Hungarians
Hungarians known as Magyars, are a nation and ethnic group native to Hungary and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture and language. Hungarians belong to the Uralic-speaking peoples. There are an estimated 14.2–14.5 million ethnic Hungarians and their descendants worldwide, of whom 9.6 million live in today's Hungary. About 2.2 million Hungarians live in areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon and are now parts of Hungary's seven neighbouring countries Slovakia, Romania, Croatia and Austria. Significant groups of people with Hungarian ancestry live in various other parts of the world, most of them in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Argentina. Hungarians can be classified into several subgroups according to local linguistic and cultural characteristics; the Hungarians' own ethnonym to denote themselves in the Early Middle Ages is uncertain. The exonym "Hungarian" is thought to be derived from Oghur-Turkic On-Ogur. Another possible explanation comes from the Old Russian "Yugra".
It may refer to the Hungarians during a time when they dwelt east of the Ural Mountains along the natural borders of Europe and Asia before their conquest of the Carpathian Basin. Prior to the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895/6 and while they lived on the steppes of Eastern Europe east of the Carpathian Mountains, written sources called the Magyars "Hungarians", specifically: "Ungri" by Georgius Monachus in 837, "Ungri" by Annales Bertiniani in 862, "Ungari" by the Annales ex Annalibus Iuvavensibus in 881; the Magyars/Hungarians belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance, it is possible that they became its ethnic majority. In the Early Middle Ages, the Hungarians had many names, including "Węgrzy", "Ungherese", "Ungar", "Hungarus"; the "H-" prefix is a addition of Medieval Latin. The Hungarian people refer to themselves by the demonym "Magyar" rather than "Hungarian". "Magyar" is Finno-Ugric from the Old Hungarian "mogyër". "Magyar" derived from the name of the most prominent Hungarian tribe, the "Megyer".
The tribal name "Megyer" became "Magyar" in reference to the Hungarian people as a whole. "Magyar" may derive from the Hunnic "Muageris" or "Mugel". The Greek cognate of "Tourkia" was used by the scholar and Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII "Porphyrogenitus" in his De Administrando Imperio of c. AD 950, though in his use, "Turks" always referred to Magyars; this was a misnomer, as while the Magyars had adopted some Turkic cultural traits, they are not a Turkic people. The historical Latin phrase "Natio Hungarica" had a wider and political meaning because it once referred to all nobles of the Kingdom of Hungary, regardless of their ethnicity or mother tongue. During the 4th millennium BC, the Uralic-speaking peoples who were living in the central and southern regions of the Urals split up; some dispersed towards the west and northwest and came into contact with Iranian speakers who were spreading northwards. From at least 2000 BC onwards, the Ugrian speakers became distinguished from the rest of the Uralic community, of which the ancestors of the Magyars, being located farther south, were the most numerous.
Judging by evidence from burial mounds and settlement sites, they interacted with the Indo-Iranian Andronovo culture. In the 4th and 5th centuries AD, the Hungarians moved from the west of the Ural Mountains to the area between the southern Ural Mountains and the Volga River known as Bashkiria and Perm Krai. In the early 8th century, some of the Hungarians moved to the Don River to an area between the Volga and the Seversky Donets rivers. Meanwhile, the descendants of those Hungarians who stayed in Bashkiria remained there as late as 1241; the Hungarians around the Don River were subordinates of the Khazar khaganate. Their neighbours were the archaeological Saltov Culture, i.e. Bulgars and the Alans, from whom they learned gardening, elements of cattle breeding and of agriculture. Tradition holds; the names of the seven tribes were: Jenő, Kér, Keszi, Kürt-Gyarmat, Megyer, Nyék, Tarján. Around 830, a rebellion broke out in the Khazar khaganate; as a result, three Kabar tribes of the Khazars joined the Hungarians and moved to what the Hungarians call the Etelköz, the territory between the Carpathians and the Dnieper River.
