ÀVARI. – Of Mongolian stock, originating from the Asian plateau and displaying a marked affinity with the Huns, the A. turned, shortly after the middle of the 5th century, toward the Caspian and Black Seas. Confused with the Huns, they are not mentioned again for another century, until around 558, when they appear settled between the Crimea and the Caucasus. In that year, in fact, they sent an embassy to Justinian to request new territories, and he granted them Ukraine in order to set them against the Huns and the Slavs. Opposed especially by the Turks, the A. moved from western Ukraine across all of Pannonia, as far as the eastern borders of the kingdom of the Franks. Defeated between 561 and 562 by Sigebert, king of Austrasia, they were nevertheless able immediately afterward to compel him to enter into a pact of friendship, in order to turn against their former patron, the emperor of the East. Inserting themselves into the struggle between the Lombards, allies of the Franks, and the Gepids, allies of Byzantium—a struggle raging fiercely in Pannonia—and reaching an understanding with the Lombard king Alboin, the A. played a part in the destruction of the Gepid kingdom and claimed for themselves the country invaded by the Lombards, who were forced to transfer themselves to Italy. In order to reduce the frontier population in Friuli to impotence, the A. also intervened directly, as parties interested in the Lombards’ conquest, by virtue of the pact concluded with them, under which they were to return occupied Pannonia if Alboin proved unable to maintain himself in Italy.
While the Lombards began their rule over the peninsula, the A. established their supremacy over the boundless Danubian plain and kept the Bulgars, Gepids, and Slavs under their control. From Bohemia to Dalmatia, including present-day Austria and Hungary, extended the vast kingdom that, as appears from the scanty sources and, even more, from historical tradition, was one of terror for the neighboring or subject populations. Their raids laid waste to the entire Balkan pe-
ninsula, and through them the involutionary process of Slavization was set in motion, gradually encompassing the territories that had once been Roman. The Peloponnese was devastated several times; a terrible siege of Salonica ended only when plague decimated the besiegers; in 619 the A. camped opposite Constantinople, and again in 626; but they were forced to withdraw by an incursion of Serbs and Croats.
As rapid as their rise was, so rapid was their decline. The foundation of a Slavic kingdom in Bohemia was the first blow. Then came the foundation of the Bulgarian kingdom. There followed fierce border wars: first with the Bavarians, then, finally, always with the Franks. The understanding reached with the Saxons and even with the Muslims of Spain could not save the A., already in open decline, from ruin under the Frankish onslaught. The wars from 791 to 796, brought by the Carolingian troops onto their own soil, proved fatal to the A., who disappeared from history.
The survivors sought refuge among the Bulgars, then converted to Christianity, and finally merged with the Hungarians.