Pontic–Caspian steppe
The Pontic–Caspian steppe, or Pontic steppe is the vast steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea as far east as the Caspian Sea, from Moldova and eastern Ukraine across the North Caucasus Federal District, Southern Federal District and the Volga Federal District of Russia to western Kazakhstan, forming part of the larger Eurasian steppe, adjacent to the Kazakh steppe to the east. It is a part of the Palearctic temperate grasslands and shrublands ecoregion of the temperate grasslands and shrublands biome; the area corresponds to Cimmeria and Sarmatia of classical antiquity. Across several millennia the steppe was used by numerous tribes of nomadic horsemen, many of which went on to conquer lands in the settled regions of Europe and in western and southern Asia; the term Ponto-Caspian region is used in biogeography for plants and animals of these steppes, animals from the Black and Azov seas. Genetic research has identified this region as the most probable place where horses were first domesticated.
According to a theory, called Kurgan hypothesis in Indo-European studies, the Pontic–Caspian steppe was the homeland of the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, these same speakers were the original domesticators of the horse. The Pontic steppe covers an area of 994,000 square kilometres of Europe, extending from Dobrudja in the northeastern corner of Bulgaria and southeastern Romania, across southern Moldova, through Russia to northwestern Kazakhstan to the Ural Mountains; the Pontic steppe is bounded by the East European forest-steppe to the north, a transitional zone of mixed grasslands and temperate broadleaf and mixed forests. To the south, the Pontic steppe extends to the Black Sea, except the Crimean and western Caucasus mountains' border with the sea, where the Crimean Submediterranean forest complex defines the southern edge of the steppes; the steppe extends to the western shore of the Caspian Sea in the Dagestan region of Russia, but the drier Caspian lowland desert lies between the Pontic steppe and the northwestern and northern shores of the Caspian.
The Kazakh Steppe bounds the Pontic steppe on the southeast. The Ponto-Caspian seas are the remains of the Turgai Sea, an extension of the Paratethys which extended south and east of the Urals and covering much of today's West Siberian Plain in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Linear Pottery culture 5500–4500 BC Cucuteni-Trypillian culture 5300–2600 BC Khvalynsk culture 5000-3500 BC Sredny Stog culture 4500–3500 BC Yamna/Kurgan culture 3500–2300 BC Catacomb culture 3000–2200 BC Srubna culture 1600–1200 BC Novocherkassk culture 900–650 BC Cimmerians 12th–7th centuries BC Dacians 11th century BC – 3rd century AD Scythians 8th–4th centuries BC Sarmatians 5th century BC – 5th century AD Ostrogoths 3rd–6th centuries Huns and Avars 4th–8th centuries Bulgars 4th–7th century Alans 5th–11th centuries Eurasian Avars 6th–8th centuries Göktürks 6th–8th centuries Sabirs 6th–8th centuries Khazars 6th–11th centuries Pechenegs 8th–11th centuries Kipchaks and Cumans 11th–13th centuries Mongol Golden Horde 13th–15th centuries Cossacks, Crimean Khanate, Volga Tatars and other Turkic states and tribes 15th–18th centuries Pontic Greeks and Caucasus Greeks 15th–19th centuries Russian Empire 18th–20th centuries Soviet Union 20th century Moldova, Russian Federation, Ukraine 20th–21st centuries "Pontic steppe".
Terrestrial Ecoregions. World Wildlife Fund. Google maps: Pontic-Caspian steppe
Zoltán of Hungary
Zoltán Zolta, is mentioned in the Gesta Hungarorum as the third Grand Prince of the Hungarians who succeeded his father Árpád around 907. Although modern historians tend to deny this report on his reign, because other chronicles do not list him among the Hungarian rulers, there is consensus that if Zoltán never ascended the throne, all monarchs ruling in Hungary from the House of Árpád after around 955 were descended from him. Modern historians' main source of Zoltán's life is the Gesta Hungarorum, a late 12th-century chronicle whose writer is now known as Anonymous. According to this source, Zoltán was the only son of Grand Prince of the Hungarians. In contrast, the nearly contemporary Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus writes that "Zaltas" was Árpád's fourth son. Zoltán's name derived from the Arabian sultan title with Turkic mediation, but modern scholars have not unanimously accepted this etymology. According to Anonymous, Zoltán was born after 903, during his father's second campaign against Menumorut.
