by
Endre Kolozsvári Grandpierre

Is the revision of Árpád's conquest necessary?

The question of Árpád's "conquest" (henceforth "Conquest") is not as
clear, as it appears to be. There are some very serious doubts concerning
this theory, which already began in the Middle Ages. Márk Kálti's(1) Képes
Krónika (Illuminated Chronicle) states the following:

"So if some codexes contain the statement, that those seven captains came
into Pannonia (meaning the seven heads of clans in allegiance with Árpád)
and Hungary came into existence only through them, then where did Ákus,
Bor, Aba and the other Hungarian nobility come from, since they all had
their origins in Skythia and are not newcomers. The only argument in favor
of this theory is one word that was preserved by the common folk:
Hétmagyar (Seven Magyars). So if only these seven Magyars (Hungarians)
entered the country and we do not count any of their families, wives,
sons, daughters and male and female servants, would it have been possible
to conquer entire countries? Impossible."

The Képes Krónika's well founded observation questions the entire
so-called "Conquest"; he brings up the question as to how a small army
could have occupied an entire country. The Képes Krónika's question
encompasses hundreds of years up to Count Széchenyi, who then again
brought up the very same problem. One of the noted Hungarian linguists of
the 19th century explains this in his posthumous work: The Origin of the
Hungarian Language; his work has been permitted to slide into oblivion.

"A section of the Scytho-Hungarians was already settled near the Danube
long before the birth of our Lord Christ, under the name of Jász and
Baranyás. So when in the 4th century AD a group arrived, under the
leadership of Bal-ember, then again the Honnos of Scythia, the Avars of
the 6th century AD and finally the Honigurians of the 9th century exited
from their former habitat (and so we can count on four occasions that the
Scytho-Hungarians came., They came not through blind adventure onto an
unknown and foreign land (even if some of the Eastern and Western heads of
state had not called their help from time to time), but they came to their
brothers from whom they learned well in advance of the goodness and the
nature of this land.

We have also seen that they were not lawless takers of this country.
Because their families occupied these lands first, and this first
ownership gave them the just and lawful right to own it. They multiplied
here and became mighty that even individual groups of these people, like
the Jász and the Berénes of Pannonia did dare to take on and fight the
Romans… So when the Honnos arrived, they came to their kindred."

This is one of the statements of József Keresztesi in his work which was
published in 1844 in Pozsony. He is talking of four waves of reoccupation
of the land; if we add the original ancient habitation we can speak of
five different layers of occupation by the same people.

The question arises, how could it be that Keresztesi's work never got the
proper attention and discussion in Hungary, when so many other
anti-Hungarian anti-tradition books and cheap, unscientific works did get
a wide publicity and honors.

But let us go further and skip back to the beginnings of our century to
another work that was equally neglected and silenced, written by Bálint
Gábor Szentkatolnai. His work was published in 1901 in Kolozsvár under the
title The Revision of the Conquest in which he brings into sharp focus the
untenability of the "Conquest" theory and the necessity of revision.

"It is already half a century that the unbiased Held and Corvin, in
discussions about Hungary, mention that there is not much known about the
origins of this nation. And this still holds true due to the Finno-Turk
and other fancy theories and deductions of the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences. When one is writing textbooks or discussing the origins of the
Hungarian nation and not subscribing to either aforementioned theories,
what else can one say but the following: according to the Finnish school
of the Academy, the Hungarians are Finno-Ugric by race, and according to
the Turcic theorists they are of the Turkis-Tatar race. As if a third
possibility had never existed and as if we would have to call a melon
either a squash or a cucumber because all three plants belong to one
genus…"

The third progressive Hungarian scientist within three decades is Lajos
Marjalaki Kiss (1928) who also brings up the following question:

"It has been about five years now since I excavated the graves of
Mezőnyék, dating to the early centuries of the great migrations and
studied in context very thoroughly the archaeological findings of the
Hungarian middle ages. I developed the firm conviction that Árpád's
conquest brought only a political change to the country; the ancient
population (estimated 90 %) remained the same as it always had been. I do
believe that the sum total of today's Magyars did not come with the Árpáds
but has already been here even before the Avars and the Huns and spoke the
Magyar (Hungarian) language."

Do I have to mention, that the works of Lajos Marjalaki Kiss were also
pushed into oblivion?

But let us go further. A number of antic authors testify to the
Magyar-Hun-Scythan ownership of Hungary, among them – and I mention only
the better known authors – is Herodotos, Strabo, Xenophon, Jordanes and
Josephus Flavius who write about the Scythans as the first, aboriginal
owners of Hungary and the lands on which they lived. According to their
testimony the Scythans (meaning Scytho Hungarians) ruled Europe and Asia.