The Hungarians faced their first attack by the Pechenegs around 854, though other sources state that an attack by Pechenegs was the reason for their departure to Etelköz. The new neighbours of the Hungarians were the eastern Slavs. From 862 onwards, the Hungarians along with their allies, the Kabars, started a series of looting raids from the Etelköz into the Carpathian Basin against the Eastern Frankish Empire and Great Moravia, but against the Balaton principality and Bulgaria. In 895/896, under the leadership of Árpád, some Hungarians crossed the Carpathians and entered the Carpathian Basin; the tribe called Magyar was the leading tribe of the Hungarian alliance that conquered the centre of the basin. At the same time, due to their involvement in the 894–896 Bulgaro-Byzantine war, Hungarians in Etelköz were attacked by Bulgaria and by their old enemies the Pechenegs; the Bulgarians won the decisive b
Battle of Velbazhd
The Battle of Velbazhd is a battle which took place between Bulgarian and Serbian armies on 28 July 1330, near the town of Velbazhd. The growing power of the Serbian Kingdom from the late 13th century raised serious concerns in the traditional Balkan powers Bulgaria and Byzantine Empire which agreed for joint military actions against Serbia in 1327. Three years the bulk of the Bulgarian and Serbian armies clashed at Velbazhd and the Bulgarians were caught by surprise. Serbian victory shaped the balance of power in Balkans in the next two decades; the Bulgarians did not lose territory after the battle but were unable to stop the Serbian advance towards Macedonia. Serbia managed to conquer Macedonia and parts of Thessaly and Epirus reaching its greatest territorial extent ever, their new King Stefan Dušan was crowned Emperor with Bulgarian help in 1346. However, decades after Dušan's death in 1355 his Empire disintegrated as did Bulgaria after the death of Ivan Alexander in 1371 and both states were subsequently destroyed by the Ottoman Turks.
During the long but unsuccessful reign of Emperor Constantine Tikh Asen the Bulgarian Empire lost its possessions in northern Macedonia including Skopie, the original feudal estate of the Emperor to the Byzantines. Both Empires were faced with serious external and internal problems and from the 1280s the Serbs began to expand their Kingdom to the south in northern Macedonia. During the internal war in the Byzantine Empire waged between the aged emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos and his ambitious grandson Andronikos III Palaiologos, the Serbian King Stefan Uroš III supported the side of old emperor and in the process gained some minor forts in Macedonia. After in 1328 Andronikos III deposed his grandfather. Serbia and the Byzantines entered a period of bad relations, closer to the state of undeclared war. On the other hand, the Bulgarian Emperor Michael Asen III supported his brother-in-law Andronikos III. In 1324, he divorced and ousted his wife and Stefan's sister Anna Neda, married Andronikos III's sister Theodora.
During that time the Serbs captured some important towns such as Prosek and Prilep and besieged Ohrid. The two Empires were worried about the fast growth of Serbia and on 13 May 1327 settled a anti-Serb peace treaty. After another meeting with Andronikos III in 1329, the rulers decided to invade their common enemy. Michael Shishman desired to retake the north-western and south-western Bulgarian lands which the Serbs had conquered; the plan included the thorough elimination of Serbia and its partition between Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire. According to some Serbian chroniclers, he demanded the submission of the Serbian king and threatened to "set up his throne in the middle of the Serbian land". Both sides took careful preparations. Michael called in his ally Basarab of Wallachia who sent him a strong unit, as well as detachments of Ossetians/Jassiges and Tatars, a total of 3,000 men. Michael's army was estimated by contemporaries to be 15,000 strong. Stefan Uroš strengthened his army by more Catalan and German mercenaries, experienced warriors which presented an elite unit of Serbian army which comprised a total of 17,000 fighters.
According to the plan the Bulgarians were to advance from the east and the Byzantines from the south and to join forces somewhere in present-day north Macedonia but their coordination was feeble. In July 1330 Andronikos III invaded Macedonia but after he captured Prilep and five minor fortresses he halted his army and decided to await the outcome of the decisive battle between Bulgarians and Serbs. Serbian objective was to fight in separate battles. Fearing an attack on Morava valley by the way of Nish the Serbian King gathered his army in the field of Dobrich, on the confluence of the Toplica river into the Morava. On 19 July the Bulgarian army led by the Emperor himself set off from the capital Tarnovo, marched through the Iskar Gorge and Sofia and entered the northern parts of the Struma valley. From there he continued towards Zemen and set his camp in the village of Shishkovtsi On the next day the army reached the important border castle near the modern village of Izvor. From there it was divided into two groups: the main forces under Michael Shishman through the northern parts of the Konyavska mountain and headed towards the Zemen gorge.
