§ 53. V.n.nd.r.
Marquart, Streifzüge, passim; Moravcsik, Zur Geschichte der Onoguren, v.s., § 22.
The natural sequence of the three closely connected chapters would be: § 22 (Majgharī), § 53 (V.n.nd.r), § 46 (Mirvāt). The subject is of considerable difficulty and the following points must be examined:
THE SEATS OF THE V.N.ND.R. Our peoples V.n.nd.r (§ 53) and Mirvāt (§ 46) have direct parallels only in Gardīzī's N.nd.r and M.rdāt. In both the Ḥ.-'Ā. and Gardīzī the V.n.nd.r / N.nd.r are the immediate neighbours of the Majgharī though the latter's habitat is conceived differently: our author places them near the Urals, whereas Gardīzī describes the Southern Magyars as living in the region of great rivers in the north-western corner of the Black Sea. Gardīzī's views on the Magyar territory are supported not only by I.R. and Bakrī but by the consensus of Byzantine and Western European sources as well. Therefore in discussing the location of the V.n.nd.r / N.nd.r territory contiguous on that of the Majgharī we have to depend chiefly on Gardīzī and disregard our author's theoretical constructions. [3] Such is the conclusion arrived at after a long series of attempts to co-ordinate our data with those of Gardīzī until it became evident that our author's starting-point was based on an error.
According to Gardīzī
the N.nd.r lived between the river separating them from the Majgharī
and the mountain from which another river flowed down and behind which
lived the M.rdat. The reading of the Oxford MS. according to which the
mountain stood above the N.nd.r. would suggest
3. Gardīzī simply describes the facts and our author forces them into a geographical scheme. His error arises the moment that he tries to dispose his materials in map form.
466 Commentary § 53
that it stretched in a northern direction. The river from the eastern (or northern) bank of which the Majgharī could see the N.nd.r on the opposite bank is most probably the Danube, or alternatively its northern affluent Sereth mentioned in Const. Porph.'s description of Atelkuzu (v.s., § 22). Consequently the N.nd.r lived west of the last mentioned river, or south of the Danube, with the Transylvanian Carpathians standing "above" them. Gardīzī adds that the N.nd.r lived in the direction (bar janb "on the side") of the Saqlāb. As stated in § 43 the latter term may refer to the western Slavs (or even to the Macedonian Slavs, § 42, 17.).
Our author, in spite of his cartographical error, preserves the original disposition of the peoples with regard to one another, but this goes only as far as the original triad Majgharī - V.n.nd.r - Mirvāt is concerned. In § 46, north [east?] of the Mirvāt are named "some of the Inner Bulghār and [!] the V.n.nd.r mountains". As the Inner Bulghār belong definitely to the Iṣṭ. < Balkhī tradition which does not know the V.n.nd.r, this combination may be disregarded as the author's own guess. See diagram on p. 440.
HARKAVI'S AND MARQUART'S VIEWS. In the Hebrew document
quoted below Harkavi, as early as 1875, explained the name V.n.nt.r
by that of the Bulgarian
but it was a long time before the parallel names in Ḥ.-'Ā.
and Gardīzī
became known. [1] When Marquart first studied Gardīzī's
passage, Streifzüge, 172, he was led astray by the fact that
Bakrī also mentions
a pair of the Majgharī's
neighbours. Having very ingeniously located the latter in the western Caucasus
Marquart was less happily inspired in identifying them with the two peoples
found in Gardīzī.
He overlooked the fact that Bakrī
(see notes to § 50, 4.) speaks of their south-eastern neighbours,
while Gardīzī
has in view the later Atelkuzu territory and its south-western neighbours.
The identification of Gardīzī's
and
with
Bakrī's
and
has often
been taken for granted, but after the publication of the Ḥ.-'Ā.,
where the two series of names are separated, no place for doubt could remain
as to its inconsistency. [2] Twenty-three years after
the publication of the Streifzüge, Marquart dropped en passant
a
hint for a new identification of the V.n.nd.r with a promise to develop
the subject. His sudden demise (4.ii.1930) prevented him from carrying
out this intention and his note buried, as if intentionally, at an unexpected
place does not seem to have attracted the notice which it merits. In his
Arktische Länder (1924) Marquart, among other things, studies the disappearance
of the sound g in old Bulgarian and Turkish
and gives as an example the name of the Turcoman tribe Salur <
Salghur.
