--- g <
george.st@...> wrote:
>
> >(GK)Sylvester's contention that they were pushed
> >out of Hungarian territories by the "White" Ugrians
> in
> >the 6th century.
>
> Did Sylvester mean the Avars?
>
> George
*****GK: That would be my understanding, taking
"Avars" as referring to a complex of various steppe
peoples led by the "proper" Avars. This segment of the
"Nestor" Chronicle is difficult. Microanalysis
indicates that Nestor (editor 1 of this part) listed a
series of steppe peoples who occupied the plains of
the northern Danube after the Huns (whom he does not
mention BTW). First, the Bulgars (5-7 cs.), then the
Ugrians, then the Pechenegs. Nestor also noted that
the Ugrians first became known (not yet on the Danube,
just generally) in the time of Heraclius, and were his
allies in the war of 627 against Khosrau of Persia.
This led some scholars to identify these Ugrians with
the Khazars, while others (whose opinion I
share)thought they might have been Ugrian peoples who
were associates of the proto-Khazars. In any event,
Nestor assumed that at some time after the Bulgars,
"Ugrians" dominated north of the Danube. Some have
seen the latter as the Onogur allies of Asparukh. What
Sylvester (editor 2 of this segment) did was to
distinguish these earlier Ugrians as "White", and to
contrast them with the "Black" Ugrians who arrived
from the East in the late 9th and early 10th c. In the
latter we would actually have a different group of
"Ugrians" (distinct from those who helped Heraclius,
and from those who dominated north of the Danube, and
from those whom Sylvester designated as "White"). Now
it is these "White" Ugrians that Sylvester holds to
have "chased out the Vlakhs" from the "Slavic"
territory which later became known as Hungary. And the
event, while undated, is supposed to have occurred
sometime between the initial Bulgar raids against the
Roman Empire (take your pick here: late 5th century
onwards), and the Avar attack on Heraclius in 619. So
the time of the Avar occupation of Pannonia appears
just right. ******
>
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