The latter was one of the many local rulers who are mentioned in the Gesta Hungarorum among the opponents of the Hungarians during their conquest of the Carpathian Basin. In the Gesta Hungarorum's narration, Menumorot was forced to surrender and to give his daughter in marriage to Zoltán in 904 or 905; when Menumorut died, Zoltán inherited his father-in-law's duchy east of the river Tisza, which Anonymous claims was inhabited by "the peoples that are called Kozár". Anonymous states that Zoltán, still a minor, succeeded his father who died around 907. Zoltán, in turn abdicated in favour of his son Taksony and died "in the third year of his son's reign", and his son Zolta succeeded, similar to his father in character but dissimilar in appearance. Prince Zolta was pale, with soft, blonde hair, of middling stature; some time when Zolta was thirteen, all the leading men of the realm by their common counsel and of their equal wish appointed rectors of the kingdom beneath the prince to mend through the guidance of customary law the conflicts and lawsuits of litigants.
Nowadays historians reject most details of Zoltán's life presented by Anonymous. For instance, the Hungarian historian Gyula Kristó says that Zoltán was born around 880 instead of around 903, his Romanian colleague Alexandru Madgearu writes that either Zoltán was born many years earlier than 903 or his marriage must have happened years after 904. Zoltán's father-in-law's identity is debated. Medievalist Pál Engel says that Menumorut is one of the "imaginary figures" invented by Anonymous in order to describe the conquering Hungarians' heroic wars against them. Historian Charles R. Bowlus writes that he was a Moravian ruler whose daughter's marriage with Zoltán symbolized the end of "Great Moravia". Medievalist Tudor Sălăgean says that Menumorut was a real person, the ruler of a one-time duchy inhabited by Romanians and many other peoples at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. Anonymous's statement that Zoltán succeeded his father as grand prince, or the idea that Zoltán ruled the federation of the Hungarian tribes have been challenged.
For instance, historian Sándor L. Tóth writes that Zoltán, being the youngest among Árpád's four sons, could hardly precede his elder brothers in the line of succession. Kristó says that other Hungarian chroniclers do not make mention of Zoltán's rule, implying that Anonymous only inserted Zoltán into the incompletely preserved list of the grand princes because he knew that all Hungarian monarchs from the House of Árpád descended from him; the following is a family tree presenting Zoltán's closest known relatives: *Whether Menumorut is an actual or an invented person is debated by modern scholars.**All grand princes and kings of Hungary descended from Taksony. Principality of Hungary
Byzantine–Bulgarian wars
The Byzantine–Bulgarian wars were a series of conflicts fought between the Byzantines and Bulgarians which began when the Bulgars first settled in the Balkan peninsula in the 5th century, intensified with the expansion of the Bulgarian Empire to the southwest after 680 AD. The Byzantines and Bulgarians continued to clash over the next century with variable success, until the Bulgarians, led by Krum, inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Byzantines. After Krum died in 814, his son Omurtag negotiated a thirty-year peace treaty. In 893, during the next major war, Simeon I, the Bulgarian emperor, defeated the Byzantines while attempting to form a large Eastern European Empire, but his efforts failed. In 971 John I Tzimiskes, the Byzantine emperor, subjugated much of the weakening Bulgarian Empire, facing wars with Russians, Pechenegs and Croatians and by defeating Boris II and capturing Preslav, the Bulgarian capital. Constantinople under Basil II conquered Bulgaria in 1018 as a result of the 1014 Battle of Kleidion.
There were rebellions against Byzantine rule from 1040 to 1041, in the 1070s and the 1080s, but these failed. In 1185, Theodore Peter and Ivan Asen started a revolt, the weakening Byzantine Empire, facing internal dynastic troubles of its own, was unable to prevent the revolt from being successful. After the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople in 1204, the Bulgarian emperor, tried to establish friendly relations with the crusaders, but the newly created Latin Empire spurned any offer of alliance with the Bulgarians; because of his cold reception, Kaloyan allied with the Nicaeans, one of the Byzantine states created after the fall of Constantinople, which reduced the crusaders' power in the area. Though his nephew Boril allied with the Latin Empire, Boril's successors sided with the Nicaeans, despite a few continuing attacks from them. After the Latin Empire collapsed, the Byzantines, taking advantage of a Bulgarian civil war, captured portions of Thrace, but the Bulgarian emperor Theodore Svetoslav retook these lands.
