisely because in Central Europe the Magyars-Hungarians are the only people belonging to the Finno-Ugric language family. The Magyar island is surrounded on all sides by the Indo-European Sea. On one side live the Slavs, on the other - the Germans and Austrians, on the third - the Romanians.
And the geographically closest people of the same family live many kilometers to the north; in the Baltics. These are Estonians. And then the Estonians - in linguistic terms - are by no means the closest relatives of the Magyars. Closer ones (Khanty and Mansi) live in the northeast of the European part of the USSR and in the extreme northwest of Asia - even further than the Estonians.
Today, Hungarian anthropologists, linguists and archaeologists travel again and again to the Volga, the Urals, the Arctic, Western Siberia and Central Asia, wanting to find traces of their ancestors and better study undisputed and presumed relatives. But many hundreds of years ago, Hungarian kings and bishops also sent their representatives far to the east and for the same purpose. However, the then representatives of the Hungarian crown and the church also pursued political goals, and, moreover, cared about saving the souls of the supposed Asian Magyars. Perhaps the most striking of these expeditions “for the ancestors” was the trip to the east of the Dominican monk Julian. It was both a feat and an adventure.
Julian walked through lands engulfed by successive wars of extermination, crossed steppes infested with robbers, or rather, nomads who did not miss the opportunity to get rich. He lost his companions along the way, lost his money, but, defenseless, lonely and poor, he walked east with the stubbornness of the Jules Verne captain Hatteras, striving for the North Pole. In order to find at least some food and protection from the steppe inhabitants, Julian joined the caravans and served their owners, earning the right to go further and further through labor and humiliation.
On the Volga, among the Bulgars, Julian meets an “Asian Magyar” who is married to a Bulgar. With the help of her and her relatives, he discovers “Great Hungary” in the Urals - the ancestral home of his people, hears Magyar speech, tells these newly discovered relatives, although not fellow countrymen, about the powerful Hungarian state on the Middle Danube, preaches Christianity.
But this remarkable discovery, made more than seven hundred years ago, was almost too late. The Western Magyars seemed to have found the eastern “Great Hungary,” only to soon find out that it was gone. The terrible Batu invasion also fell on the land of the Ural Magyars.
It should also be noted that immediately after the conquest, the Tatar-Mongols included the Magyar warriors, according to their long tradition, into their own army. For some time, in the Tatar Golden Horde, among other “national”, as we would say today, military units there was also a Magyar one.
The defeated and scattered Magyars apparently eventually mixed with the surrounding peoples, mainly the Bashkirs. However, back in the 12th century, a century before Batu’s campaign, some Arab travelers considered the Bashkirs themselves to be the Asian Magyars.
Geographical names once again confirm the connection between the Magyars and the Urals. For example, in Bashkiria there is the Sakmara River, a tributary of the Urals. And this same word, which serves as the name of the Bashkir river, is repeated more than once on the map of modern Hungary.
Not only that. Three of the twelve main Bashkir clans known to history bore the same names as three of the seven Magyar tribes that came to the Danube.
The Magyars also came to the Urals from somewhere. Traces of these Pramagyars are in Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. On the left bank of the Kama, in its lower reaches, an ancient Magyar burial ground was recently discovered.
According to researcher E. A. Khalikova, the territory of Great Hungary covered the left bank of the Lower Kama, the Southern Cis-Urals - and partly the eastern slopes of the Urals. E. A. Khalikova believes that the Proto-Hungarians appeared in the Southern Urals at the end of the 6th century - perhaps after some Ugric tribes of the Turkic Kaganate rebelled against his power and suffered a severe defeat.
Insurrection. this covered a number of areas in Central Asia and Kazakhstan.
Before him, E. A. Khalikova believes, the ancestors of the ancient Hungarians “in the second half of the 6th century. most likely they were part of the Western Turkic Khaganate and, together with the Thuriots, played a large role in the political life of Central Asia and Sasanian Iran (how can one not recall Persia, which is mentioned in the Hungarian chronicles. - Author). This era left its mark on the subsequent culture of the ancient Hungarians: Iranian motifs and themes are strong in its various elements - mythology, fine arts."
The ancestors of the ancient Hungarians came to Central Asia and Kazakhstan back in the 4th century AD. e., when a stream of nomads swept across Southern Siberia tore them away from their relatives - the Ob Ugrians.
E. A. Khalikova especially emphasizes that the Ural “Great Hungary” of the late 6th - early 9th centuries maintained connections with the forest-steppe regions of Western Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, where Ugric tribes closely related to the ancient Hungarians remained. This is clearly evidenced by materials from excavations in the Urals, confirming the exchange between these distant regions.
We know much more about the fate of the Magyars who left the Urals to the west, although also relatively little.
Apparently, in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. part of the Ural Magyar tribes left their native places. Maybe because the Magyars were pushed by the next wave of the Great Migration of Peoples. Perhaps because after the Hunnic invasion and plunder, many fertile lands to the west of the Urals turned out to be relatively sparsely populated. Maybe because the climate has changed in the Urals. One way or another, moving to new places could not be too difficult for the Magyar nomads.
In the middle of the 1st millennium, the Magyars already lived in the Volga basin. This Magyar new country on the right bank of the Volga has a beautiful name - Levedia Etelkuza. Soon the local tribes recognized the power of the Khazar Kagan, then the ruler of a great power that covered the North Caucasus, part of the Volga region and neighboring lands and soon entered into a struggle with the Arabs for Transcaucasia. At that time, several Khazar tribes roaming nearby became part of the Magyar association and adopted the Magyar language.