The smaller part which included the army support went through an easier but longer road through the mountain and arrived between the villages of Konyavo and Dvorishte. Other Bulgarian forces under the command of the Emperor's brother Belaur set off from his seat in Vidin but did not participate in the battle, among the main reasons for the following defeat. According to some historians they were stationed as a reserve around the Izvor castle while others think that he arrived too late. From his camp on the confluence between the Toplica and the Morava rivers Stefan Decanski expected an attack from Vidin to the north-east, his purpose was to hinder a Bulgarian advance to the interior of his state. Upon the news for the Bulgarian presence in the Struma valley the king marched southwards along the Bulgarian Morava and the valley of the river Pchinya until he reached the Staro Nagorichino village where stopped for a pray in a nearby monastery. After that he continued to the Ioakim Osogovski Monastery where he prayed again and advanced on Bulgarian territory near the Kamenitsa river in the vicinity of Velba
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars sanctioned by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The most known Crusades are the campaigns in the Eastern Mediterranean aimed at recovering the Holy Land from Muslim rule, but the term "Crusades" is applied to other church-sanctioned campaigns; these were fought for a variety of reasons including the suppression of paganism and heresy, the resolution of conflict among rival Roman Catholic groups, or for political and territorial advantage. At the time of the early Crusades the word did not exist, only becoming the leading descriptive term around 1760. In 1095, Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade in a sermon at the Council of Clermont, he encouraged military support for the Byzantine Empire and its Emperor, Alexios I, who needed reinforcements for his conflict with westward migrating Turks colonizing Anatolia. One of Urban's aims was to guarantee pilgrims access to the Eastern Mediterranean holy sites that were under Muslim control but scholars disagree as to whether this was the primary motive for Urban or those who heeded his call.
Urban's strategy may have been to unite the Eastern and Western branches of Christendom, divided since the East–West Schism of 1054 and to establish himself as head of the unified Church. The initial success of the Crusade established the first four Crusader states in the Eastern Mediterranean: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Tripoli; the enthusiastic response to Urban's preaching from all classes in Western Europe established a precedent for other Crusades. Volunteers became Crusaders by taking a public vow and receiving plenary indulgences from the Church; some were hoping for a mass ascension into heaven at Jerusalem or God's forgiveness for all their sins. Others participated to satisfy feudal obligations, obtain glory and honour or to seek economic and political gain; the two-century attempt to recover the Holy Land ended in failure. Following the First Crusade there were numerous less significant ones. After the last Catholic outposts fell in 1291, there were no more Crusades.
The Wendish Crusade and those of the Archbishop of Bremen brought all the North-East Baltic and the tribes of Mecklenburg and Lusatia under Catholic control in the late 12th century. In the early 13th century the Teutonic Order created a Crusader state in Prussia and the French monarchy used the Albigensian Crusade to extend the kingdom to the Mediterranean Sea; the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th century prompted a Catholic response which led to further defeats at Nicopolis in 1396 and Varna in 1444. Catholic Europe was in chaos and the final pivot of Christian–Islamic relations was marked by two seismic events: the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 and a final conclusive victory for the Spanish over the Moors with the conquest of Granada in 1492; the idea of Crusading continued, not least in the form of the Knights Hospitaller, until the end of the 18th-century but the focus of Western European interest moved to the New World. Modern historians hold varying opinions of the Crusaders.
To some, their conduct was incongruous with the stated aims and implied moral authority of the papacy, as evidenced by the fact that on occasion the Pope excommunicated Crusaders. Crusaders pillaged as they travelled, their leaders retained control of captured territory instead of returning it to the Byzantines. During the People's Crusade, thousands of Jews were murdered in what is now called the Rhineland massacres. Constantinople was sacked during the Fourth Crusade. However, the Crusades had a profound impact on Western civilisation: Italian city-states gained considerable concessions in return for assisting the Crusaders and established colonies which allowed trade with the eastern markets in the Ottoman period, allowing Genoa and Venice to flourish; the Crusades reinforced a connection between Western Christendom and militarism. The term crusade used in modern historiography at first referred to the wars in the Holy Land beginning in 1095, but the range of events to which the term has been applied has been extended, so that its use can create a misleading impression of coherence regarding the early Crusades.