The Byzantine-Bulgarian relations continued to fluctuate until the Ottoman Turks captured the Bulgarian capital in 1393 and the Byzantine capital in 1453. The Byzantines and the Bulgarians first clashed when Khan Kubrat's youngest son Asparukh moved westward, occupying today's southern Bessarabia. Asparukh defeated the Byzantines under Constantine IV, who led a combined land and sea operation against the invaders and besieged their fortified camp in Ongala. Suffering from bad health, the emperor had to leave the army, which allowed itself to panic and be defeated by the Bulgarians. In 681 Constantine was forced to acknowledge the Bulgar state in Moesia and to pay protection money to avoid further inroads into Byzantine Thrace. Eight years Asparukh led a successful campaign against Byzantine Thrace. Tervel, first mentioned in the Byzantine texts in 704 when the deposed emperor Justinian II came to him and asked for his aid, supported Justinian in an attempted restoration to the Byzantine throne in exchange for friendship and his daughter in marriage.
With an army of 15,000 horsemen provided by Tervel, Justinian advanced on Constantinople and managed to gain entrance into the city in 705. The restored emperor executed his supplanters, the emperors Leontios and Tiberios III, alongside many of their supporters. Justinian rewarded Tervel with many gifts, the title of kaisar, which made him second only to the emperor and the first foreign ruler in Byzantine history to receive such a title, a territorial concession in northeastern Thrace, a region called Zagore. Whether Justinian's daughter Anastasia was married to Tervel as had been arranged is unknown. A mere three years Justinian II himself violated this arrangement and commenced military operations to recover the ceded area. Tervel routed him at the Battle of Anchialus in 708. In 711, faced by a serious revolt in Asia Minor, Justinian again sought the aid of Tervel but obtained only lukewarm support manifested in an army of 3,000. Outmaneuvered by the rebel emperor Philippicus, Justinian was captured and executed, while his Bulgar allies were allowed to retire to their country.
Tervel took advantage of the disorder in Byzantium to raid Thrace in 712, plundering as far as the vicinity of Constantinople. According to the chronological information of the Imennik, Tervel died in 715. However, the Byzantine Chronicler Theophanes the Confessor ascribes Tervel a role in an attempt to restore the deposed Emperor Anastasius II in 718 or 719. If Tervel did survive this long, he was the Bulgarian ruler who concluded a new treaty with Emperor Theodosius III in 716, he was the Bulgarian ruler who helped relieve the second Arab siege of Constantinople in 717–718 by land. According to Theophanes, the Bulgars slaughtered some 22,000 Arabs in the battle. After the death of Sevar, Bulgaria descended into a long period of crisis and unrest, while the Byzantines consolidated their positions. Between 756 and 775, the new Byzantine Emperor Constantine V led nine campaigns against his northern neighbour to establish a Byzantine border on the Danube. Due to the frequent change of rulers and the constant political crisis, Bulgaria was on the verge of destruction.
In his first campaign in 756, Constantine V was successful and managed to defeat the Bulgarians twice, but in 759, the Bulgarian Khan, defeated the Byzantine army comprehensively in the Battle of the Rishki Pass. Vinekh sought to make peace with the Byzantines but was ass
Barley
Barley, a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Barley has been used as animal fodder, as a source of fermentable material for beer and certain distilled beverages, as a component of various health foods, it is used in soups and stews, in barley bread of various cultures. Barley grains are made into malt in a traditional and ancient method of preparation. In 2016, barley was ranked fourth among grains in quantity produced behind maize and wheat; the Old English word for'barley' was bære, which traces back to Proto-Indo-European and is cognate to the Latin word farina "flour". The direct ancestor of modern English "barley" in Old English was the derived adjective bærlic, meaning "of barley"; the first citation of the form bærlic in the Oxford English Dictionary dates to around 966 CE, in the compound word bærlic-croft. The underived word bære survives in the north of Scotland as bere, refers to a specific strain of six-row barley grown there.