In the same era, apparently, a new ethonym was added to the ancient self-name of one of the tribes - “Magyars” - “Hungarians” on behalf of the Turkic people of the Onogurs, on whose lands the Magyars lived for about a century.
Gradually, the center of settlement of the Magyars shifted to the west. New Levedia is already located on both sides of the Don, located approximately on the territory from Kyiv to Voronezh. The Magyars live among the Slavic tribes, perhaps even interstriated with them. The Magyar Union of Tribes maintains friendly relations with Byzantium, and this power draws nomads into its wars.
Fulfilling an agreement with Byzantium, the Magyars in the 9th century dealt a heavy blow to the Bulgarian kingdom on the Lower Danube. The Bulgarians, who had suffered a severe defeat, responded a few years later with a merciless raid on Levedia, undertaken in alliance with the Pechenegs, who had appeared shortly before in the same Black Sea steppes where the Magyars lived. The Bulgarians and Pechenegs chose a very opportune moment to attack. The Magyar army, almost all men capable of carrying weapons, was on a long march at that time. Levedia was defenseless.
When the army returned to their homeland, they saw that they were left without people. The Pechenegs not only ravaged the country as best they could, they also took captive or killed all the young women.
And the Magyars decided to leave the lands where they could no longer feel safe. Where were they supposed to go? Legends claim that the resettlement was by no means spontaneous. Even the address, apparently, had been planned in advance: a country in the middle reaches of the Danube, an area where the Roman province of Pannonia was once located. Later, there, on the Middle Danube, there was the center of the great Hunnic power (and even later - the Avar Kaganate).
Strange as it may sound, it is possible that the Magyars were brought to Pannonia by the legend that they descended from their family. from Attila. There is still a legend among the Hungarian people that the Magyars descend from the Huns. Historians usually shrug their shoulders in response and say that, of course, a number of Ugric tribes were involved in the great migration of peoples, that Attila’s armies probably included Magyars, but that the Huns themselves, like their leaders, were, of course, not Magyars were.
However, it must be said that, firstly, after the death of Attila and the defeat of his armies, the remnants of the Huns, led by one of the surviving sons of the formidable king, left for the Northern Black Sea region. Here they existed as a separate nation for about two more centuries, until they finally dissolved among the then population of these places. The Huns could, which by no means be considered proven, meet the Magyars in the Black Sea region and mingle here with them. It is possible that this could become the basis of the legend about the relationship between the Huns and Magyars.
It is worth adding, secondly, that some Hungarian scientists now believe that the first Magyars appeared in the Carpathians and to the west of them back in the 7th century. If this is so, the bulk of the Magyars at the end of the 9th century really went west along the path that had already been trodden by their relatives.
It was also hypothesized that this group of Onogur Turks, from whom, as you know, the name passed on to the Hungarians, appeared on the Danube around 670 along with the Bulgar Turks.
Scientists of our days argue, but in the Hungarian medieval chronicles it is directly reported that the Magyars went to the Danube to take possession of the legacy of the first leader of the Almus (Almos) family - Attila. At the same time, Almus is declared a descendant of the “King Magog.” The names of the giants Gog and Magog, taken from the Bible, were often used in the Middle Ages to name nomadic tribes that were formidable to sedentary Europeans. Tradition connected Magog with the Huns; the chronicler, proud of his descent from the Huns, reflected the Hungarian tradition that had already developed in his time, but... which the name Magog did not frighten, but, on the contrary, one could boast of such an ancestor.
The exodus of the Magyars from the Don occurred around 895, when Prince Oleg ruled in Rus'. The ancient Russian information here does not contradict the Hungarian chronicles. The Old Russian chronicler placed it under the year 898. message about the peaceful departure of the Magyars through the Kyiv lands to the west.
Along the way, by the way, they took it with them and kept it to this day. Old Russian names for fishing gear, and at the same time they began to call - and are still calling - the Poles in the Old Russian manner.
Through the mountain passes in the Carpathians, the nomads finally emerged into the vastness of Pannonia. Their main force consisted of seven tribes, among them tribes with “Bashkir” names: Yurmatians, Kese, Yeney. The seven leaders of these tribes bound themselves and their tribes to an eternal treaty of alliance, sealed with blood.
According to Hungarian legend, the Magyars allegedly bought Pannonia from the Slavic prince of Moravia for a white horse, saddle and bridle, but the prince then violated the agreement, and the Hungarians “had” to reconquer the country.
Historians still argue how big a role purely military actions played in deciding the fate of Pannonia. The three-volume “History of Hungary” states that often, probably, things got done without bloodshed. At the moment when the Magyars came to the Middle Danube, there was no real political force here that could prevent them from taking possession of this territory.
The reports of some chroniclers about the ancient, even for them, very heroic battles of aliens with the aborigines of the country, according to many historians, are exaggerated. In the Middle Ages they loved to glorify the past and, as a rule, exaggerated the role of military actions in history.