The term used for the campaign of the First Crusade was iter "journey" or peregrinatio "pilgrimage". The terminology of crusading remained indistinguishable from that of pilgrimage during the 12th century, reflecting the reality of the first century of crusading where not all armed pilgrims fought, not all who fought had taken the cross, it was not until the late 12th to early 13th centuries that a more specific "language of crusading" emerged. Pope Innocent III used the term negotium crucis "affair of the cross" for the Eastern Mediterranean crusade, but was reluctant to apply crusading terminology to the Albigensian crusade; the Song of the Albigensian Crusade from about 1213 contains the first recorded vernacular use of the Occitan crozada. This term was adopted into French as croisade and in English as crusade; the modern spelling crusade dates to c. 1760. Sinibaldo Fieschi used the terms crux transmarina for crusades in Outremer against Muslims and crux cismarina for crusades in Europe against other enemies of the church.
The Crusades in the Holy Land are traditionally counted as nine distinct campaigns, numbered from the First Crusade of 1095–99 to the Ninth Crusade of 1271–72. This conv
Despot (court title)
Despot or despotes was a senior Byzantine court title, bestowed on the sons or sons-in-law of reigning emperors, denoted the heir-apparent of the Byzantine emperor. From Byzantium it spread throughout the late medieval Balkans and was granted in the states under Byzantine cultural influence, such as the Latin Empire, the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian Empire and its successor states, the Empire of Trebizond. With the political fragmentation of the period, the term gave rise to several principalities termed "despotates" which were ruled either as independent states or as appanages by princes bearing the title of despot. In modern usage, the word has taken a different meaning: "despotism" is a form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute power; the semantic shift undergone by the term is mirrored by "tyrant", an ancient Greek word that bore no negative connotation, the Latin "dictator", a constitutionally sanctioned office of the Roman Republic. In colloquial Modern Greek, the word is used to refer to a bishop.
In English, the feminine form of the title is despotess or despotissa, which denoted the spouse of a despot, but the transliterated traditional female equivalent of despotes, despoina, is commonly used. The original Greek term δεσπότης meant "lord" and was synonymous with κύριος; as the Greek equivalent to the Latin dominus, despotēs was used as a form of address indicating respect. As such it was applied to any person of rank, but in a more specific sense to God and the patriarchs, the Roman and Byzantine Emperors used in formal settings, for example on coins or formal documents. Although it was used for high-ranking nobles from the early 12th century, the title of despot began being used as a specific court title by Manuel I Komnenos, who conferred it in 1163 to the future King Béla III of Hungary, the Emperor's son-in-law and, until the birth of Alexios II in 1169, heir-presumptive. According to the contemporary Byzantine historian John Kinnamos, the title of despot was analogous to Bela's Hungarian title of urum, or heir-apparent.
From this time and until the end of the Byzantine Empire, the title of despot became the highest Byzantine dignity, which placed its holders "immediately after the emperor". The Byzantine emperors from the Komnenoi to the Palaiologoi, as well as the Latin Emperors who claimed their succession and imitated their styles, continued to use the term despotes in its more generic sense of "lord" in their personal seals and in imperial coinage. In a similar manner, the holders of the two junior titles of sebastokrator and Caesar could be addressed as despota; the despot paneutychestatos. During the last centuries of Byzantium's existence, the title was awarded to the younger sons of emperors as well as to the emperor's sons-in-law; the title entailed extensive honours and privileges, including the control of large estates – the domains of Michael VIII's brother John Palaiologos for instance included the islands of Lesbos and Rhodes – to finance their extensive households. Like the junior titles of sebastokrator and Caesar however, the title of despot was a courtly dignity, was not tied to any military or administrative functions or powers.
