Kursan

Kursan , Hungarian. Kurszán [-saː-], also Kusál , Cussan , in Latin sources dux Chussal ( Chussol , Chusdal , Cusa ) presumably the last sacred king ( Kende , Kündü ) of the Magyars († 904 Pressburg ).

Kursan is first mentioned in Byzantine sources in 894. At the time he was next to Árpád one of the two leaders in the Hungarian "double principality", although his exact role is controversial. At that time the Magyars were led by a "sacred" head ( kende ) and a military commander ( gyula ), whose precise division of tasks has not been handed down. Possibly the Kende had more representative tasks, while the Gyula took care of the everyday business. Models for these functions can be found among the Khazars , a semi-nomadic people in Central Asia.

Due to a lack of sources, very little is known about Kursan's life. The tribe named after him is said to have settled in the castle of the same name on the abandoned site of the Roman amphitheater of Aquincum (today's Budapest ). After the defeat of the Magyars in 893 against the Turkic people of Pechenegs that deals with the Bulgarian King Simeon I had allied, the Kende Levedi were and already elderly Gyula Álmos fell after unsuccessfully for the support of the Khagan effort of the Khazars had. Kursan could have risen to Kende back then. At the urging of the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI. , who, according to the historian Georgios Monachos , negotiated with Kursan, the Magyars again turned against Bulgaria in 895, but suffered another defeat and were driven from their traditional settlement area between Danube and Dnieper, whereupon they settled in the eastern Carpathian Basin ("Landnahme") .

In 904 or 906 Kursan was murdered by Bavarian nobles at a banquet in Pressburg (Bratislava) . Thereupon Árpád rose to the position of sole ruler, disempowered Kursan's followers and, after the Battle of Pressburg (907), in which the Bavarians were defeated by his army, created a large Magyar empire.

literature

• György Györffy: The Hungarians' conquest from a historical point of view. In: Michael Müller-Wille, Reinhard Schneider (Ed.): Selected problems of European land grabbing in the early and high Middle Ages. Part 2, 1994, pp. 67-78

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hansgerd Göckenjan: Aid peoples and border guards in medieval Hungary. Stuttgart 1972, p. 31
2. ↑ [1]
3. ↑ Dezső Dercsényi, Balázs Dercsényi: Art guide through Hungary. Budapest 1984, p. 12
4. ^ Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. Volume 26, 1978, pp. 130 f.