We must not forget that the number of aliens was relatively small. After all, the Magyars were nomads, and nomadic peoples are usually much smaller in number than settled peoples, occupying equal territory. On the fertile land near the Danube, a place was found for new tribes who quickly settled on the earth. The Magyars easily mixed with the local population, mostly Slavic - people from the Don, strictly speaking, had no choice here, since after the Bulgarian-Pecheneg attack the Magyars were left almost without women. And, it must be said, in the Hungarian language almost all words related to housing and food, agricultural labor and government are Slavic in origin.
Mixing with the Slavs naturally affected the Magyar language. The Hungarian historian E. Molnar wrote: “If a Hungarian peasant looks out the window, goes out into the hallway, goes into the cellar, into the kitchen or into the room, into the closet, goes out into the yard or onto the street, if he speaks, calls his godfather, looks for his neighbor , turns to a friend, feasts in a tavern, dances a czardash, looks around on the plain or in the steppe, becomes a shepherd, a robber, carries food supplies with him, lives on a farm, throws a rope around the neck of a foal, harnesses an ox to a yoke, drives it home The herd picks up the scythe, lays the haystack, gives the cattle food, pulls the wheelbarrow if it is working or finishing work. he does things that are expressed in words adopted from the Slavic language.”
It is worth noting that excavations of Hungarian burial grounds of the 10th century on the Middle Danube showed that the ancient Magyars at that time were similar in anthropological appearance to the Sarmatians who lived at the beginning of our era in the Lower Volga region, Ukraine and the southern shores of the Aral Sea. That is, the Hungarians came to the Danube as fairly typical Caucasians. Meanwhile, the Ugrians who left southern Siberia possessed many Mongoloid features. The Magyar ethnic group gradually lost most of them, mixing on the way to the west with tribes that were Caucasian in appearance.
So, Pannonia became the new homeland of the Magyars - forever.
This area in the center of Europe has an amazing history. (However, what country does not have an amazing history behind it?) At the very beginning of the 1st millennium AD. e. the lands on the Middle Danube were conquered by the Romans. But the inhabitants of the new Roman province did not obediently obey the “rulers of the world” for long. Soon they rebelled and forced the Roman Empire to strain all its forces in the fight against the “rebels”. The Romans of that time considered the war with the Pannonians to be difficult for themselves after the Punic Wars, in which Carthage opposed Ram, who once brought the state of its enemies to the brink of destruction. The world power still won here, but until the end of the Roman Empire, Pannonia with its rebellious inhabitants remained one of the weak points in the Augustan possessions.
During the Great Migration of Nations, Pannonia was freed from Roman rule, but not foreign rule. As its masters, Sarmatians and Goths, Vandals and Roxolani, Iazyges and Carps, Bastarnae and Marcomanni and many other tribes replaced each other (or shared the country with each other). These tribes, most of them now known only to specialists, once made the hearts of the rulers of Rome and Constantinople tremble. Then the Huns reigned here, but they were driven out by the end of the 5th century AD. e. Gepids, Ostrogoths, Rugians and Squiri.
It was from Pannonia that the leader of the union of the Rugians and Squiri, Odoacer, went to Italy and, after many victories over the powerless empire, deposed the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus. So Pannonia still “took revenge” from Rome - not even five centuries had passed. Later, Pannonia was the center of the Avar power, founded by newcomers from Central Asia in the 6th century. At the beginning of the 9th century, the army of Emperor Charlemagne came here, placing the baptized Kagan on the shaky Avar throne. Here the last Avars were dissolved by the Slavs. And here the Magyars included the local Slavs in their composition.
Arpad, the son of Almus, the leader of the strongest of the seven tribes, called "Medier", founded the Arpadovich dynasty, and the name of his tribe was adopted by all the people. But the formation of the Hungarian Kingdom did not yet put an end to the migration of more and more tribes to the land of Pannonia.
The Hungarian kings, having forgotten past grievances, accepted on their land in the 11th century the Pecheneg Turks, expelled from the Northern Black Sea region by their own relatives, the Cumans, also Turks in language. And two hundred years later, in the 13th century, the hospitable Danube valley also received a wave of Polovtsians who went west from the Mongol invasion (some of them later left Pannonia, moving to other lands, primarily to Bulgaria). Until now, among the Hungarian people, an ethnic group of their direct descendants stands out - the Palocians.
The nomads were probably attracted to the famous Hungarian steppe - Pashta, and the Hungarian kings also needed warriors to fight their own large vassals.
From century to century, the fertile land on the Middle Danube retained its attractiveness for more and more new peoples. How many roads that began in the center of Asia ended here, in the center of Europe!
At times, the Kingdom of Hungary became in size and influence one of the great powers of medieval Europe. Hungarian kings sometimes also occupied the thrones of Poland, Naples in Italy, and extended their influence to Czech, Romanian, Croatian, Ukrainian and Serbian lands.
At the beginning of the 16th century, part of the Magyar lands came under the rule of the Turkish Empire, later Hungary was part of the Habsburg Empire along with Austria and the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia, part of Ukraine and part of Serbia, etc.
Coexistence with other peoples as part of one power was reflected, of course, in the culture and language, and to some extent also in the appearance of the Magyars. But over the last millennium, the Magyars have not changed their homeland. And between the Yenisei and the Danube, archaeologists, linguists, anthropologists and historians together clarify the location of at least three ancestral homelands of the Magyars: Don, Volga and Ural, plus they are looking for traces of a fourth, even more ancient ancestral home, Central Asian or Western Siberian.
The migration of the Magyars began at the time, which is called the time of the Great Migration of Peoples, and ended at the end of this era.