The word barn, which meant "barley-house", is rooted in these words. Barley is a member of the grass family, it is a diploid species with 14 chromosomes. The wild ancestor of domesticated barley, Hordeum vulgare subsp. Spontaneum, is abundant in grasslands and woodlands throughout the Fertile Crescent area of Western Asia and northeast Africa, is abundant in disturbed habitats and orchards. Outside this region, the wild barley is less common and is found in disturbed habitats. However, in a study of genome-wide diversity markers, Tibet was found to be an additional center of domestication of cultivated barley. Wild barley is the ancestor of domestic barley. Over the course of domestication, barley grain morphology changed moving from an elongated shape to a more rounded spherical one. Additionally, wild barley has distinctive genes and regulators with potential for resistance to abiotic or biotic stresses to cultivated barley and adaptation to climatic changes. Wild barley has a brittle spike. Domesticated barley has nonshattering spikes.
The nonshattering condition is caused by a mutation in one of two linked genes known as Bt1 and Bt2. The nonshattering condition is recessive, so varieties of barley that exhibit this condition are homozygous for the mutant allele; each plant gets a set of genes from both parents, so two copies of each gene are in every plant. If one gene copy is a nonworking mutant, but the other gene copy works, the mutation has no effect. Only when the plant is homozygous with both copies of the gene as nonworking mutants does the mutation show its effect by exhibiting the nonshattering condition. Domestication in barley is followed by the change of key phenotypic traits at the genetic level. Little is known about the genetic variation among domesticated and wild genes in the chromosomal regions. Spikelets are arranged in triplets. In wild barley, only the central spikelet is fertile; this condition is retained in certain cultivars known as two-row barleys. A pair of mutations result in fertile lateral spikelets to produce six-row barleys.
Recent genetic studies have revealed that a mutation in one gene, vrs1, is responsible for the transition from two-row to six-row barley. Two-row barley has a lower protein content than six-row barley, thus a more fermentable sugar content. High-protein barley is best suited for animal feed. Malting barley is lower protein which shows more uniform germination, needs shorter steeping, has less protein in the extract that can make beer cloudy. Two-row barley is traditionally used in English ale-style beers, with two-row malted summer barley being preferred for traditional German beers. Six-row barley is common in some American lager-style beers when adjuncts such as corn and rice are used. Hulless or "naked" barley is a form of domesticated barley with an easier-to-remove hull. Naked barley is an ancient food crop, but a new industry has developed around uses of selected hulless barley to increase the digestible energy of the grain for swine and poultry. Hulless barley has been investigated for several potential new applications as whole grain, for its value-added products.
These include flour for multiple food applications. In traditional classifications of barley, these morphological differences have led to different forms of barley being classified as different species. Under these classifications, two-row barley with shattering spikes is classified as Hordeum spontaneum K. Koch. Two-row barley with nonshattering spikes is classified as H. distichum L. six-row barley with nonshattering spikes as H. vulgare L. and six-row with shattering spikes as H. agriocrithon Åberg. Because these differences were driven by single-gene mutations, coupled with cytological and molecular evidence, most recent classifications treat these forms as a single species, H. vulgare L. VocabularyDON: Acronym for deoxynivalenol, a toxic byproduct of Fusarium head blight known as vomitoxin Heading date: A parameter in barley cultivation Lodging: The bending over of the stems near ground level Nutans: A designation for a variety with a lax ear, as opposed to'erectum' (with an erect ea
Pannonia
Pannonia was a province of the Roman Empire bounded north and east by the Danube, coterminous westward with Noricum and upper Italy, southward with Dalmatia and upper Moesia. Pannonia was located over the territory of the present-day western Hungary, eastern Austria, northern Croatia, north-western Serbia, northern Slovenia, western Slovakia and northern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Julius Pokorny believed the name Pannonia is derived from Illyrian, from the Proto-Indo-European root *pen-, "swamp, wet". Others believe that the name is related to the god of the nature and shepherds Pan and/or pan, the Proto-Slavic/Proto-Indo-European word for lord/master, which could mean Pan's Land or Land of the Master, more probable due the fact the Ionian fleet supplied Pannonia via the Black Sea and Danube, Panionium festivities were well known in the region to its Celtic, Adriatic Veneti and Scythian inhabitants. Pliny the Elder, in Natural History, places the eastern regions of the Hercynium jugum, the "Hercynian mountain chain", in Pannonia and Dacia.
