Post by hjernespiser on Mar 12, 2010 10:11:59 GMT 3
I've not paid that much attention to the details on the Khavars who joined the Magyar tribal confederation pre-Conquest so I've had to go re-read about them.
Here's what Rona-Tas has to say. This comes after a description of the West Turk political organization where there would be a supreme commander after the king and a governor or series of governors in charge of joined or subjugated peoples. In the Khazar Empire the title was yiltever (East Turk elteber). And then it goes on to show how Magyars adopted this political organization and the kharhas must have been the equivalent to a yiltever.
Other tidbits:
More later.
Here's what Rona-Tas has to say. This comes after a description of the West Turk political organization where there would be a supreme commander after the king and a governor or series of governors in charge of joined or subjugated peoples. In the Khazar Empire the title was yiltever (East Turk elteber). And then it goes on to show how Magyars adopted this political organization and the kharhas must have been the equivalent to a yiltever.
The designation Khabar denoting the Khavars, like so many other names, is a Hungarian historical convention. The Greek text reads as Khavar. Although in those days Khabar might also have been transliterated by the Greeks in the same way, we learn from the Latin written sources that the correct reading was indeed Khavar. The variant cowari, featuring in the Annals of Salzburg, and the Greek khabaroi are to be read as Khavari. The Khavars rebelled against the Khazars, but the latter got the better of them, and "... some of them were slain, but others escaped and came and settled with the Turks (Magyars) in the land of the Pechenegs, and they made friends with one another, and were called 'Khavars'," Porphyrogenitus writes.
The question is who called them Khavars. The quoted text does not say that one of the Khazar tribes, the Khavars, rebelled, but rather, that those that joined the Magyars were called 'Khavars'. The ethnic name cannot have derived from the Turkic verb kava- 'to swell (of a wound)' as it was claimed; semantic and onomastic problems make that impossible to establish. If we were to find a related Turkic word, a possibility would be kavir- 'to collect, assemble' which interestingly tallies with kuvra- 'to be assembled', kuvrat- 'to assemble'. (The latter survived in the name of the Bulghar khaghan Khuvrat). Morphologically, however, the derivation is not clear, and more likely than not we are again looking at a popular etymology. One of the leading clans of the Khavars must have been called Khavar, a name which the new group consisting of three tribes commonly adopted. Popular etymological explanations came later, like for example, bodun kavradi 'brought the people together'.
The three Khavar tribes - so the emperor tells us - had one chieftain (arhon), a set-up which remained much the same until the times of the account. Of the eight Magyar tribes the Khavars, who were always sent to the front lines in battle, proved to be the strongest and the most courageous in war, in reward for which they were raised to the level of the first tribes - we read. Hungarian historiography has long revealed that we are witnessing here an established military system whereby the most recently joined people or tribe was sent to the front lines. The above 'first tribe' refers to military position, not to a political rank. The system of three tribes having one chieftain corresponds perfectly to the organisational samples of Turkic tribes. This is important to acknowledge because it often happened that the merger of two or more tribes entailed having one chieftain for the new unit.
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In my opinion... the report (Porphyrogenitus again) should be read as follows: The Khavars taught the Magyars the tongue of the Khazars, but the Khavars "to this day" speak this Khazar language, and also learnt the language of the Magyars - that is, the Khavars were bilingual. The Khavars were under Magyar rule, and the military lingo of the tribal confederation must have been Hungarian, so they had to learn the language. It is sure that the Magyars first encountered the language of the Khazars before the Khavars had joined them. However, after the Khavars had joined, the role of the Khazar language must have increased in the Magyar court. The process of joining was very often confirmed by matrimony between the leading clans - as in Levedi's case, for instance. We know that Levedi had a Khazar wife, consequently the Khavar chieftain might have taken a Magyar wife. However, having a Magyar wife was not considered to be binding enough, so the Khavar chieftain was always supervised by a Magyar governor, the kharha. There are several examples of this in the Khazar Empire...
Other tidbits:
Among other sources it is important to highlight the Annales iuvavenses maximi, in the original text of which there is mention of a joint attack launched by the Magyars and Khavars around Vienna in 881.
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Not only did the Khavars learn the language of the Magyars, but some Slavic groups are also known to have joined the invading Magyars before the Conquest.
More later.