Avar Khaganate
586 CE 822 CE
No General Descriptions provided.
| 2,750,000 km2 | 600 CE |
| 1,200,000 km2 | 600 CE |
| - |
NGA Settlements:
| Year Range | Avar Khaganate (hu_avar_khaganate) was in: |
|---|
Home NGA: None
in squared kilometers
This description of territorial area suggests a much more extensive area than typical maps of the Avar kingdom, including the ’Baltic Sea’, making the estimate about 2,750,000 km2."At the end of the sixth century the domain of the Dacian Avars extended from the Volga River to the Baltic Sea, and they exacted enormous tribute from the Byzantine Empire. In 626 the Avars invaded Byzantine territory and lay siege to the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. Although unsuccessful, they extended their dominion over the Bulgars and Slavs formerly controlled by Byzantium. To the west the Avars controlled the Hungarian Plain and moved into territory that formed part of Charlemagne’s Frankish Empire."
[1]
Most other maps do not include the Baltic Sea region. This map extends the eastern border only to the Don river. 1,200,000 km2.http://worldhistorymaps.info/images/East-Hem_600ad.jpg
[1]: (Minahan 2000, 68-69) James B. Minahan. 2000. One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups. Greenwood Press. Westport.
in squared kilometers
This description of territorial area suggests a much more extensive area than typical maps of the Avar kingdom, including the ’Baltic Sea’, making the estimate about 2,750,000 km2."At the end of the sixth century the domain of the Dacian Avars extended from the Volga River to the Baltic Sea, and they exacted enormous tribute from the Byzantine Empire. In 626 the Avars invaded Byzantine territory and lay siege to the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. Although unsuccessful, they extended their dominion over the Bulgars and Slavs formerly controlled by Byzantium. To the west the Avars controlled the Hungarian Plain and moved into territory that formed part of Charlemagne’s Frankish Empire."
[1]
Most other maps do not include the Baltic Sea region. This map extends the eastern border only to the Don river. 1,200,000 km2.http://worldhistorymaps.info/images/East-Hem_600ad.jpg
[1]: (Minahan 2000, 68-69) James B. Minahan. 2000. One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups. Greenwood Press. Westport.
- [586, 822]
3 [586, 822]
levels.
1. Capital
"The Avars were centralized".
[1]
2. Town "They lived in networks of small settlements built close together."
[2]
3. Settlements
[1]: (Liebeschuetz 2015, 441) J H W F Liebeschuetz. 2015. East and West in Late Antiquity: Invasion, Settlement, Ethnogenesis and Conflicts of Religion. BRILL. Leiden.
[2]: (Martin 2017, 171) Michael Martin. 2017. City of the Sun: Development and Popular Resistance in the Pre-Modern West. Algora Publishing. New York.
4 [586, 822]
levels.
1. King
"The Avars were centralized".
[1]
"The Avars have left lots of grave goods, suggesting that they had an aristocracy".
[1]
"Yet another reason for thinking that the leadership core of the European Avars was an element or remnant of the Rouran is the fact that the Avars are closely associated with the westward transmission of a number of items of military technology that had long been familiar in China and its adjacent steppe zone - but were unknown in the Mediterranean world, Europe, and the western steppe before the Avars’ arrival in those parts."
[2]
"The Avars ruled over the indigenous, Romanized population of Pannonia and over such German peoples as the Gepids and Lombards, as well as Bulgars and Slavs, wherein, according to Tivader Vida, ’political power was unambiguously reserved for the Avar elite.’ (Curta, 2008, p. 15)."
[3]
2. Councillors Avar kaghan had councilors who could be Kutrighur in origin.
[4]
2. Officials "the later Byzantine use of the same term (logades) to describe graded officials within the Avar Empire that succeeded the Huns"
[5]
3. Lesser officials
2. Governors Avar governors.
[6]
2. Banates 3. Zupanik, leader of zupania - autonomous Slavic administrative unit "According to Klaic ... zupanias were established as autonomous Slavic administrative units only where the Avars were in hegemony. Above them was banates, whose governor was of Avaric origin. We have no [sic] any data or sample case to help us imagine ethnic origin of zupans, but if the zupanias were organized according to any tribal criteria, Klaic would be exactly right. However, these were geographical units, whose governors might be both Avars and Slavs, preferably the former. ... Governor of zupa would be something like zupanik."
[7]
"The Avar power, having been in warfare with all surrounding states and nations for 250 years, seems to have lost its authority over bans and zupans of Bosnia, coincidedly with its weakening in the last decades, if not earlier. Sudden collapse of this state at the end of the 8th century left Bosnian begs with Avaric and Bulgaric origin stateless. According to N. Klaic, well before the Franks’ coming and declining the Avar state, Bosnian begs were de facto independent."