He gives us some dramaticised description of its composition, in which the close proximity of the forest trees causes competitive struggle among them. He mentions its gigantic oaks, but he—if the passage in question is not an interpolated marginal gloss—is subject to the legends of the gloomy forest. He mentions unusual birds, which have feathers that "shine like fires at night". Medieval bestiaries named these birds the Ercinee; the impenetrable nature of the Hercynian Silva hindered the last concerted Roman foray into the forest, by Drusus, during 12–9 BC: Florus asserts that Drusus invisum atque inaccessum in id tempus Hercynium saltum patefecit. The first inhabitants of this area known to history were the Pannonii, a group of Indo-European tribes akin to Illyrians. From the 4th century BC, it was invaded by various Celtic tribes. Little is heard of Pannonia until 35 BC, when its inhabitants, allies of the Dalmatians, were attacked by Augustus, who conquered and occupied Siscia; the country was not, definitively subdued by the Romans until 9 BC, when it was incorporated into Illyricum, the frontier of, thus extended as far as the Danube.
In AD 6, the Pannonians, with the Dalmatians and other Illyrian tribes, engaged in the so-called Great Illyrian Revolt, were overcome by Tiberius and Germanicus, after a hard-fought campaign, which lasted for three years. After the rebellion was crushed in AD 9, the province of Illyricum was dissolved, its lands were divided between the new provinces of Pannonia in the north and Dalmatia in the south; the date of the division is unknown, most after AD 20 but before AD 50. The proximity of dangerous barbarian tribes necessitated the presence of a large number of troops, numerous fortresses were built on the bank of the Danube; some time between the years 102 and 107, between the first and second Dacian wars, Trajan divided the province into Pannonia Superior, Pannonia Inferior. According to Ptolemy, these divisions were separated by a line drawn from Arrabona in the north to Servitium in the south; the whole country was sometimes called the Pannonias. Pannonia Superior was under the consular legate, who had administered the single province, had three legions under his control.
Pannonia Inferior was at first under a praetorian legate with a single legion as the garrison. The frontier on the Danube was protected by the establishment of the two colonies Aelia Mursia and Aelia Aquincum by Hadrian. Under Diocletian, a fourfold division of the country was made: Pannonia Prima in the northwest, with its capital in Savaria / Sabaria, it included Upper Pannonia and the major part of Central Pannonia between the Raba and Drava, Pannonia Valeria in the northeast, with its capital in Sopianae, it comprised the remainder of Central Pannonia between the Raba and Danube, Pannonia Savia in the southwest, with its capital in Siscia, Pannonia Secunda in the southeast, with its capital in SirmiumDiocletian moved parts of today's Slovenia out of Pannonia and incorporated them in Noricum. In 324 AD, Constantine I enlarged the borders of Roman Pannonia to the east, annexing the plains of what is now eastern Hungary, northern Serbia and western Romania up to the limes that he created: the Devil's Dykes.
In the 4th-5th century, one of the dioceses of the Roman Empire was known as the Diocese of Pannonia. It had its capital in Sirmium and included all four provinces that were formed from historical Pannonia, as well as the provinces of Dalmatia, Noricum Mediterraneum and Noricum Ripense. During the Migrations Period in the 5th century, some parts of Pannonia was ceded to the Huns in 433 by Flavius Aetius, the magister militum of the Western Roman Empire. After the collapse of the Hunnic empire in 454, large numbers of Ostrogoths were settled by Marcian in the province as foederati; the Eastern Roman Empire controlled it for a time in the 6th century, a Byzantine province of Pannonia with its capital at Sirmium was temporarily restored, but it included only a small southeastern part of historical Pannonia. Afterwards, it was again invaded by the Avars in the 560s, the Slavs, who first settled c. 480s but became independent only from the 7th century, the Franks, who named a frontier march the March of Pannonia in the late 8th century.
