Cuman inscriptions in Moravia

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

According to the Czech scholar Bohuslav Balbín (Boleslaus Balbinus) who wrote in 1677, at the vicinity of Ivančice and the Oslova Monastery in Moravia, there were many Cuman tombstones in a church and these tombstones had inscriptions with their alphabets. Balbín also noted that he himself had seen these inscriptions. Has anyone heard or read anything about these?

[benzin]

I havent heard about it before. There is 1-2 hits about it only in hungarian.

[merlkir]

Here's the only remaining stone (and it's only a fragment, not the whole thing) in that church:



Dr. Pavel Poucha deciphered it in 1952 as an Uighur dialect, it should read "Margus" (a Cuman version of Markus he guessed)


(the church is in Øeznovice, near Ivanèice indeed. About 32 km from where I live. )

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Thank you merlkir. I thpought it would be in runic, I was surprised from the Uyghur script (actually honestly, this looks quite different from it but anyway) because the Cumans in Hungary had a few runic inscriptions.

[benzin]

Is it sure this is a script written by Cumans ? Doesnt look like a turkic script. Doesnt really look uyghur either.

[benzin]

I found who these cumans were )

They were the leading force of the hungarian army lead by Bela the IV. attacking chech king Ottokar in 1253. Many cumans fell in battle near the monostery of oslava, so the king decided to rise a temple above their graves, and a large written stone in their memories.



Source : Klara Friedrich, Gabor Szakacs,

[merlkir]

Balbín mentions multiple grave stones, at least my source says so. But yes, that's pretty much what I found out as well.

(although it implies the graves are of soldiers who came with the invasion of count Albrecht in 1304. Ivanèice were burned to the ground by then. Another source I found suggests it might've been christian Cuman settlers, since they're buried in a church.)

There is also a hill named Kumán, where a Cuman warlord is supposed to be buried.

Here's another photo:

[Ardavarz]

This inscription bears remote resemblance to the old Mongolian quadratic script (the Phags-pa alphabet): www.omniglot.com/writing/phagspa.htm

Very curious... But it doesn't seem very plausible that Cumans have used it in Europe.

[hjernespiser]

This is a neat mystery. The only thing I was able to find was a mention of a Cuman invasion in Moravia around the time of the Mongols. I too thought the script looks more like some Tibetan script. I wonder if we could get Peter T. Daniels to comment on it. He wrote the book on scripts and writes/wrote all the time on Usenet.

[benzin]

In 1251 the austrian throne received by Ottokar morovian warlord, son of Vencel I king of Czechia.
Because of this Bela the IV, king of Hungary asked help from Danilo russian prince, who joined the Hungarian and Cuman army in 1252 in austria. In 1253 The joint Hungarian and Cuman forces ruined the czech kingdom. in 1253 by the ask of the Pope the two party took a peace treaty and the joint army went back down to Semmering, and received the territory south to semmering (currently austria).
source : wiki.

These cumans were settled in hungary just before the mongolian conquest (1230s), they arrived in huge numbers to help protect against the mongols.
The cumans were partly helped the mongols so their king Kötöny was killed in 1239 by the hungarians, and the cumans left the country leaving everything in ruins behind them. They arrived back several years later for the ask of Bela the IV. he gave several unique rights to the cumans, and therefore they helped him in his further attacks, like the attack on Checzhia in 1253.

[benzin]

Please note that hungarian population almost devastated completely in the mongolian conquest, the cumans played a significant role to replace the died out population. They were head force and main strenght of hungarian armies in the 13th, 14th century.

[benzin]

Jun 21, 2011 9:24:27 GMT 3 hjernespiser said:

This is a neat mystery. The only thing I was able to find was a mention of a Cuman invasion in Moravia around the time of the Mongols. I too thought the script looks more like some Tibetan script. I wonder if we could get Peter T. Daniels to comment on it. He wrote the book on scripts and writes/wrote all the time on Usenet.

You think of Peter B. Golden ?

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Jun 21, 2011 1:38:39 GMT 3 Ardavarz said:

This inscription bears remote resemblance to the old Mongolian quadratic script (the Phags-pa alphabet): www.omniglot.com/writing/phagspa.htm

Very curious... But it doesn't seem very plausible that Cumans have used it in Europe.

Indeed, it looks more like that one.

[hjernespiser]

Nope. Peter T. Daniels, world writing system expert and frequent poster on sci.lang.

[hjernespiser]

Another option might be Glagolitic! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_alphabet