It is an undeniable fact that the Carpathian basin was inhabited by
Scytho-Hungarian people since prehistoric times and that this was the
center, the heart of the Scythan empire. (page 11-15)

(…)

A Unique Defense system.

The Árpáds could not yet settle down in Hungary when they already began
strengthening the border defense with a mighty force. The ancient
inhabitants followed them in this endeavor. Not because they were forced
laborers, but it was they who brought the subject of the necessity of a
defense system up to the Árpáds.

Would it be possible, that the Árpád conquest was only an occupation?

If this is the case, the first thing on their agenda would have been the
subjugation of the inhabitants, and the destruction of their power bases.
And as this is a large territory, the entire Carpathian basin: this
process would have lasted for many years and many bloody battles could
only have brought a relative peace and quiet to this land.

But the Árpáds did not have time to look around in the country when they
began to build the fortification of the borders – in complete agreement
and unison with the ancient inhabitants of the country. It was this
defense system, that was the most urgent and important action to them.
Anonymus paints a broad picture through several chapters in his book of
the sequence of the reoccupation of the land and the measures taken to
fortify it. Due to the restrictions of this work I quote only a few
selected, short segments of his work.

The Árpáds even became owners of castle fortifications without resistance.
The foreign mercenaries who manned these gave the castles over with at
most a weak, pro-forma resistance.

It is the aboriginal populace that hurried the building of fortifications.

"When they settled in this manner – writes Anonymus -heading the warnings
of the inhabitants, they decided that they would send Bors*, the son of
Böngér, with large troops toward the land of the Poles to inspect the
borders of the country and to fortify them with obstacles all the way to
the Tátra mountains and to build a castle on an appropriate spot for the
sake of defense.

After occupying the castles on the Felvidék – writes Anonymus – which up
to this day is called Sempte, Galgóc, Trencsén, Bolondóc and Bán (…) and
after they placed guards in the castles, they went up to the Morva river
and built barricades there. The borders of the Hungarian lands were
established up to Borona and Sárvár.

Szekcső (Dunaszekcső today) was built by Og, the son of Ute, who marched
toward Baranya county with his troops and built his castle on a land which
today is called Dunaszekcső, but its common name is Szekcső (Zekuseu)
which means that he settled there and built a permanent home. (Szék =
seat)."

The writings of Anonymus make it clear, that not only some of the
aboriginal inhabitants of the Carpathian valley were true to the Árpáds,
but the entire population and they all helped them to establish the
forest-borders of the country.

The borders of the country were already given, settled and final at the
tumultuous time of Árpád's return. The reason for the grandiose project
was to prevent other foreigners from invading the country. In other words,
the idea of the nation which meant the entire Hungary already existed and
looked back to a long tradition at the time of Árpád's introit; – the
country meant the entire historical Hungary and was a fully developed,
firm historical legal concept, need and requirement in the consciousness
of its inhabitants.

The very interesting coinciding circumstance of the times is that the
Árpádian dukes decided to build the fortifications of the borders due to
the petition of the inhabitants. (…) These inhabitants could ask for
these fortifications only because the castle fortifications were already
developed at an earlier age, but was later – probably at the time of the
disintegration of the Avar empire – destroyed. Consequently the
inhabitants asked the Árpádian dukes that these old defense systems be
rebuilt, repaired and fortified; they in turn had to agree with the just
nature of this petition which was based upon a historical past and the
necessity of which they could not deny. Denial would have been difficult
considering that the country's population offered their services to
complete this work of immense scope.

As we can see, the inherent, and hitherto obscured logic of the Anonymus
text brings us to further facts and ever newer certainties that the
ethnicity of the population of the Carpathian valley was Magyar. (page
40-43)

* The Bors family-name is by no means new in Europe even before the
Árpáds. Among others Bors is one of the heroes of the Arthurian legends as
it was preserved through tradition. (Ed.)

———————

Endre Kolozsvári Grandpierre is a writer, poet, historian, and a pioneer
in researching and discovering unknown facets of Hungarian history. His
ancestors were of French Huguenot origin, who fled to Switzerland and
settled in Hungary in 1820. His great-grandfather was the secretary to
Lajos Kossuth, leader of the 1848 freedom fight. His family also served in
Garibaldi's freedom movement. His maternal ancestry is Transylvanian
Hungarian. Endre K. Grandpierre was on the black list of the Rákosi regime
in 1953. His poem "About me" (Magamról) talks about this experience and
was broadcast on BBC.

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