From the second third of the 9th century. The Slavic population of the Don and the entire forest-steppe zone was attacked by the Magyars, whom the Slavs called Ugrians, the Arabs and Byzantines called Turks, and in Central and Western Europe they became known as Hungarians.

They were a people speaking a language belonging to the Finno-Ugric language family. The ancestral home of the Magyars - Great Hungary - was in Bashkiria, where back in 1235 the Dominican monk Julian discovered people whose language was close to Hungarian.

Having broken through between the Volga and Don rivers, the Magyars then settled in areas that in their legends are called Levedia (Swans) and Atelkuzy. Researchers usually believe that we are talking about the Lower Don and the Dniester-Dnieper interfluve, respectively.

The entire Magyar horde numbered no more than 100,000 people and, according to contemporaries, could field from 10,000 to 20,000 horsemen in the field. Nevertheless, it was very difficult to resist them. Even in Western Europe, which had recently defeated the Avars, the appearance of the Magyars caused panic. These nomads - short, with three braids on their shaved heads, dressed in animal skins, firmly sitting on their short but hardy horses - terrified with their very appearance. The best European armies, including the Byzantine, turned out to be powerless against the Magyars’ unusual military tactics. Emperor Leo the Wise (881 - 911) described it in detail in his military treatise. When setting out on a campaign, the Magyars always sent horse patrols ahead; during stops and overnight stays, their camp was also constantly surrounded by guards. They began the battle by showering the enemy with a cloud of arrows, and then with a swift raid they tried to break through the enemy formation. If they failed, they turned to feigned flight, and if the enemy succumbed to the trick and began pursuit, then the Magyars turned around at once and attacked the enemy’s battle formations with the whole horde; An important role was played by the reserve, which the Magyars never forgot to deploy. In pursuit of the defeated enemy, the Magyars were tireless, and there was no mercy for anyone.

