MAGIARI. – An eastern people who, at the end of the ninth century, settled in the country that took from them the name Magyarország, or Hungary. Historians and ethnographers are divided regarding their origin: Hunfalvy considers them a Finnic tribe, while Vambery regards them as Turkish in race, an Ural-Altaic tribe. Various elements are found in their language. They are now generally judged to be of Ugro-Finnic origin: Turkish cultural influence is thought to have acted vigorously upon their civilization.
At the beginning of the ninth century they are said to have emigrated from the steppes between the Ural and the Caspian toward the Black Sea, some moving south into the Persian regions, others north and settling between the Don and the Dnieper. After 880, the advance of the Petzeneghi and Cumani, themselves pressed by the Ghuzi, forced the M. to cross the Don and settle in the regions of present-day Bessarabia and Moldavia: they called the country Atescuzu or Atelkör (=country between the rivers); then the pressure of the Petzeneghi drove them across the Carpathians, and they occupied the country as far as the Theiss. The crossing of the mountains took place around 895–96; in the following years they crossed the Danube, and the Magyar population occupied the country as far as the Raab. Their civilization was primitive; they were animists, buried the dead with their horses and slaves, were herders and hunters, and lived as nomads, first in wagons and later in villages of huts. Their furnishings and weapons reveal their eastern origin, and the style of their silverwork was likewise eastern. They were divided into tribes, governed by chiefs called gyula.
Around 860 their first contacts began with the civilized Western world, through lightning raids into the Danubian lands. The raids intensified after they settled in the Hungarian plain: they attacked Moravia, entered Italy in 890, and reached the Brenta; the following year they invaded a large part of Lombardy, defeating King Berengar. They returned to Italy in 920–22 and advanced as far as Apulia; the burning of Pavia took place in 924. Their incursions into Germany were more terrible, where feudal anarchy left them free to act. It may be said that there was no year in which the M. did not launch themselves across the German regions; Bavaria, Thuringia, and Saxony were repeatedly plundered. In 915 they reached as far as Bremen. The secret of their success lay in their method of warfare: rapidity of attack, the ability to move with lightning speed from place to place, and light armament, which facilitated attacks against the Western forces, composed of slow and heavily armed cavalry. Their war cry also acted upon the spirit in a depressing manner and caused general routs.
Western Europe remained disarmed before the savage M. until the pitched battle on the Lech, where Otto I defeated them in 955. Yet for several decades castles had been built and preparations made in both Italy and Germany to repel the invaders; after 934 the M. had begun to take the road toward the Balkan regions, threatening the Byzantine Empire, now in agreement, now in conflict, with the Petzeneghi.
It may be said that after the middle of the tenth century the aggressiveness
of the M. was in decline. Their tactics were well known and were no longer effective: the Slavic populations among whom they lived influenced them, leading them toward higher levels of civilization. They abandoned their huts and moved into permanent dwellings; they began agriculture, and Christianity also penetrated among them. Their prince Geza began negotiations with Otto I around 973; in 985, under the influence of his wife, the Polish Adelaide, he converted to Christianity; his son Stephen was crowned in 1000 in the cathedral of Gran with the famous crown sent to him by Pope Stephen II. Thus began the history of the Kingdom of Hungary, destined in turn to become a barrier of Christian civilization against eastern barbarism.