Avar principality

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The Amber Road near Sabaria , here as the southernmost point of the Avar Principality

The Avar principality (also Avar Khaganate ) was a tribal principality of Christian Avar rulers under Frankish suzerainty within the Frankish Avarmark . It encompassed a settlement area between Carnuntum and Sabaria - an area in what is now southeastern Lower Austria , Burgenland and western Hungary - and existed between 805 and 828.

Emergence

At the end of the 8th century, the Frankish king Charlemagne led a series of wars of conquest against the empire of the pagan Avars in the last phase of the Frankish expansion, as a result of which the previously uniform Avar ruling class under the Great Khan (Chagan) broke up and various groups came under formed their own Avar leaders who fought each other. In 796 the former Avar center was finally destroyed with the "Hring", which meant that the Avar Empire was considered conquered by the Franks.

Despite the submission of various Avar leaders, new battles between Avars and Franks flared up again and again until 803. Since he and his people were displaced from his former settlement area by hostile Slavs (and not named in the historical sources) , who presumably advanced against the Avars from the south, the Khapkan Theodor, who was already referred to as a Christian, asked for the assignment an area that he had chosen himself. Karl dismissed the Khapkan with rich gifts and recognized the Avar tributary principality under Frankish suzerainty as requested by Theodor between Carnuntum and Sabaria. The khapkan now settled in this area of Pannonia .

Settlement area

At the beginning of the 9th century, the previously nomadic Avar population had been settled and farmed for a long time. Even if the Germanic reporting of the 9th and 10th centuries still regularly confused the Avars with the Huns , it still gives detailed evidence of the processes on Avar soil, such as the Annales regni Francorum about the year 805. The new settlement area is referred to as called inter Sabariam et Carnuntum . This area, which was still quite densely populated in the late Avar period, was probably quite depopulated as a result of the wars with the Franks and offered the Khapkan and his people sufficient living space. The two cities of Carnuntum and Sabaria on the Amber Road, important in Roman times, formed the northern and southern endpoints of the area. It is not clear from the sources whether the Amber Road marked the axis or a boundary of the Khaganate. The majority of historians place the area of ​​the vassal principality on both sides of the Bernsteinstrasse, which was thus bounded by the Vienna Woods in the west and by the Raab in the east and south-east. But the area west of it up to the Enns , where there was a customs office for border trade in Lorch , was also considered a “provincia Avarorum”.

The Avar princes

Part 2, Article VII of the Diedenhofen capitular of Charlemagne of December 24, 805 forbade the export of weapons to the Avars

Khapkan Theodor died that same year. The Avar Khapkan title, borrowed from the neighboring Bulgarians, appears only once in the annals. It could be a new, prestigious and not yet burdened title. Theodor's successor as prince was Khagan Abraham , who was baptized on September 21, 805 at Fischa . Abraham asked Emperor Charles to renew the Chagan dignity. Abraham and his successors were thus responsible as princes “for all Avars” and recognized as partners in Frankish politics. The Avar dignitary Tudun also had to recognize the primacy of Abraham. Since the Avars appeared in Europe in 558, Abraham is only the second known Avar Khagan after Baian .

The Avar Khaganate stood in a number of dependent principalities along the Frankish imperial borders, which were formed mainly on the former Avar imperial territory, and regularly sent representatives to the Frankish imperial diets . It formed a buffer zone between the Franconian Empire and the Bulgarian Empire . Militarily, however, the khaganate had been weakened since the wars with Charlemagne and was further restricted by the ban on the arms trade with the Avars and Slavs, introduced by the emperor in the Diedenhofen capitular of 805. Politically, the khaganate was subordinate to the prefect of the Bavarian east country . This office was held successively between 805 and 811 by Counts Werner I , Albrih and Gotafrid , and Count Gerold (II.) From 811 to 828.

Due to its predominantly pagan inhabitants, the Avar Empire has been the focus of church efforts to Christianize since Charlemagne's first Avar campaigns in the 790s . After the end of the wars in 805 the diocese border from Charlemagne to the Raab was brought forward. For the Christian mission of the Avars, the diocese of Passau was responsible for the area between Enns and Raab and the Archbishop of Salzburg for the area around Lake Balaton and between Raab, Danube and Drau . The Hungarian historian István Bóna thought it possible that the Cundpald chalice could have come from the grave of a choir bishop Theodoric, who worked in the Avar Khaganate. The mission center could therefore be located near today's Petőháza , where Khagan Abraham may have built his headquarters later. Archaeologically, however, there are very few traces that indicate missionary activity. The pagan Avar burial grounds continued to be occupied and, with the exception of the Cundpald chalice, there are no finds of Christian life in the Avar Khaganate. At that time, Roman cities and fortifications with ruins that could be renovated, such as Sabaria, Scarbantia and Keszthely -Fenékpuszta, still existed in the territory of the Avar princes, but - with the possible exception of the civitas Sabaria - they were not developed into secular or ecclesiastical centers.