[8]
4. Slavic tribal leader
3. Tribal leaders
Avars themselves may have been made up of two tribes, the Var and Chunni, of the same origin and language as those who joined later who adopted the name ’Avars’.
[4]
"The ethnic composition of the Avar state was not homogenous. Bayan was followed by 10,000 Kutrighur warrior subjects already at the time of the conquest of Gepidia. In 568 he sent them to invade Dalmatia, arguing that casualties they may suffer while fighting against the Byzantines would not hurt the Avars themselves. A little later, fleeing from the Turk supremacy, 10,000 further warriors of the tribes Tarniakh, Kotzager (= ? Kutrighur) and perhaps Zabender (= ? Sabir) joined the Avars. It is probable, even if the sources do not say so explicitly, that these tribes joined the Avars in the Carpathian basin, and not on the Pontic steppe."
[4]
[1]: (Liebeschuetz 2015, 441) J H W F Liebeschuetz. 2015. East and West in Late Antiquity: Invasion, Settlement, Ethnogenesis and Conflicts of Religion. BRILL. Leiden.
[2]: (Graff 2016, 139) David A Graff. 2016. The Eurasian Way of War. Military practice in seventh-century China and Byzantium. Routledge. Abingdon.
[3]: (Martin 2017, 171) Michael Martin. 2017. City of the Sun: Development and Popular Resistance in the Pre-Modern West. Algora Publishing. New York.
[4]: (Szadecky-Kardoss 1990, 222) Samuel Szadecky-Kardoss. The Avars. Denis Sinor ed. 1990. The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.
[5]: Hyun Jin Kim 2015 The Huns p.83-84
[6]: (Stadler 2008, 67) Peter Stadler. Avar Chronology Revisited, And The Question Of Ethnicity In The Avar Qaganate. Florin Curta. Roman Kovalev. eds. 2008. “The” Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans ; [papers ... Presented in the Three Special Sessions at the 40th and 42nd Editions of the International Congress on Medieval Studies Held at Kalamazzo in 2005 and 2007]. BRILL. Leiden.
[7]: (Karatay 2003, 50) Osman Karatay. 2003. In Search of the Lost Tribe: The Origins and Making of the Croatian Nation. KaraM. Corum.
[8]: (Karatay 2003) Osman Karatay. 2003. In Search of the Lost Tribe: The Origins and Making of the Croatian Nation. KaraM. Corum.
Present [586, 822]
Present [586, 822]
The Avar kaghan had councilors. [1] "the later Byzantine use of the same term (logades) to describe graded officials within the Avar Empire that succeeded the Huns" [2]
[1]: (Szadecky-Kardoss 1990, 222) Samuel Szadecky-Kardoss. The Avars. Denis Sinor ed. 1990. The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.
[2]: Hyun Jin Kim 2015 The Huns p.83-84
Present [586, 822]
According to the Lexicon of Suidas, a 10th CE Byzantine encyclopedia, the Bulgarian king Krum asked a captured Avar ’What caused the ruin of your leader and your entire nation?’:
"It is all because mutual accusations multiplied and the bold and the clever perished; because the violent and the thieves became cronies with the judges; and because of drunkenness for, as there was more wine, everyone took to drinking; and because of corruption, and because of trade. All and sundry became merchants and began swindling each other. This is the cause of our ruin."
[1]
[1]: (Petkov 2008, 23-24) Kiril Petkov. 2008. The Voices of Medieval Bulgaria, Seventh-Fifteenth Century: The Records of a Bygone Culture. BRILL. Leiden.
Unknown [586, 822]
no data. "On the Steppe, the Avars had been nomadic horsemen. Once settled in Pannonia, they became sedentary and agricultural, farming cereals and clearing the many marshlands of Pannonia." [1]
[1]: (Martin 2017, 171) Michael Martin. 2017. City of the Sun: Development and Popular Resistance in the Pre-Modern West. Algora Publishing. New York.
Present [586, 822]
"On the Steppe, the Avars had been nomadic horsemen. Once settled in Pannonia, they became sedentary and agricultural, farming cereals and clearing the many marshlands of Pannonia." [1]
[1]: (Martin 2017, 171) Michael Martin. 2017. City of the Sun: Development and Popular Resistance in the Pre-Modern West. Algora Publishing. New York.
Present [586, 822]
"On the Steppe, the Avars had been nomadic horsemen. Once settled in Pannonia, they became sedentary and agricultural, farming cereals and clearing the many marshlands of Pannonia." [1] Building farm-able land.
[1]: (Martin 2017, 171) Michael Martin. 2017. City of the Sun: Development and Popular Resistance in the Pre-Modern West. Algora Publishing. New York.