Women bore the titles of their husbands. Thus the spouse of a despot, the despotissa, had the right to bear the same insignia as he. Among the women of the court, the despotissai took the first place after the empress; the use of the title spread to the other countries of the Balkans. The Latin Empire used it to honour the Doge of Venice Enrico Dandolo and the local ruler of the Rhodope region, Alexius Slav. After ca. 1219 it was borne by the Venetian podestàs in Constantinople, as the Venetian support became crucial to the Empire's survival. In 1279/80, it was introduced in Bulgaria to placate the powerful magnate George Terter in 1279/80. During the Serbian Empire it was awarded among the various Serbian magnates, with Jovan Oliver being the first holder, it was held by lesser principalities as well, including the self-proclaimed Albanian despots of Arta. In the 15th century, the Venetian governors of Corfu were styled as despots; as the title of despot was conferred by the emperor and implied a degree of submission by the awardee, the Palaiologan emperors tried long to persuade the Emperors of Trebizond, who claimed the Byzantine imperial title, to accept the title of despot instead.
Only John II of Trebizond and his son Alexios II, accepted the title, they continued to use the usual imperial title of "basileus" domestically. With the death of the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI on May 29, 1453, the creation of a despot became irregular; the title was granted by Pope Paul II to Andreas Palaiologos, heir to the Byzantine throne in 1465, by the king of Hungary to the heirs of the Serbian Despotate. From the mid-14th century on, various territories were given to imperial princes with the rank of despot to
Vidin Eyalet
The Eyalet of Vidin was an administrative territorial entity of the Ottoman Empire located in the territory of present-day north-western Bulgaria. It was formed in 1846 and its administrative centre was Vidin, it was incorporated into Danube Province in 1864 and its sanjaks were reduced to townships except Vidin. Sanjaks of the Eyalet in the mid-19th century: Sanjak of Tirnova Sanjak of Vidin Sanjak of Lom Ottoman Bulgaria Osman Pazvantoğlu
Moesia
Moesia was an ancient region and Roman province situated in the Balkans south of the Danube River. It included most of the territory of modern-day Central Serbia and the northern parts of the modern North Macedonia, Northern Bulgaria and Romanian Dobrudja. In ancient geographical sources, Moesia was bounded to the south by the Haemus and Scardus mountains, to the west by the Drinus river, on the north by the Donaris and on the east by the Euxine; the region was inhabited chiefly by Thracians, Dacians and Thraco-Illyrian peoples. The name of the region comes from Moesi, Thraco-Dacian peoples who lived there before the Roman conquest. Parts of Moesia belonged to the polity of Burebista, a Getae king who established his rule over a large part of the northern Balkans between 82 BC and 44 BC, he led plunder and conquest raids across Central and Southeastern Europe, subjugating most of the neighbouring tribes. After his assassination in an inside plot, the empire was divided into several smaller states.
In 75 BC, C. Scribonius Curio, proconsul of Macedonia, took an army as far as the Danube and gained a victory over the inhabitants, who were subdued by M. Licinius Crassus, grandson of the triumvir and also proconsul of Macedonia during the reign of Augustus c. 29 BC. The region, was not organized as a province until the last years of Augustus' reign; as a province, Moesia was under an imperial consular legate. In 86 AD the Dacian king Duras ordered his troops to attack Roman Moesia. After this attack, the Roman emperor Domitian arrived in Moesia and reorganized it in 87 AD into two provinces, divided by the river Cebrus: to the west Moesia Superior - Upper Moesia, to the east Moesia Inferior - Lower Moesia; each was governed by a procurator. The chief towns of Upper Moesia in the Principate were: Singidunum, Remesiana, Bononia and Skupi; the last two were Greek towns which formed a pentapolis with Istros and Apollonia. From Moesia, Domitian began planning future campaigns into Dacia and by 87 he started a strong offensive against Dacia, ordering General Cornelius Fuscus to attack.