After 803 there are no more known fights between Avars and Franconia. According to this, the Slavs are likely to have become the Avars' greatest enemies, with whom battles broke out again in the following years. In 811 three Franconian armies moved to Pannonia to protect the Avars to end the wars. The Avar princes Canizauci ("Great Khan"), who is referred to in the annals from 811 as the sole princeps and whose title is also "borrowed" by the Bulgarians, the Tudun and other Avar greats were then together with Slavic princes in Aachen summoned. The sovereignty of the Frankish emperor and the fact that he was able to dispose of land of the Avars is shown, among other things, in the deed of November 26th, 811 by Charlemagne, in which he confirmed his ownership to the Niederaltaich monastery at the mouth of the Pielach near Melk "in Avaria". In the Ordinatio imperii of the year 817, Emperor Ludwig the Pious, along with other lands in eastern Bavaria, also assigned the Avar Khaganate to his son Ludwig the German as King of Bavaria, who did not really take power in Bavaria until 825 and probably hardly reported it afterwards to high Avar dignitaries.

resolution

822 announced a change of power in the area of ​​the Avar Khaganate. This year the Avars appeared for the last time, while the Slavic Moravians appeared for the first time at a Reichstag in Frankfurt. With the acceptance of Christianity and with it the loss of their sacred tradition, the Avar elite was politically weakened. A worsening of the climate, which is documented for the year 822, may have been one of the reasons for the end of the Avar aristocracy and warrior caste. There are indications that the people starved to death and some died in fighting. Parts are likely to have migrated to the neighboring Bulgarian empire under Khan Omurtag . The last news of the Avar borders come from 826/827 when the Bulgarians attacked the Frankish Empire and tried to set up their own leadership structures in Pannonia. The Bulgarians did not encounter any Avar dignitaries. These had already been ousted by Slavic princes. In 828 the Avar Khaganate was dissolved in the course of an administrative reorganization of the Bavarian east country. The political existence of the Avars, the once most important power factor between the Franconian Empire and the Byzantine Empire , ended for good. In the Treaty of Verdun in 843 only Avar farmers who were liable for interest were mentioned.

Dominion over the area of ​​the Avarenkhaganat was taken over by the Moravians in the north from around 830, in the south (perhaps as early as 825) the Franconian Count Rihheri as head of the County of Steinamanger and in the southeast from around 838 Pribina as the prince of the Balaton Principality . The fact that the Avar culture did not end suddenly is shown, for example, by excavations near Zalavár , which document Avar burial rites beyond the time of the Avar Principality. In Lower Austria (e.g. finds near Sommerein ), in the area between the Danube and Tisza under Hungarian rule and further east under the suzerainty of the Bulgarians, the Avars were able to hold out into the 10th century. The Russian Nestor Chronicle of the High Middle Ages commented on the end of the once feared Avars: “The Avars were great in body and proud of mind, and God destroyed them, and they all died, and not a single Aware remained. And there is a saying in Russia to this day: You have disappeared like the Obor (Avar), from whom there are neither descendants nor heirs. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Franz-Reiner Erkens (Ed.): Karl der Große and the Erbe der Kulturen , Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-05-003581-1 , pp. 160 ff.
  2. ↑ a b Herwig Wolfram : Austrian History 378–907 , Ueberreuter Verlag, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-8000-3524-3
  3. ^ A b Franz Altheim : History of the Huns. Fifth volume. Decline and Succession , Publisher: de Gruyter, Vienna 1962.
  4. ^ Béla Miklós Szőke: The Danube and the last days of the Avar Khaganate , in "TEN THOUSAND YEARS ALONG MIDDLE DANUBE", Varia Archaeologica Hungarica XXVI, Archaeolingua, Budapest 2011
  5. ↑ a b c d e Walter Pohl : The Avars. A steppe people in Central Europe , Munich 1988
  6. ↑ The Diedenhofen Chapter ( Memento of the original from January 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the Archivlink website ( Memento of the original from January 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.forchheim.com @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.forchheim.com
  7. ↑ a b c Dieter Geuenich (Ed.): Nomen et Gens , Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, supplementary volume, Verlag de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-11-015809-4 , p. 84 ff.
  8. ↑ a b Emanuel Beiser: Karl the Great and the Avars , GRIN Verlag, Norderstedt 2011, ISBN 978-3-656-14334-5 , p. 9 ff.
  9. ↑ a b Uta von Freeden, Herwig Friesinger, Egon Wamers (ed.): Faith, cult and rule. Phenomena of the Religious. Colloquia on prehistory and early history. Volume 12, Roman-Germanic Commission of the German Archaeological Institute, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-7749-3663-8 , p. 400 ff.
  10. ↑ a b Herwig Wolfram: Salzburg, Bavaria, Austria. The Conversio Bagoarium et Carantanorum and the sources of their time , Verlag Oldenbourg, Vienna, Munich, Oldenbourg 1996
  11. ^ A b c Max Spindler : Handbook of Bavarian History. Old Bavaria. Volume I, Verlag C. H. Beck, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-406-07322-0 , p. 254 ff.
  12. ^ Andreas Schwarzc: Pannonia . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , Sp. 1655-1657.
  13. ^ Josef Fleckenstein : Ordinatio imperii from 817 . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , Sp. 1434 f.
  14. ↑ Reinhold Gau (Ed.): Sources for the Carolingian Empire History 3 , Darmstadt 1975
  15. ↑ Avar graves near Sigleß attest to the end of a culture on the website http://www.krone.at/
  16. ↑ Heinrich Georg Pertz (Ed.): Erchanbert. Breviarium regum Francorum , MGH SS2, Hanover 1829
  17. ↑ Béla Miklós Szőke: ANTÆUS 31-32 , Communicationes ex Instituto Archaeologico Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Budapest 2010
  18. ^ Heinz Dopsch : Steppe peoples in medieval Eastern Europe - Huns, Avars, Hungarians and Mongols