As another instance of the same phenomenon he quotes (p. 275) "den bulgarischen
Hordennamen
(Nikephoros);
Ulughundur
(Ibn al-Kalbī, + um
820, bei Jāqūt);
Ołxontor
(Anania
1.
In his translation of § 52 (in annex to Markov's work) Toumansky illustrates
V.n.nd.r by
found in Ibn al-Athīr,
i, 243 ( < Mas'ūdī,
Murūj,
ii, 58-64). On other similar hints cf. now Kokovtsov, o.c., 92.
2. Cf. Barthold's Preface, p. 43. Marquart, Streifzüge, 172, 517, knew only a stray quotation from the Ḥ.-'Ā through Westberg's Beiträge, p. 215.
§ 53 V.n.nd.r. 467
Širakac'i, VII.
Jahrh.) > W(u)ł(u)ndur
Bułkar (Ps. Moses
Chorenac'i, letztes Drittel des IX. Jahrh.), Wunundur (Ḥudūd
al-'Ālam, Ende
des X. Jahrh.), bereits mit prothetischem w vor labialem Vokal,
wie im čuwaschischen; Wulundur
(al-Mas'ūdī,
943-4 n. Chr.) = magy. Nándor Fejérvár = Belgrad."
The exact references of this cryptic passage are: Nicephori Archiepiscopi
Constantinopolitani Opuscula, ed. de Boor, Lipsiae 1880, p. 24;
Yāqūt,ī,
404: Japhet's sons: Yūnān,
al-Ṣaqlab,
(sic), [1] Burjān,
Jurzān, Fārs,
Rūm; Géographie de
Moïse de Corène [attributed sometimes to A. Shirakats'i], ed. by Soukry, Venice
1881, p. 25, transl. p. 34 (Marquart's translation in Streifzüge, 57); Moses of Khoren, History, book ii,
ch. 6. The reference to the Ḥ.-'Ā.
evidently hails from Westberg's Beiträge. Mas'ūdī
mentions
both in the Murūj,
ii, 58-64, and in the Tanbīh,
180, 183 (see in detail Streifzüge, 60-74).
Marquart thinks that Onoghundur belongs to the type of names
formed with the Turkish suffix -dur (Bayandur, Mongoldur).
The forms attested in the sources would then suggest for our V.n.nd.r
the reading *Vunundur. [Gardīzī's
N.nd.r
can
hardly be compared directly with the Magyar form Nándor;
most probably the initial v taken for the conjunction va
was dropped by the scribe in the same way as we find in our text Khān
instead of Vakhān,
cf. also Mas'ūdi's
with initial w.]
THE ONOGHUNDUR. The people
called Onoghundur were a Bulgarian tribe (cf. § 51) which "from the sixties of
the fifth century down to the end of the seventh century" lived north of the
Caucasus, to the east of the Azov sea in the Kuban region. Their great ruler
Kobrat () organized them
into a powerful state but after his death (circa A.D. 642) the advance
of the Khazars split the Bulgar kingdom; a part of the tribes under Bayan
(said to be Kobrat's son) remained in their former seats as Khazar subjects,
whereas another of Kobrat's sons Asparukh travelled westwards and after
having crossed the Danube (A.D. 679) conquered the territory of the present
Bulgaria. Const. Porph., De thematibus, p. 48, says that since that
time the name of the Bulgar has become known for "previously they
were called
".
[2]
The centre of Asparukh's kingdom was in the strong locality
surrounded on one side by marshes and on the other by very high rocks.
Jireček, Geschichte
d. Bulgaren, 1876, p. 129, read the name
< Slavonic
glŭ
"angle, corner" and identified it with the southern part of Bessarabia
known under the Turkish name Bujaq which also means "corner". [However
the situation of
better suits some place in Dobruja.]
Considerably later, in the second half of the ninth century, the Onoghundurs
who had stayed in the old seats and became mixed with the Magyars [3]
1. Not in the general index of Wüstenfeld's edition.
2. Marquart, Chronologie, pp. 89-96, Streifzüge, pp. 126, 505; Bury, A History of the later Roman Empire, 1889, ii, 333; Moravcsik, o.c., pp. 65, 71—2, 89.