The term Pannonia wa
Pechenegs
The Pechenegs or Patzinaks were a semi-nomadic Turkic people from Central Asia speaking the Pecheneg language which belonged to the Oghuz branch of Turkic language family. The Pechenegs were mentioned as Bjnak, Bjanak or Bajanak in medieval Arabic and Persian texts, as Be-ča-nag in Classical Tibetan documents, as Pačanak-i in works written in Georgian. Anna Komnene and other Byzantine authors referred to them as Patzinakitai. In medieval Latin texts, the Pechenegs were referred to as Bisseni or Bessi. East Slavic peoples use the terms Pečenegi or Pečenezi, while the Poles mention them as Pieczyngowie or Piecinigi; the Hungarian word for Pecheneg is besenyő. Three of the eight Pecheneg "provinces" or clans were collectively known as Kangars. According to Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, the Kangars received this denomination because "they are more valiant and noble than the rest" of the people "and, what the title Kangar signifies". For no Turkic word with similar meaning is known, Ármin Vámbéry connected the ethnonym to the Kirghiz words kangir and kani-kara, while Carlile Aylmer Macartney associated it with the Chagatai word gang.
Omeljan Pritsak proposed that the name had been a composite term deriving from the Tocharian word for stone and the Iranian ethnonym As. If the latter assumption is valid, the Kangars' ethnonym suggests that Iranian elements contributed to the formation of the Pecheneg people. Mahmud al-Kashgari, an 11th-century man of letters specialized in Turkic dialects argued that the language spoken by the Pechenegs was a variant of the Cuman and Oghuz idioms, he suggested that foreign influences on the Pechenegs gave rise to phonetical differences between their tongue and the idiom spoken by other Turkic peoples. Anna Komnene stated that the Pechenegs and the Cumans shared a common language. Although the Pecheneg language itself died out centuries ago, the names of the Pecheneg "provinces" recorded by Constantine Porphyrogenitus prove that the Pechenegs spoke a Turkic language; the Huns and Pechenegs are thought to have belonged to the same proto-Turkic group of languages as the modern Chuvash language.
Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos lists eight Pecheneg tribal groupings, four on each side of the Dnieper river, reflecting the bipartite left-right Turkic organization. These eight tribes were in turn divided into 40 sub-tribes clans. Constantine VI records the names of eight former tribal leaders who'd been leading the Pechenegs when they were expelled by the Khazars and Oghuzes. Golden, following Németh and Ligeti, proposes that each tribal name consists of two parts: the first part being an equine coat color, the other the tribal ruler's title; the first three tribes in the list below formed the Qangar/Kenger and were deemed "more valiant and noble than the rest". Paul Pelliot originated the proposal that the Book of Sui—a 7th-century Chinese work—preserved the earliest record on the Pechenegs; the book mentioned the Pei-ju people who had settled near the En-ch'u and A-lan peoples, to the east of Fu-lin. Victor Spinei emphasizes that the Pechenegs' association with the Pei-ju is "uncertain".
He proposes that an 8th-century Uighur envoy's report, which survives in Tibetan translation, contains the first certain reference to the Pechenegs. The report recorded an armed conflict between the Be-ča-nag and the Hor peoples in the region of the river Syr Darya. Ibn Khordadbeh, Mahmud al-Kashgari, Muhammad al-Idrisi, many other Muslim scholars agree that the Pechenegs belonged to the Turkic peoples; the Russian Primary Chronicle stated that the "Torkmens, Pechenegs and Polovcians" descended from "the godless sons of Ishmael, sent as a chastisement to the Christians". Omeljan Pritsak says that the Pechenegs' homeland was located between the Aral Sea and the middle course of the Syr Darya, along the important trade routes connecting Central Asia with Eastern Europe; the Orkhon inscriptions listed the Kangars among the subject peoples of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. The Turkic Khaganate collapsed in 744 which gave rise to a series of intertribal confrontations in the Eurasian steppes; the Karluks attacked the Oghuz Turks, forcing them to launch a westward migration towards the Pechenegs' lands.