The dominance of the Magyars in the Black Sea steppes lasted for about half a century. In 890, a war broke out between Byzantium and the Danube Bulgarians. Emperor Leo the Wise attracted the Hungarians to his side, who crossed to the right bank of the Danube and, devastating everything in their path, reached the walls of the Bulgarian capital Preslava. Tsar Simeon asked for peace, but secretly decided to take revenge. He persuaded the Pechenegs to attack the Hungarians. And so, when the Hungarian cavalry went on another raid (apparently against the Moravian Slavs), the Pechenegs attacked their nomads and massacred the few men and defenseless families remaining at home. The Pecheneg raid confronted the Hungarians with a demographic catastrophe that threatened their very existence as a people. Their first concern was to fill the lack of women. They moved beyond the Carpathians and in the fall of 895 settled in the valley of the upper Tisza, from where they began to carry out annual raids on the Pannonian Slavs in order to capture women and girls. Slavic blood helped the Hungarians survive and continue their family line.

Prince Arpad's crossing of the Carpathians. The cyclorama was written for the 1000th anniversary of the conquest of Hungary by the Magyars.

Magyar rule made us remember the times of the Avar yoke. Ibn Ruste compared the position of the Slavic tribes subordinate to the Magyars with the position of prisoners of war, and Gardizi called them slaves obliged to feed their masters. In this regard, G.V. Vernadsky makes an interesting comparison between the Hungarian word dolog - “work”, “labor” and the Russian word “debt” (meaning “duty”). According to the historian, the Magyars used the Slavs for “work”, which was their “duty” to perform - hence the different meaning of this word in Hungarian and Russian. Probably, the Hungarians borrowed the Slavic words for “slave” - rab and “yoke” - jarom ( Vernadsky G.V. Ancient Rus'. pp. 255 - 256).

Probably during the 9th century. The Slavic tribes of the Dnieper and Don regions also more than once experienced the heavy onslaught of the Hungarian cavalry. Indeed, “The Tale of Bygone Years” notes under 898: “the Ugrians marched past Kyiv along the mountain, which is now called Ugorskoe, and when they came to the Dnieper they stash with vezhas [tents]…”. However, upon closer examination, this fragmentary message is hardly credible. Firstly, the date of the invasion is incorrect: the Hungarians left the Lower Dnieper region for Pannonia no later than 894. Secondly, the lack of continuation of the story about the “standing” of the Ugrians near Kiev indicates that the chronicler-local historian in this case just wanted to explain the origin name Ugric, which actually goes back to the Slavic word eel- “high, steep bank of the river” ( Vasmer M. Etymological dictionary. T. IV. P. 146). Thirdly, it is not clear where the Ugrians could be heading, walking “past Kyiv by the mountain” (that is, up the Dnieper, along its right bank), not to mention the fact that, fleeing from the Pechenegs, they moved from their Atelkuza by no means to north, and straight to the west - into the Pannonian steppes.

The last circumstance again makes us suspect that the chronicler here, too, timed a legend relating to one of the Dnieper to the historical reality of Kyiv on the Dnieper. In a more complete form, it can be read in the “Acts of the Hungarians” (an unnamed chronicle written at the court of King Béla III in 1196 - 1203), where it is said that the Hungarians, retreating from Atelkuza, “reached the region of the Rus and, without meeting any or resistance, marched all the way to the city of Kyiv. And when we passed through the city of Kyiv, crossing (on ferries. - S. Ts.) the Dnieper River, they wanted to subjugate the kingdom of the Rus. Having learned about this, the leaders of the Rus were greatly frightened, for they heard that the leader Almos, the son of Yudjek, was descended from the family of King Attila, to whom their ancestors paid an annual tribute. However, the Kiev prince gathered all his nobles, and after consulting, they decided to start a battle with the leader Almosh, wanting to die in battle rather than lose their kingdom and, against their will, submit to the leader Almosh.” The battle was lost by the Russians. And “the leader Almosh and his warriors, having won, subjugated the lands of the Rus and, taking their estates, in the second week went to attack the city of Kyiv.” Local rulers considered it best to submit to Almos, who demanded that they give “him their sons as hostages”, pay “ten thousand marks in the form of an annual tax” and, in addition, provide “food, clothing and other necessary things” - horses “ with saddles and bits" and camels "for transporting goods." The Russes submitted, but on the condition that the Hungarians leave Kyiv and go “to the west, to the land of Pannonia,” which was fulfilled.

