Immemorial debates about the origins of the Hungarians – reaching an agreement?

Are Hungarians one of the Finno-Ugric nations or the descendants of Huns? In the last 2-300 years Historians, linguists, genetics and archaeologists have been quarrelling on the issue collecting pros and cons in uncountable quantity. Now an MTA (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) researcher might cut the Gordian knot.

Is it time to rewrite the Hungarian prehistory?

Balázs Sudár says that he does not belong to any of the “teams” debating the origins of the Hungarians. In fact, for the Finno-Ugric supporters, he is “a Turk” while for the Scythians, he is “a Finno-Ugric”. He is very proud of his Finno-Ugric mother tongue, he translates, sings and he is happy because the Hungarians are not an umpteenth Turkish nation somewhere on the Western borders of the great Turkish world – index.hu reports. Meanwhile, he lives his life as a Scythian horseman and feels himself home in the equestrian nomad traditions.

As we reported before, the government created the Institution for Hungarian Studies at the beginning of 2019 which will focus on the era preceding the 9th-century Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, the origin of the Hungarian people, the Hungarian conquest itself and medieval Hungary. According to Sudár, it seems that

there is an expectation from the politics towards scholars

regarding the final conclusions of the research. He added that he would be the happiest if it was proven that he was wrong. However, it generally seems that the whole institute was only established against the MTA. In fact, minister Kásler said many times that it is high time to rewrite Hungarian prehistory.

Is the solution easier than thought before?

According to Sudár, nobody has to choose between the Finno-Ugric and the equestrian nomad ancestries. He highlighted that some Finno-Ugric peoples were, in fact, equestrian nomads at some point of their History even though later they were forced back to the woods. He says that during the Communist era

the Finno-Ugric theory became a doctrine

even though it does not explain the Oriental cultural heritage of the Hungarian people. Emphasising the equestrian nomad tradition and seeking the relatives somewhere in Kazakhstan or Mongolia is just a reaction to this.

According to Sudár, it could happen that originally the Árpád-dynasty was the ruling dynasty of the Uyghur Khaganate which fell in the 840s. Therefore, they knew how to create a new state in the Carpathian Basin 50 years later, out of an ethnically very mixed population.

He cleared that we do not know how many of them, or the residents of the Carpathian Basin spoke Hungarian. However, he believes that not only (at least the majority of) the conquerors but also the subjected people used that language, and they together created something very new from an ethnic point of view. Finally, he highlights that it could happen that

the traditions of Árpád’s invaders and the subjected peoples were mixed somehow.

And this is how an ideological background for the Hungarian Empire was created and used later in the chronicles of the Christian era.

Source: index.hu