Why Nomads loved Hungary ?

[IsadorBG]

I have been wondering this for a while but in the early middle age, what is nowaday called "hungary" has been the center of many nomadic empire among them the Huns, Avars and of course the Magyars.

But why all those nomads choose Hungary ? What makes it so attractive to them ?

 

[Gordy]

It's flat for starters, who wants to be a nomad in a mountainous area? It's also got a huge river , (the Danube) running through it, easy to navigate and lots of water / food.

 

[Amallric]

Going westward from the Great Steppe this is the last large plain non covered with woods. It makes perfect sense for nomads to settle there if they have been driven away from the Steppe.

 

[Calad]

Going westward from the Great Steppe this is the last large plain non covered with woods. It makes perfect sense for nomads to settle there if they have been driven away from the Steppe.

This.

Poland is also plains so potentially a Khanate could have been formed there but not in Germany which is dense forest and swamps. Greek and Bulgaria is mountain terrain so no nomads there.

 

[pithorr]

But... wasn't western Ukraine also covered by the woods in those times?

 

[Amallric]

You would need to cross the Carpathian mountains to get into HUngary, yes. But this could actually de seen as an advantage, because many of the peoples who went there did so because they weren't welcome in the steppe anymore. The woods and mountains shielded them from the steppe.

 

[IsadorBG]

Ok I understand why Hungary was a good land for Nomads but it was also the center of "huge" nomadic empire like the huns and the avars. Why choose hungary as the center of the empire instead of say valachia or moldavia ? wich was many times controlled by those empires.

I was thinking of the proximity with "civilization" (rome and successor) along with the natural defense that is carpathia may have been important factor but maybe they were other for those empires ?

 

[Arilou]

As mentioned, because Hungary is essentially a piece of the steppe in the centre of Europe. Perfect for a nomadic empire.

 

[eleinvisible]

I think it is more of an issue of why didn't they become removed by another invader. Nomads roam everywhere, but they seem to stay in peninsulas and other defensible areas: the Koreans, the western Turks, the Magyars. They all ruled beyond the defensible area at one point, but only really the natural redoubt remains. Hungary is shielded by the Carpathian Mountains, so that must help.

Also it is a plains and steppe people like plains, hence why the Turks burned much of Anatolia when they conquered it: to make plains.

 

[JodelDiplom]

Was Hungary really a steppe when the Magyars invaded, though? The natural lowland vegetation for central Europe, including Hungary, is swamps and dense forests. Hungary does not get less rain than the surrounding regions, it's not at all an arid land.

AFAIK Hungary was a not very densely settled land in the 8th/9th century and what peoplelived there (slavs) didn't live the sort of pastoral / nomadic life styles that can keep the natural vegetation in check. (Like the Avars may have done, with huge roaming herds.) So I would expect most of Hungary to have been forests and the occasional swamp, when the Magyars arrived, just like anywhere else in Europe where human settlement was sparse. The flatness of the land would still make it easy to traverse, even with forests - so, there's where your nomads get their huge advantage over the sedentary inhabitants - but it's not like Mongolia or Nebraska.

The deforested steppe-like Puszta regions in Hungary, which you may think of when you think "Hungary + nomads" actually owe their existence to massive clearings in the 16th/17th century during Ottoman occupation.

 

[Herbert West]

Was Hungary really a steppe when the Magyars invaded, though? The natural lowland vegetation for central Europe, including Hungary, is swamps and dense forests. Hungary does not get less rain than the surrounding regions, it's not at all an arid land.

Most of the Great Hungarian Plain was routinely flooded by the Danube and the Tisza, before these rivers were reined in in the mid of the 19th century. Supposedly, it sometimes reached levels when the two rivers touched in the middle.

So most of the plain was, well, a floodplain, with adequate light, meadowy forest vegetation. The rest is/was shurbland (check out the Wikipedia article on the Hortobagy National Park, that should give you a good idea on how that place looked thousand years ago), mostly because the two big rivers meant that a lot of smaller rivers flowed into them, diverting the irritation from places like the Hortobagy.


Also, you are confusing two things. There was a huge deforestation in 16-17th centuries in regions west of the Tisza/Danube, and in the highlands. This did indeed lead to the expansion of the Steppe into areas west of the Danube, but it did not create the steppe regions east of the Tisza. In fact, the main settling sites of the still nomadic Magyars were east of the Danube, same as with the Avars and other steppe people passing through here.

Permanent seditary occupation of the areas west of the Danube, like Esztergom Visegrád, or Tihany comes when the tribes switch from mostly nomadic behaviour with permanent wintering places to having permanent settling places and only going nomad in the summer months to herd cattle and raid germans.

 

[Hibernian]

From the information I can gather, Hungary was not a natural steppe/grassland zone in the middle ages (it was heavily forested, like the surrounding regions).

Here is a reconstructed map of the forest cover of Europe throughout various time periods. I think it's based on tree pollen data, you can read about it in the scientific paper that it comes from here.

I asked similar questions last year in a thread called Nomads on the Steppe (there's some interesting discussions there, worth checking out). But I still don't really have a clear answer as to why nomads gravitated towards Hungary.

 

[Arilou]

Even if Hungary was more densely forested today, those map still shows hungary a substantially lighter shade than the surrounding areas.

 

[JodelDiplom]

I asked similar questions last year in a thread called Nomads on the Steppe (there's some interesting discussions there, worth checking out). But I still don't really have a clear answer as to why nomads gravitated towards Hungary.

Perhaps forests aren't an obstacle to nomads by themselves, as long as there is sufficient pasture to be found in the meadows between the forests?

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

The food of course, om nom nom.

 

[soda7777777]

The food of course, om nom nom.

Somehow I knew you would make that joke.

 

[Enravota]

You would need to cross the Carpathian mountains to get into HUngary, yes. But this could actually de seen as an advantage, because many of the peoples who went there did so because they weren't welcome in the steppe anymore. The woods and mountains shielded them from the steppe.

AFAIK the steppe folk usually followed the Danube plain into what is now Hungary instead of traversing the Carpathians. IIRC during the migrations period most settlements on the northern bank were a couple of days travel from the river. That allowed them to raid into Byzantium while creating a corridor of a sorts for whatever came from the steppes to pass through.

 

[Semper Victor]

From the information I can gather, Hungary was not a natural steppe/grassland zone in the middle ages (it was heavily forested, like the surrounding regions).

Here is a reconstructed map of the forest cover of Europe throughout various time periods. I think it's based on tree pollen data, you can read about it in the scientific paper that it comes from here.

I asked similar questions last year in a thread called Nomads on the Steppe (there's some interesting discussions there, worth checking out). But I still don't really have a clear answer as to why nomads gravitated towards Hungary.

That sequence of maps shows a dark green patch (which I suppose indicates a "heavily forested area") continuedly from 1000 BC up to 1850 AD in what should be the northern Arabian desert (lower right corner of each map) :wacko:

 

[Calad]

That map is simply afwul when comes to this topic. According it forest of Europe has been only declining, which is true, but this also violates history so much and makes it even worse by using modern borders from 1 000 bc.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

somehow i knew you would make that joke.

:laugh: I somehow cant resist.