3. The name Onoghundur (Onoghur, &c.) may be responsible for the western designation of the Magyars as Hungar-. See Munkácsi and Németh quoted by Moravcsik, o.c., 81, note 3.
468 Commentary § 53
began their westward trek which finally brought them into the present-day Hungary, cf. Moravcsik, o.c., 89.
THE SOURCE OF THE Ḥ.-'Ā.
AND GARDĪZĪ.
If Our two Muslim sources have preserved the name of the Onoghundur it
remains to be seen to which of the two migrations the item can be assigned.
It does not look probable that the original name of the Danubian Bulgars,
not recorded in the earlier Muslim sources, should have suddenly emerged
at a later time. [1] Both in the Ḥ.-'Ā.
and Gardīzī
the V.n.nd.r / N.nd.r appear not as an abstract symbol but as a tribe in flesh
and blood. As shown in the notes to § 42, 17. our item on the "Christianized
Slavs" is due to some later source of circa A.D. 900 when the Magyars sat
in Atelkuzu and it is most likely that the additional details on the Magyars's
neighbours (§§ 46 and 53) found in the Ḥ.-'Ā.
and Gardīzī
belong to the same source (Hārūn
b. Yaḥyā?).
If so, the special information of our two sources must refer to the second
lot of Onoghundur pushed on by the Magyar migration. [2]
Neither the Ḥ.-'Ā.
nor Gardīzī
mentions any enmity between the V.n.nd.r and Magyars. The qualification
of the V.n.nd.r in our source as cowards (badh-dil) may be due to
a wrong interpretation of the word tarsā
(which means both "Christian" ' and "coward"). [3]
In Gardīzī[4]
the N.nd.r are definitely called Christians (tarsā)
and Rūmī,
i.e. "Byzantine", very possibly with a reference to their religion. In
the list of bishoprics dating from the middle of the eighth century a bishop
of the Onoghurs ()
is mentioned under the metropolitan of Crimean Gothia (
),
cf. Moravcsik, o.c., 64. The Onoghurs in question were certainly
those who still remained to the north-east of the Black Sea and therefore
could be controlled from the Crimea. [5] The rest
of our author's characteristics may be only a development of his initial
mistake about tarsā.
[6]
1. The Khazar king's letter (v.i.) refers to the events of A.D. 679, but this detail may point to the literary origin of the passage.
2. Unless the name V.n.nd.r
< Onoghundur refers to some special Bulghar territory, such as the original
occupied by Asparukh ?
3. Was then the original source
on Eastern Europe, or the text in which it was available, in Persian? The
absence of underground canals (kārīz)
in the M.rdāt country,
mentioned in Gardīzī,
could hardly strike any one except an Iranian. Cf. also the strange transcription
of the name (§51)
(§ 52). These facts still await an explanation. Mas'ūdī,
Murūj,
ii, 59, says that dissensions among the W.l.nd.rī
tribes arose in connexion with the presence among them of a Muslim merchant
from Ardābīl.
Consequently Persian traders penetrated into the southern Russian steppes
and could be the source of information for their coreligionists.
5. Were it not for the name *Vunundur one might consider as the Magyars' neighbours the Rumanian Vlachs, see Kunik in Izvestiya al-Bakri, ii, 16, and Niederle, Manuel, Map.
6. The Danube Bulgars were baptized under King Boris in A.D. 864. If indeed our data refer to them ( = Burjān = Inner Bulghār = Bulghari), their weakness in comparison with the Magyars could be explained by the fact that the latter were moving westwards and their forced energy (under the Pecheneg impact) could be mistaken for strength.
