The Early Magyars in the Jayhani tradition. Reflections on István Zimonyi's book "Muslim sources on rhe Magyars". Second, revised edition. Budapest 2021.. (original) (raw)
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The Jayhani Traditon contains the most detailed description of the Magyars/Hungarians before the Conquest of the Carpathian Basin (895) Unfortunately, the book itself was lost and it can be recunstructed from late Arabic, Persian and Turkic copies. The reconstruction is primary based on the texts of al-Marwazi, Ibn Rusta and Gardizi. The original texthas a shorter and longer versions. The basic text was reformed at least twice and the later copyists adde further emmendation. Tis study focuses on the philological comments and historical interpretation of the Magyar chapter, integrating the results in the fields of medieval Islamic studies, the medieval history of Eurasian steppe, and the historiography of early hungarian history.
It is quite unconceivable that we have accounts of all ethnic movements from the East to the Eastern and Central Europe, except the most important one: that of the Hungarians. Scholarship overemphasised the Magyar tribe, which was actually only one of the ethnic groups contributing to the making of the nation, and disregarded the tribal union called the Onogurs or Black Ogurs. We know deeds of the Black Ogurs and their federal partners White Ogurs from the year 463 on. This union represented a conglomerate structure of three kinds of people of the same root: the Magyars proper, the Bulgaro-Turks and the Common Turks. The White Ogurs were expelled by the Avars from the Caspian steppes to Galicia. The Black Ogurs, who had settled to the north of the White wing, remained at home for more than four centuries. The Magyar tribe flourished in those days to become the most crowded tribe of the union. But it was only in the late Medieval that they spread their name to the entire comrade population, and the name Onogur replaced with Magyar at home. Other people, however, have continued to call them as 'Onogurs' by this time.
A new Muslim source on the Hungarians in the second half of tenth century
2004
The tenth century was the golden age of the Muslim culture. The political centers of the Islamic civilizations such as Buchara in the East, Baghdad and Cairo in the central regions, and Cordova in the West had developed high scientific and literary levels. The neighboring and even remote non-Muslim lands were also well known if they were parts of the worldwide commercial system. Europe was in close contact with Muslim Spain, while Eastern Europe stood in the middle of the area of interest of the Samanids and Baghdad. The Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin attracted attention from both ends of the Muslim world. The Samanid wazir, al-Űayhání, preserved a discourse on the Hungarians before they conquered the Carpathian Basin. 1 In the tenth century the cartographer al-Balhi and his followers al-Istahri and Ibn Hauqal 2 and the traveler al-Mas'üdl 3 gave accounts of the Hungarians. Most of this information reached Andalusia, as is attested in the Andalusian author al-Bakri's geographical chapters on the Hungarians based on the books of al-Gayhani and al-Mas'üdl. The work of al-Bakri, entitled The Book of Routes and Kingdoms, was published in parts until recently. In the 1970s Károly Czeglédy discovered a new Andalusian Muslim source concerning 1 T. Lewicki, trôdla arabskie do dziejôw slowianszczyzny. [Arabic sources on the history of the Slavs] T. 2/2. Wroclaw-Warszawa-Kraköw 1977, 32-35, 94-107; H. Göckenjan-I. Zimonyi, Orientalische Berichte über die Völker Osteuropas und Zentralasiens im Mittelalter.
Eastern Muslim Groups among Hungarians in the Middle Ages / Erdal Çoban - Bilig 63. Sayı – Güz 2012
The role of Islam in Hungarian history dates back before the Ottoman reign. The first written records about the 9 th and 10 th century Hungarians belong to Muslim writers who brought these up on the scene of history with their own ethnic names. In the light of Garnati and other sources, we can designate that there were two Khwarezmian ethnic groups, respectively the Turkified Chwalisians and the As people among Hungarians and these groups joined Hungarians before the Magyar conquest (896) of Hungary. Out of these groups, which were called Ishmaelite or böszörmény by Hungarian sources, especially the Chwalisians later continued to migrate to Hungary together with various Turkic tribes during the medieval period. The Chwalisians undertook significant posts in administrative and financial fields while, at the same time, they became a part of Hungarian army like the As people.
Texts on the Early Hungarians in the Ǧayhānī tradition
The Arabist: Budapest Studies in Arabic
The work under review deals with an account of the Magyars in the ninth and tenth centuries, mainly before their arrival and final settlement in their present-day habitat in Central Europe. It is part of a succinct description of the peoples of Eastern Europe which has come down to us in several, slightly differing versions in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. It is generally assumed that they all derive from an Arabic work composed by the wazīr Ǧayhānī in Buḫārā in the Sāmānid Emirate around the beginning of the tenth century, the original of which has not survived. The present work is the English translation of a volume originally published in Hungarian in 2005 (Zimonyi 2005a). It was also published in German in 2006 (Zimonyi 2006). It deals first with the Ǧayhānī tradition, presenting an account of Ǧayhānī's person, his activities, his sources and the works which preserved his account of Eastern Europe. Then follow the versions of the Magyar chapter in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, accompanied by English translations. An interpretation of the contents of the Magyar chapter follows sentence by sentence, with a detailed philological analysis, in essay form, of the questions involved. Finally, the author offers a tentative reconstruction of the original textin English translationwith a