In Hungary, this legend was obviously intended to justify Hungarian dominance over the “kingdom of the Rus,” that is, over the subordinate region of the Carpathian Rusyns, thanks to which the heir to the Hungarian throne bore the title “Duke of the Rus.”

In view of all this, we can say that the period of Magyar domination in the Northern Black Sea region passed almost without a trace for early Russian history.
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Hungarians (self-name Magyars) are a people in Central Europe, the main population of Hungary (9.02 million people, 2004), also live in Romania (1.47 million), Slovakia (574 thousand), Serbia (357 thousand), Ukraine (156 thousand, the vast majority in the Transcarpathian region). In the United States, 997 thousand people are considered descendants of immigrants from Hungary. In the Russian Federation, 2.78 thousand Hungarians were registered (2010). The total number of Hungarians in the world is estimated at 12 million people (2004). The Hungarian language is spoken by the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic family. Dialects: Western Transdanubian, Southern (Alfeldian), Tisskiy (Danube-Tisskiy), Palotskiy (northwestern), Northeastern, Mezzeszegskiy (Zakirayhagskiy), Székely. Writing since the 10th century based on Latin script. Believers are mostly Catholics, there are Calvinists and a small number of Lutherans.

The Ugric tribes of semi-nomadic pastoralists, whose homeland is considered to be the region east of the Urals, presumably moved to the Kama basin in the first millennium AD, then to the Black Sea and Azov steppes and for a long time were under the rule of the Turkic tribes of the Onogurs and Proto-Bulgarians. The ethnonym “Ugrians” originated from the Onogur tribe. In 895-896, the Ugrians crossed the Carpathians and occupied lands in the Middle Danube basin - the so-called “Finding of a Homeland”. Here there was a transition to a sedentary lifestyle and agriculture. At the beginning of the 11th century, the Hungarian state arose, and Catholicism was adopted at the same time.

In the Middle Ages, Latin and later German were the official languages ​​of Hungary: the Hungarian language included many terms of German and Latin origin. In the 16th century, after the establishment of Ottoman rule over the southern and central regions of Hungary, many Hungarians moved to the north and east. After the Austro-Turkish War of 1683-1699 and the suppression of the liberation movement of 1703-1711, the ethnic territory of the Hungarians came under Habsburg rule as part of the Kingdom of Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania. The Austrian government resettled colonists, mostly German, to Hungary. The formation of Austria-Hungary in 1867 did not eliminate national contradictions. During this period, the Magyarization of some non-Hungarian groups, especially Germans and Slovaks, took place. In 1918, Hungary became an independent state.

The complex ethnic history and natural conditions of various regions of the country gave rise to the formation of local subethnic and ethnographic groups that emerged mainly by the beginning of the 18th century and retained their characteristics for a long time. Living in the northern mountainous part of Hungary, the Paloczi ethnic groups (between the cities of Balassagyarmat and Salgotaryan) and Matyo (inhabiting the area centered in the city of Mezekövesd, received their name from King Matthias, who endowed them with lands) are famous for the art of embroidery on leather and linen. To the west of Budapest there lives a group of Sharkez, distinguished for their decorative arts and clothing. In the west of the Transdanubia region, in the Middle Ages, ethnographic groups of the regions of Khetes and Gecey were formed, whose material culture has many similarities with the neighboring Slovenes. Between Raba and the Danube live the ethnic group of the Rabakez region. The descendants of the Cumans - the Cumans (Kuns), who moved to Hungary under the onslaught of the Tatar-Mongols in 1239, and the Yases (close in origin to the Ossetians) received land from the Hungarian kings in the areas of Yassag, Kiskunsag and Nagykunsag. They adopted the Hungarian language and culture. In the vicinity of the city of Debrecen, a sub-ethnic group of Haiduks was formed. In the southeast of Transylvania (Romania) live the Szekely Hungarians, who have preserved legends about their Hunnic origin; some scientists consider them descendants of the Pechenegs. A number of groups that separated from the Székelys at different times are united under the name Chango.

