Hunnic components in the Hungarian ethnogenesis

This chapter examines through what course of events the Huns could have been included in the process of Hungarian ethnogenesis. Starting from the Hungarian gestas and chronicles, especially Simon Kézai and the Anonymous Notary, it argues that the Legend of the Miraculous Deer has parallels in Hun and Turkic traditions, including a saga collected among the Balkars of the Caucasus, and cannot be dismissed as a literary topos. Reviewing the debate from Bálint Hóman to György Györffy and Gyula Kristó, it contends that the Árpád dynasty "accepted" rather than "chose" Attila as ancestor: the chroniclers did not conceal Attila's negative traits, and by the 13th century the dynasty's legitimacy rested on the "lineage of holy kings". The chapter then discusses forms of identity and the functions of proper names, using Menander and Agathias on the Utigurs and Kutrigurs, and, building on Gyula Moravcsik, proposes that the Kutrigur-Hun king Muageris (c. 528) became the eponymous ancestor of the Megyer clan, whose name later passed to the whole people. Byzantine sources (Malalas, Theophylaktos Simokattes, Nikephoros) and Frankish annals and charters are used to trace "Hun" groups that survived within and after the Avar Khaganate: the Var and Chunni, the Onogurs who came with Kuber, the Wangars and the Christian "Huns" of 9th-century Pannonia. The Székely tradition is discussed with reference to Hóman and Hakan Aydemir. The chapter concludes that Hungarian ethnogenesis was not linear but a multilineal process that can be described as an early medieval Turkic–Hungarian network.