Hungarian Conquest of the Carpathian Basin (c. 895): Árpád

The Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin was the migration of the Magyar tribes, led by Árpád, across the Carpathian Mountains around 895 and their occupation of the plains of the middle Danube over the following decade. Known in Hungarian as the honfoglalás, the “taking of the homeland”, it created the territorial core of the later Kingdom of Hungary and introduced a non-Indo-European language into the heart of Europe that is still spoken there today.

Who the Magyars were

The Magyars spoke a Uralic language, related distantly to Finnish and Estonian and more closely to the Khanty and Mansi languages of western Siberia. Over centuries on the Eurasian steppe, however, they absorbed much from Turkic-speaking neighbours, including many loanwords, a mounted nomadic way of life and a style of warfare based on horse archers. Byzantine writers often called them “Turks”.

By the 9th century they lived in the steppe between the Dnieper and the lower Danube, a region the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus called Atelkouzou (Etelköz in Hungarian). They formed an alliance of seven tribes, joined by three tribes of Kabars who had broken away from the Khazar Khaganate. The confederation probably had a dual leadership: a sacral ruler, the kende, and a military leader, the gyula.

Magyar warriors were already active in central Europe before the conquest. The Annals of Saint-Bertin record raiders called Ungri in East Francia in 862, and in 892 the East Frankish king Arnulf of Carinthia hired Magyar warriors against Svatopluk I of Great Moravia.

Causes of the move west

The immediate trigger was a war in the Balkans. In 894 the Byzantine emperor Leo VI, at war with Simeon I of Bulgaria, persuaded the Magyars to attack the Bulgarians from the north. The Magyars, carried across the Danube on Byzantine ships, won several victories, but Simeon the Great made peace with Byzantium and allied with the Pechenegs, another steppe people living east of the Magyars.

Around 895 the Pechenegs and Bulgarians struck the Magyar homeland while many warriors were away, according to Constantine VII. The surviving Magyars abandoned Etelköz and moved west across the Carpathians. The Carpathian Basin was an attractive refuge: it had good pasture, and political power there was fragmented between Moravia, the East Frankish kingdom, Bulgaria and local Slavic and Avar remnants.

Course of the conquest

The crossing itself is poorly documented. Medieval Hungarian tradition places it at the Verecke Pass in the northeastern Carpathians, while some historians think different groups used several passes, including routes through Transylvania. The Magyars first settled east of the Danube, in the Great Hungarian Plain and the upper Tisza region.

In 899 the Magyars raided northern Italy and defeated King Berengar I at the Brenta River on 24 September 899. The death of Arnulf in December 899 removed the main Frankish power in the region, and around 900 the Magyars occupied Pannonia, the land west of the Danube. Great Moravia collapsed under their attacks in the first decade of the 10th century and disappears from the sources after about 906.

The Bavarians tried to reverse the conquest. On 4 July 907 a large Bavarian army was destroyed near Brezalauspurc, usually identified with Pressburg (modern Bratislava). Margrave Luitpold of Bavaria and Archbishop Theotmar of Salzburg were among the dead. After this defeat the Carpathian Basin was firmly in Magyar hands.

Key people

• Álmos: Árpád’s father and, according to later Hungarian chronicles, the leader who began the migration. The 13th-century Gesta Hungarorum says he died before the conquest was complete, but the details are legendary.
• Árpád: the chieftain most closely associated with the conquest and founder of the Árpád dynasty. Whether he was kende or gyula is debated.
• Kurszán: a leader recorded in Frankish sources, probably the kende, killed by the Bavarians in 904 at a banquet to which he had been invited.
• Leo VI and Simeon I: the Byzantine emperor and the Bulgarian ruler whose war set the migration in motion.

Sources and archaeology

No Magyar wrote about the conquest at the time. The main contemporary or near-contemporary sources are Frankish chronicles such as the Annals of Fulda and Regino of Prüm, and Constantine VII’s De Administrando Imperio, written around 950 with information from Magyar envoys. The Rus Primary Chronicle also records “Ugrians” passing Kiev on their way west.

The best-known Hungarian accounts are much later. The Gesta Hungarorum by an anonymous royal notary, known as Anonymus, was written around 1200, and Simon of Kéza’s Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum in the 1280s. They contain valuable traditions but also invented episodes and anachronisms, so historians use them with caution.

Archaeology adds a great deal. Conquest-period cemeteries contain warriors buried with sabres, composite bows, arrowheads, stirrups and harness fittings, sometimes with the skull and leg bones of a horse. Silver plates from sabretaches (belt pouches), decorated with palmettes and other motifs, are among the finest finds. Genetic studies of these burials suggest a mixed population with links to both the steppe and the existing inhabitants of the basin.

The number of people who arrived is unknown. Estimates have ranged from well under 100,000 to several hundred thousand, and historians treat all of them as rough guesses.

Consequences

The conquest permanently separated the western and southern Slavs and ended Great Moravia. For about half a century the new settlers used the basin as a base for raids deep into Germany, Italy, France and the Balkans, until their defeat by Otto I at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955.

After Lechfeld the Árpád princes turned to consolidation. Prince Géza invited Christian missionaries, and his son Stephen was crowned the first king of Hungary in 1000 or 1001, beginning the Christian kingdom described in Stephen I of Hungary.

Legacy and the millennium of 1896

The conquest became the founding story of the Hungarian nation. In the 1890s parliament chose 896 as the official year for the millennium, and Budapest celebrated in 1896 with Heroes’ Square, the Millennium Underground Railway and a great exhibition. Árpád Feszty’s panorama painting Arrival of the Hungarians, about 120 metres long, was completed in 1894 for the occasion and is now displayed at Ópusztaszer, where Anonymus placed an assembly of the conquering chiefs.

Some popular myths do not stand up. Medieval chroniclers claimed the Magyars were descendants of Attila’s Huns returning to their inheritance; there is no evidence for this, although the idea long remained popular. The date 896 is also a convention rather than a recorded fact.

Timeline

• 862: First recorded Magyar raid in East Francia, noted in the Annals of Saint-Bertin.
• 892: Arnulf of Carinthia employs Magyar warriors against Great Moravia.
• 894: At Byzantine request, the Magyars attack Bulgaria.
• c. 895: Pechenegs and Bulgarians strike Etelköz; the Magyars cross the Carpathians.
• 899, 24 September: Magyars defeat Berengar I at the Brenta in Italy.
• c. 900: Magyars occupy Pannonia after the death of Arnulf.
• 904: Kurszán is killed by the Bavarians.
• 907, 4 July: Bavarian army destroyed near Pressburg.
• 1896: Hungary celebrates the millennium of the conquest.

Why it matters

The honfoglalás explains why a people speaking a Uralic language live in central Europe and why the Hungarian state took the shape it did for the next thousand years. It reshaped the political map between the Frankish and Byzantine worlds and remains a cornerstone of Hungarian identity.