The main place in the traditional economy of the Hungarians belonged to cattle breeding, and since the 19th century it gave way to agriculture. Extensive pastoralism (cattle, sheep) was developed on the plains of the eastern part of the country - Alfeld, in particular in the Hortobágy steppe. Horse breeding has a long tradition, mainly in the south of the country. Pig farming is developed everywhere. Economic and cultural contacts of the Hungarians with the Turkic-speaking proto-Bulgarians, and later with the Slavs, played a major role in the development of agriculture. This is evidenced by numerous Turkic and Slavic borrowings in the agricultural vocabulary of the Hungarian language. The main food crop is wheat. Since the 17th and 18th centuries, corn has also been cultivated - the main feed crop. Potatoes have been grown since the 18th century. Viticulture and winemaking (the most famous wine-growing region is the Tokaj Upland in the northeast), horticulture and vegetable growing have long traditions. There are a variety of folk crafts - processing of flax and hemp, embroidery, lace weaving, weaving, pottery, tanning and dressing of leather, etc. In modern folk arts and crafts there is a noticeable desire to preserve old local traditions.

The main forms of settlements for a long time were large villages (falu, kezsheg) and farmsteads (tanya), especially in the east of the country. Along with the cities that arose in the Middle Ages (Buda, Gyor, Pecs), the so-called agricultural cities (mezevarosi) were formed: the Alföld cities of Cegled, Kecskemet, Hodmezevasarhely. The majority of the population of these cities were formerly peasants. In the 20th century, the difference between the two types of cities was largely erased. Traditional forms of housing vary in different parts of the country. In the past, houses were often built with earthen walls, in some places (in Alfeld) with reed walls coated with clay. Wooden buildings predominated among the Székelys, Palocies and in the western Transdanubia region.

The traditional clothing of Hungarians is very diverse. Women wore wide gathered skirts, often worn over several petticoats, short shirts with wide sleeves, and bright sleeveless vests (prusliks). They could only appear in public wearing headdresses - caps and scarves. The men's suit consisted of a canvas shirt, vest and linen trousers (gatya). Among the headdresses, fur hats and straw hats predominated. Men's outerwear - a simple-cut cloth coat (guba), an embroidered cloak (sur), a long fur cape (fur coat).

Traditional forms of costume have been supplanted by urban clothing, but in nutrition the traditions are stable. Hungarians eat a lot of meat, vegetables (cabbage, tomatoes), flour products (noodles, dumplings), seasonings (black and red pepper - paprika, onions). The most famous dishes are goulash (thick meat soup with onions and red pepper), perkelt (meat stew in tomato sauce), paprikash (chicken stew with red pepper), turoshchusa (noodles with cottage cheese and cracklings). Among the alcoholic drinks, grape wine and fruit vodka palinka predominate.

The modern family is small; in the past, a large patriarchal family was common. In traditional spiritual culture, calendar and family rituals, elements associated with pre-Christian beliefs remain - traces of totemism, magic, shamanism, and some characteristic mythologies can be traced. Folklore includes songs and ballads (about batty robbers), fairy tales (magical, comic), historical legends, and proverbs. Hungarian folk music is unique. In the songs of the “old style”, features characteristic of the musical creativity of the peoples of the Volga region are noticeable. The music of the “new style” developed under Western European influence. The famous Hungarian dances are Verbunkos and Csardas.

The question of where the name that its neighbors give to the people comes from is always a subject of debate among scientists. The name that representatives of the people give themselves is usually shrouded in no less mystery.

This article provides some information about what the European people of Magyars, who are the state-forming people in Hungary, call themselves and what other European nations call them, as well as interesting facts from the history of the centuries-old wanderings of the Hungarian people, their relationships with various states and the creation of their own country.

The article also contains a brief description of the national culture of Hungary and its traditions, that is, it contains the answer to the question: “Who are the Magyars?”

Middle name

There are a great many examples of the parallel existence of two or more names of the same nation.

So the tribes of Celts who lived in the Middle Ages on the territory of modern France were called Gauls by the inhabitants of the Roman Empire. The name Germany also comes from Latin. The indigenous people of this country themselves call each other “Deutsch”.

The name "Germans" has Russian roots. This is how all people who spoke foreign, incomprehensible languages ​​were called in ancient Rus'.

The same thing happened to the Chinese people. The Chinese themselves call their nation “Han”. The Russian name “Chinese” is the Russified name of the dynasty that ruled China during the first visits of Russian travelers to this country.

The word "China", which is used in English, originated in a similar way. European merchants first came to the Chinese Empire when rulers from the Chin dynasty were in power.

What are Magyars?

As for the history of the origin of the Magyars and the name of this people, the existence of many names for them is due to the fact that for many centuries the Hungarians led a nomadic life, every now and then, moving to a new place. They either found themselves conquered by other tribes, or they themselves acted as conquerors. Contacting other peoples, each of whom gave this tribe a name corresponding to the rules of phonetics of a given language, they moved forward from the banks of the Volga River to the place of their current residence.