Therefore, in the summer of 87, Fuscus led six legions across the Danube. The campaign against the Dacians ended without a decisive outcome, Decebalus, the Dacian King, had brazenly flouted the terms of the peace, agreed on at the war's end. Emperor Trajan arrived in Moesia, he launched his first military campaign into the Dacian Kingdom c. March–May 101, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube River and defeating the Dacian army near Tapae, a mountain pass in the Carpathians. Trajan's troops were mauled in the encounter, he put off further campaigning for the year to heal troops and regroup. During the following winter, King Decebalus launched a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, but this was repulsed. Trajan's army advanced further into Dacian territory and forced King Decebalus to submit to him a year later. Trajan was granted the title Dacicus; the victory was celebrated by the Tropaeum Traiani. However, Decebalus in 105 undertook an invasion against Roman territory by attempting to stir up some of the tribes north of the river against the empire.
Trajan took to the field again and after building with the design of Apollodorus of Damascus his massive bridge over the Danube, he conquered part of Dacia in 106. Sometime around 272, at the Moesian city of Naissus or Nissa, future emperor Constantine. After the abandonment of Roman Dacia to the Goths by Aurelian and the transfer of the Roman citizens from the former province to the south of the Danube, the central portion of Moesia took the name of Dacia Aureliana. During administrative reforms of Emperor Diocletian, both of the Moesian provinces were reorganized. Moesia Superior was divided in two, northern part forming the province of Moesia Prima including cities Viminacium and Singidunum, while the southern part was organised as the new province of Dardania with cities Scupi and Ulpiana. At the same time, Moesia Inferior was divided into Scythia Minor. Moesia Secunda's main cities included Marcianopolis, Nicopolis, Durostorum, Sexaginta Prista and Novae, all in Bulgaria today; as a frontier province, Moesia was strengthened by stations and fortresses erected along the southern bank of the Danube, a wall was built from Axiopolis to Tomi as a protection against the Scythians and Sarmatians.
The garrison of Moesia Secunda included Legio I Italica and Legio XI Claudia, as well as independent infantry units, cavalry units, river flotillas. The Notitia Dignitatum lists its units and their bases as of the 390s CE. Units in Scythia Minor included Legio I Iov
Calafat
Calafat is a town in Dolj County, Romania, on the river Danube, opposite the Bulgarian city of Vidin, to which it is linked by the Calafat-Vidin Bridge, opened in 2013. After the destruction of the bridges of late antiquity, for centuries Calafat was connected with the southern bank of the Danube by boat and on by ferryboat; the city administers three villages: Ciupercenii Vechi and Golenți. It was founded in the 14th century by Genoese colonists, who employed large numbers of workmen in repairing ships; this industry gave the town its name. In January 1854, during the Crimean War, when Russian forces were headed up the Danube, Ahmed Pasha, commanding the Turkish forces at Calafat, made a surprise attack on the temporary Russian garrison nearby Cetate, under the command of Colonel Alexander Baumgarten; this diverted the initial Russian attack and allowed Ahmed Pasha to consolidate his forces in Calafat. On 28 January the Russians under the command of General Iosif Romanovich Anrep reached Calafat and began the siege which lasted until May.
Riddled by disease and unable to take the town, Anrep withdrew. Calafat lies on the river corridor VII-Danube and the pan-European corridor IV which starts in Germany and ends in Istanbul and Thessaloniki; the city is at crossroads of DN56, DN56A, DN55A and E79. The city of Calafat and its neighbour, are linked by bridge over the Danube in the area called Bașcov built by the Spanish company FCC; the project of constructing a Danubian bridge in the area of Calafat-Vidin dates from the year 1925. Road traffic between Vidin and Calafat were doubling every year, so it became necessary to construct a bridge with four lanes of road traffic, a railway line, a lane two meters wide for bikes and a pavement for pedestrians; the bridge has a total length of 1,971 m and its costs are estimated about US $200 million. It was opened on 14 June 2013. Calafat has several city newspapers. One of them is called Ziarul De Calafat, maintained online. Calafat is twinned with: Vidin, Bulgaria Zaječar, Serbia Duiven, Netherlands Biñan, Philippines City hall
Hódmezővásárhely, Hungary [14]
West Carrollton, Ohio, United States [15]
Zaječar, Serbia [16]
Rivne, Ukraine [17]
Demre, Turkey [18]
Calafat, Romania [19]
General Mariano Alvarez, Philippines
Deggendorf, Germany [20]
Lecco, Italy [21]
Debar, North Macedonia [23]