§ 53 V.n.nd.r. 469
MAS'ŪDI'S
"W.L.ND.R". An entirely independent use of the term [1] is found in Mas'ūdi's
well-known
report on the incursion into the Byzantine Empire of the nomads called
W.l.nd.rī in
(or after) 320/932. [2] In the Murūj
(written in 332/943), i, 262, ii, 58-64, Mas'ūdī
calls the invaders "Turkish peoples" and enumerates their four tribes,
namely, B.jnī, [3]
Bajghurt (= evidently Magyar), Pecheneg (the most valiant of the four),
and Nūkarda (still
obscure). In the Tanbīh,
180, 182, Mas'ūdī
refers to the incursion "of the Burghar and the Turkish tribes"
and under the latter mentions the same four names. The reasons of this
association of tribes are not quite apparent and it is possible that information
belonging to different epochs has been telescoped in Mas'ūdi's
version. As regards the date, the invasion seems to correspond best to
that of the
(i.e. in Byzantine terminology: Magyars) recorded under 934!
However, Mas'ūdī
presents the four tribes as living in the neighbourhood of the Khazars
and Alāns, [4] which
after the events of 889 (v.s., § 22) could be true only with regard to
the Pechenegs. The kings of the four tribes appear as independent chiefs and
only by the consent of his three colleagues is the king of the Pechenegs
invested with the supreme command on the day of battle. Mas'ūdī
says that the tribes were called
"after the town of
situated in the extreme frontier region of the Rūm
towards the east" and adds that the cavalry dispatched by the Emperor against
the invaders reached this frontier post in 8 days. The exact situation
of W.l.nd.r has been a matter of much speculation. Some scholars
looked for it even in the Caucasus and in the Crimea, but Marquart,
Streifzüge,
499-500, with some probability identified it with the fortress of
which lay in the neighbourhood of Burgas and was mentioned in the delimitation
treaty of 864 concluded between the Emperor and the Bulgarian King Boris.
[5] Jireček, o.c.,
499, already suspected in W.l.nd.r a Bulgarian (non-Slavonic) name
corresponding to some different official term (Debeltos?). Mas'ūdī
must have got it from some oral source. Already in his innumerable "Zusätze" in
Streifzüge, 500, Marquart wondered whether "Walandar" has
not preserved the name of the "Unughundur-Bulgars" and in his Arktische
Länder (1924) he finally adopted this point of view. The fortress,
of which the name must consequently be restored as *Vulundur, could
have received this name either
1. The form W.l.nd.r peculiar to Mas'ūdī results from the dissimilation n.n>l.n. Cf. the Armenian form Vłəndur.
2. See Marquart, Streifzüge, 60-74, 499-500, 527.
3. Contrary to Marquart, o.c.,
67, mentioned
alongside with Pecheneg can hardly be identical with the latter. Perhaps
it is only a metathesis of
äpni,
as one of the Oghuz clans is called in Kāshgharī,
i, 57; on their later history see M. F. Köprülü-zade, Oguz
etnolojisine dayir, pp. 24-7 (v.s., § 18). However, cf.
infra
the Khazar king's letter. [Rashīd
al-dīn, ed. Bérézine, vii,
7, among the Oghuz tribes issued from Kök-khan mentions separately
and
]
4. Marquart, o.c., 74: "verblasste Erinnerungen".
5. See now V. Zlatarski, Istoriya na Bŭlgarskata dŭržava, Sofia, 1927, i. 25: the frontier left Develt to the Byzantine Empire.
470 Commentary § 53
from some colony of Onoghundurs with whom the Greeks were in relations since the times of Kobrat, Streifzüge, 529, or because it was directed against the Vulundur (in Arabic one might say: 'alā thaghr al-Wulundur), and consequently Mas'ūdi's term *Wulunduriya (referring to all the four, or even five different tribes), most probably has to be taken in the sense of "the coalition attacking on the *Vulundur front". [1] Whatever the explanation of the raid, [2] the survival of the name *Vulundur in Mas'ūdī is a firmly established fact interesting as a parallel to our *Vunundur.
THE KHAZAR KING'S LETTER. Among the parallels to the
name V.n.nd.r it remains for us to consider V.n.nt.r
found in the Hebrew letter supposed to have been sent by the Khazar king
Joseph in answer to that of Chasdai ben Shafrut, an agent to the Cordovan
caliph 'Abd al-Raḥmān
(A.D. 912-61). The year 961 is the terminus ante quem of Chasdai's
original letter and the king's reply must have followed it within a not
too long period. As has been recently discovered (1924), the existence
of King Joseph's letter was known already to Yahuda ben Barzillai (lived
towards A.D. 1100) who wondered "whether it was genuine or not". The question
is complicated by the existence of two versions of the document: [3]
the one (A) in a shorter form was published in Constantinople in 1577 (this
text is very close to the Christ Church College MS. 193); the other (B)
in a more complete form came to light only towards 1873 among the manuscripts
collected by Firkovich. This fact, in view of this collector's suspect
practices, was not in favour of a blind acceptance of the contents of this
particular version.