Thus, Magyars are the name of the Hungarians, which they themselves use.

Language will bring you to Kyiv...

Despite the significant geographical distance that this people had to go through in the process of long migration, the Magyars' language remained unchanged. And today Hungarians speak the same language of their ancestors, which was adopted in ancient times in the Volga region. This language belongs to the Finno-Ugric group of Indo-European languages. The closest relatives of the Magyar language are the languages ​​spoken today by the Khanty and Mansi peoples living on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Of course, with such a long existence in conditions of nomadic life, he could not help but absorb some elements of foreign languages. It is known that most of the borrowings in the Hungarian language have Turkic roots. The reason for this was that in the Middle Ages the Hungarians were constantly raided by various nomadic Turkic tribes, including the Khazars, who repeatedly attacked Rus'.

Bashkirs are relatives of the Magyars

It is interesting that in medieval Persian chronicles there is a mention of the Magyars, who are also called Bashkirs in the same documents. Historians believe that the ancient Hungarians could well have been pushed back by the Pecheneg tribes from their ancestral territory to the area where modern Bashkiria is located. In Hungary itself, even in the thirteenth century, oral folk traditions were preserved that in ancient times their people lived in other lands and had their own state, called Great Hungary.

This country was located in the Urals. Modern historians say that the hypothesis of the origin of the Bashkirs from the peoples of the Ugric group sounds quite plausible. The Bashkirs could change their language to the current one, belonging to the Turkic group, after the migration of part of the people to the Black Sea region.

Another relocation

After leaving the Urals, the Magyars settled in an area called Levadia. This territory was occupied by various tribes before them, including those of Slavic origin. It is possible that it was at this time that the European name for the Magyars - Hungarians - appeared.

Over many years of wanderings and military conflicts with neighboring tribes, the Magyars turned into skilled warriors. It happened that countries with which the Hungarians had established trade relations turned to them with the aim of using them as mercenary soldiers.

The long-term military alliance of the Magyars with the Khazars is known, when the Khazar king sent Magyars troops, first to pacify the rebel inhabitants of one of the cities under his control in the Crimea, and then to war with the Pechenegs in the territory where the Hungarian state was later formed.

Traditional activities

A few words should be said about the culture of the Magyars and their traditional activities.

This will help to better understand the question “who are the Magyars?”

In the Middle Ages, when the tribes of the ancient Magyars lived in the Volga region, their traditional activities were fishing and hunting. In this they differed little from all other Ugric tribes. Later, during the time of their resettlement, one of the main occupations of the Hungarians became military raids on peoples less developed in terms of the manufacture of weapons and military craft. When the Hungarians settled in the current territory, their sedentary lifestyle allowed them to engage in cattle breeding and agriculture. Hungarians are known as excellent horse breeders, as well as experienced winemakers. In the twentieth century, a powerful leap in the development of technology allowed many Hungarians to leave agricultural work and find employment in the manufacturing sector. According to the latest Hungarian census, most of the country's citizens live in large and small cities.

The most popular occupation among modern Magyars has become work in the service sector and production work.

Costume

The national women's costume of the Hungarians consists of a short linen shirt with wide sleeves. Also, the national women's clothing of this country is characterized by spacious skirts, and in some areas they even wore several skirts. Mandatory elements of a traditional men's suit are a shirt, a narrow vest and trousers. The headgear most often used was a straw hat in the summer and a fur cap in the winter. The appearance of women in public without a headdress was considered unacceptable.

Therefore, Hungarian women always wore scarves or caps. This style of clothing is typical for many peoples of Transcarpathia. Bram Stoker describes well what kind of people the Magyars are, the folk traditions and life of this people in his famous novel “Dracula”.

Many sources indicate that the most striking feature of the national mentality of the Hungarians is their pride in the fact that they belong to this particular nationality.

Musicians and poets

Speaking about the folk culture and art of the Magyars, it is worth mentioning the numerous forms of oral creativity: these are lyrical ballads and folk tales about brave warriors, which exist in both poetic and prose forms. Thus, the Magyars are a very gifted people from a poetic point of view.

Musical works also gained worldwide fame. Created by the Hungarian people. The most famous Hungarian national dances, which have become popular far beyond the country's borders, are the Csardas and Verbunkos.

The Magyars are a highly musical nation.

In Hungarian works of musical culture one can hear echoes of the influence of the musical traditions of other peoples, including Gypsy, French and German music.