The Uighur envoy's report testifies that the Oghuz and Pecheneg waged war against each other in the 8th century, most for the control of the trade routes. The Oghuz made an alliance with the Karluks and Kimaks and defeated the Pechenegs and their allies in a battle near the Lake Aral before 850, according to the 10th-century scholar, Al-Masudi. Most Pechenegs launched a new migration towards the Volga River, but some groups were forced to join the Oghuz; the latter formed the 19th tribe of the Oghuz tribal federation in the 11th century. The Pechenegs who left their homeland settled between the Volga rivers, their new territory was quite large, according to Muslim sources. Their territory bordered on the Khazars, Slavs and Ouzes; the Pechenegs sold their captives. The Khazars made an alliance with the Ouzes against the Pechenegs and they invaded the Pechenegs' land from two directions; the double attack forced the Pechenegs into a new westward migration. They marched across the Khazar Khaganate and expelled the Magyars
Attila
Attila called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in March 453. He was the leader of a tribal empire consisting of Huns and Alans among others, in Central and Eastern Europe. During his reign, he was one of the most feared enemies of the Eastern Roman Empires, he plundered the Balkans, but was unable to take Constantinople. His unsuccessful campaign in Persia was followed in 441 by an invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire, the success of which emboldened Attila to invade the West, he attempted to conquer Roman Gaul, crossing the Rhine in 451 and marching as far as Aurelianum before being defeated at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. He subsequently was unable to take Rome, he planned for further campaigns against the Romans, but died in 453. After Attila's death, his close adviser, Ardaric of the Gepids, led a Germanic revolt against Hunnic rule, after which the Hunnic Empire collapsed. There is no surviving first-hand account of Attila's appearance, but there is a possible second-hand source provided by Jordanes, who cites a description given by Priscus.
He was a man born into the world to shake the nations, the scourge of all lands, who in some way terrified all mankind by the dreadful rumors noised abroad concerning him. He was haughty in his walk, rolling his eyes hither and thither, so that the power of his proud spirit appeared in the movement of his body, he was indeed a lover of war, yet restrained in action, mighty in counsel, gracious to suppliants and lenient to those who were once received into his protection. Short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head. Many scholars have argued. Omeljan Pritsak considered Ἀττίλα a composite title-name which derived from Turkic *es, *t il, the suffix /a/.:444 The stressed back syllabic til assimilated the front member es, so it became *as.:444 It is a nominative, in form of attíl- with the meaning "the oceanic, universal ruler".:444 J. J. Mikkola connected it with Turkic āt.:216 As another Turkic possibility, H. Althof considered it was related to Turkish atli, or Turkish at and dil.:216 Maenchen-Helfen argues that Pritsak's derivation is "ingenious but for many reasons unacceptable",:387 while dismissing Mikkola's as "too farfetched to be taken seriously".:390 M. Snædal notes that none of these proposals has achieved wide acceptance.:215-216 Criticizing the proposals of finding Turkic or other etymologies for Attila, Doerfer notes that King George VI of England had a name of Greek origin, Süleyman the Magnificent had a name of Arabic origin, yet that does not make them Greeks or Arabs: it is therefore plausible that Attila would have a name not of Hunnic origin.:31-32 Historian Hyun Jin Kim, has argued that the Turkic etymology is "more probable".:30M.
Snædal, in a paper that rejects the Germanic derivation but notes the problems with the existing proposed Turkic etymologies, argues that Attila's name could have originated from Turkic-Mongolian at, adyy/agta and Turkish atli, meaning "possessor of geldings, provider of warhorses".:216-217 The historiography of Attila is faced with a major challenge, in that the only complete sources are written in Greek and Latin by the enemies of the Huns. Attila's contemporaries left many testimonials of his life, but only fragments of these remain.:25 Priscus was a Byzantine diplomat and historian who wrote in Greek, he was both a witness to and an actor in the story of Attila, as a member of the embassy of Theodosius II at the Hunnic court in 449. He was biased by his political position, but his writing is a major source for information on the life of Attila, he is the only person known to have recorded a physical description of him, he wrote a history of the late Roman Empire in eight books covering the period from 430 to 476.
Today we have only fragments of Priscus' work, but it was cited extensively by 6th-century historians Procopius and Jordanes,:413 in Jordanes' The Origin and Deeds of the Goths. It contains numerous references to Priscus's history, it is an important source of information about the Hunnic empire and its neighbors, he describes the Hunnic people for a century after Attila's death. Marcellinus Comes, a chancellor of Justinian during the same era describes the relations between the Huns and the Eastern Roman Empire.:30Numerous ecclesiastical writings contain useful but scattered information, sometimes difficult to authenticate or disto
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