Unknown [586, 822]
no data. Another polity? but probably relevant as the Avars migrated from this region: "The first embassy from the Turks arrived in Constantinople in 564 [CE], twelve years after the founding of the Turk empire. To the court of Justinian came a Sogdian named Maniakh and several retainers, bearing a letter in "Skythian writing." [1]
[1]: William H King. Primary Sources for the History of Central Eurasia in the Early Mediaeval Period: Turkic Runiform Inscriptions of Central Asia. 1991. William McCulloh Symposium. Kenyon College. archive.is/W9YF2#selection-29.0-29.26
Present [586, 822]
Another polity? but probably relevant as the Avars migrated from this region: "The first embassy from the Turks arrived in Constantinople in 564 [CE], twelve years after the founding of the Turk empire. To the court of Justinian came a Sogdian named Maniakh and several retainers, bearing a letter in "Skythian writing." [1] archive.is/W9YF2#selection-29.0-29.26
[1]: William H King. Primary Sources for the History of Central Eurasia in the Early Mediaeval Period: Turkic Runiform Inscriptions of Central Asia. 1991. William McCulloh Symposium. Kenyon College. archive.is/W9YF2#selection-29.0-29.26
Present [586, 822]
Another polity? but probably relevant as the Avars migrated from this region: "The first embassy from the Turks arrived in Constantinople in 564 [CE], twelve years after the founding of the Turk empire. To the court of Justinian came a Sogdian named Maniakh and several retainers, bearing a letter in "Skythian writing." [1]
[1]: William H King. Primary Sources for the History of Central Eurasia in the Early Mediaeval Period: Turkic Runiform Inscriptions of Central Asia. 1991. William McCulloh Symposium. Kenyon College. archive.is/W9YF2#selection-29.0-29.26
Present [586, 822]
"the early steppe peoples would not have been a promising vehicle for the diffusion of complicated, textually based knowledge; according to the Northern Wei dynastic history, the Rouran were illiterates whose leaders at first kept records of their troop numbers by piling up sheep turds as counters but eventually graduated to scratching simple marks onto pieces of wood. Not surprisingly, there is no evidence of the transmission of Chinese military theories and texts to the West by way of the Avars, other steppe nomads, Silk Road caravans, or any other channel prior to the activities of the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." [Graff 2016, p. 146]
Present [586, 822]
"The first embassy from the Turks arrived in Constantinople in 564 [CE], twelve years after the founding of the Turk empire. To the court of Justinian came a Sogdian named Maniakh and several retainers, bearing a letter in "Skythian writing." [1]
[1]: William H King. Primary Sources for the History of Central Eurasia in the Early Mediaeval Period: Turkic Runiform Inscriptions of Central Asia. 1991. William McCulloh Symposium. Kenyon College. archive.is/W9YF2#selection-29.0-29.26
Present [586, 822]
Byzantine gold coins have been found in some Avar burial assemblages. [1]
[1]: (Stadler 2008, 56) Peter Stadler. Avar Chronology Revisited, And The Question Of Ethnicity In The Avar Qaganate. Florin Curta. Roman Kovalev. eds. 2008. “The” Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans ; [papers ... Presented in the Three Special Sessions at the 40th and 42nd Editions of the International Congress on Medieval Studies Held at Kalamazzo in 2005 and 2007]. BRILL. Leiden.
Present [586, 822]
In 558 CE the Avars sent emissaries to Constantinople. [1] Another polity? but probably relevant as the Avars migrated from this region: "The first embassy from the Turks arrived in Constantinople in 564 [CE], twelve years after the founding of the Turk empire. To the court of Justinian came a Sogdian named Maniakh and several retainers, bearing a letter in "Skythian writing." [2]
[1]: (Karatay 2003, 45) Osman Karatay. 2003. In Search of the Lost Tribe: The Origins and Making of the Croatian Nation. KaraM. Corum.
[2]: William H King. Primary Sources for the History of Central Eurasia in the Early Mediaeval Period: Turkic Runiform Inscriptions of Central Asia. 1991. William McCulloh Symposium. Kenyon College. archive.is/W9YF2#selection-29.0-29.26
Present [586, 822]
Weights and scales found in burial assemblages for females. [1]
[1]: (Stadler 2008, 63) Peter Stadler. Avar Chronology Revisited, And The Question Of Ethnicity In The Avar Qaganate. Florin Curta. Roman Kovalev. eds. 2008. “The” Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans ; [papers ... Presented in the Three Special Sessions at the 40th and 42nd Editions of the International Congress on Medieval Studies Held at Kalamazzo in 2005 and 2007]. BRILL. Leiden.