The passage containing the name V.n.nt.r is found only in version
B. The Khazar king says that his ancestors fought against "many nations"
whom they expelled and whose country they occupied. Then comes the additional
paragraph: "In the country in which I live lived formerly the V.n.nt.r.
Our Khazar ancestors warred against them. The V.n.nt.r were more
numerous, as numerous as the sea sand, but they could not resist the Khazars.
They left their country...." After this the two versions agree in saying
that the enemies were driven beyond the great river Rūnā
(A. ) or
Dūnā
(B.
), and
"until the present day they are situated on the river Rūnā/Dūnā,
near Kushtantiniya/Kustandina [i.e. Constantinople] and the Khazars
have occupied their country". [4]
1. Unless the coalition was
formed on some special territory, v.s.,
= Bujaq.
2. In his final "Zusatz", o.c., 528, Marquart writes: "was es mit der Erstürmung der Festung Walandar für eine Bewandtnis hat, lasst sich bei dem völligen Schweigen der Chronisten . . . auch jetzt noch nicht erkennen, so viel ist aber nun mehr klar, dass die Walandarhorden eigentlich die Bulgaren (B.rgh.r) und ihre damaligen Verbündeten, die Pečenegen, sind…." [Cf. C. A. Macartney in Byz.-Neugr. Jahrb., 1930, pp. 159-70.]
3. See Prof. P. K. Kokovtsov, Yevreysko-khazarskaya perepiska v X veke, ed. by the Academy of the U.S.S.R., 1932, which gives the originals of all the documents bearing on the correspondence with the Khazar king with translation and a very valuable commentary. The third document discovered lately in Cambridge does not concern us here.
4. Kokovtsov's transl., pp. 75 and 92.
§§ 53-5 V.n.nd.r. 471
In a later passage the king gives an account of the Khazar boundaries
and, immediately after a very detailed enumeration of the localities belonging
to the Crimea [Firkovich's home!], the frontier is said to turn northwards
to the country of Batsra (
most probably
*Bačna referring
to Bajnī or
Bajnā
whom Mas'ūdī
associates with the Pechenegs, v.s., p. 469, n. 3). The (inhabitants)
of this country lived near the river V.zg (A. spells Y.zg,
very probably *Uzu = Dniepr) and wandered in the steppe down to
the limits of the H.gry'īm
(A. Hyndy'īm),
i.e. evidently Hungarians *H.ng.r. Consequently the lands of a (Turkish)
tribe and those of the Magyars stretched to the west of the Khazar and
separated the latter from the Danube. The writer clearly refers to the
expulsion of the V.n.nt.r beyond the Danube as a remote past (events of
A.D. 679), whereas the account of the Khazar frontiers presupposes the
arrival of the Pechenegs in the second half of the ninth century. The form
W.n.nt.r
has a striking resemblance to our V.n.nd.r, and on the other hand
considerably differs from the forms attested in Greek and Armenian sources.
Numerous names in version B seem to have been borrowed from Muslim geographers
[1]
and the question arises whether such is not the case of W.n.nt.r
as well. The interpolator could not possibly know the Ḥ.-'Ā.
or Gardīzī
[which in Europe have come to light at a very recent date] but could he
not have seen their common source? The text of the Khazar letter as it
stands, if confronted with our two Persian authors, would confirm the interpretation
of our Rūtā/Dūbā
as Danube [2] and, on the other hand, suggest the
identity of our V.n.nd.r with the Danubian Bulgars. However, the
origin of the Hebrew interpolation remains obscure and the clever interpolator
may have read his own sense into his source. Therefore in our own explanation
of the Muslim texts we have to go principally by their internal evidence.
1. The most striking example
is the Arabic form
*Ṣlawiyūn,
Kokovtsov, o.c. 98-9.