Southern Transylvania under Bulgar Rule

( 8 2 7 -8 9 5 )

The internal strifes that erupted throughout Avaria in the aftermath of Char­

lem agne's campaign in 791 probably decimated the Avars of Transylvania, too. The civil wars of 795 saw the death of the kagan, the overlord of the Avar heartland, as well as of th e jugurrus (juyrus), the comm ander of north­

ern and eastern Avaria. Since the Franks did not venture beyond the Tisza in their campaigns, eastern Avaria would have stood a chance of survival had not an even more dangerous enemy arisen in the person of Krum, the khan of all the Bulgarians, in 802-803. And while most western historians, ever under the spell of the Carolingian Empire, refuse to recognize that the Avar Empire had, in fact, been crushed by the Bulgarian army, most H un­

garian and Bulgarian scholars are inclined to believe that eastern Avaria was incorporated into the Bulgarian Empire already in 804. This latter theory is contradicted by the fact that the Carolingian annals mention that between 818 and 824, some Slavic groups — the Timocani who had inhabited the .Tim ok Valley, and the.renegade (predannici) Abodriti — fled to "D acia"

north of the Danube to escape the wrath of their former Bulgarian over­

lords.17 Since the Franks readily supported these Slavic groups and showed no inclination whatsoever to waive their patronage, in 827 the Bulgarians

17. Annales regtii Francorum, ad A. 818; ibid. ad A. 819; ibid. ad A. 824.

102

mounted a general attack against the outposts of the Frankish Empire in the Drava-Sava interfluve. In the course of successive campaigns, they drove out the Franks and occupied the territory of the present-day Sirmia and eastern Slavonia. An inscription of Khan Omurtag (814-831) m entions a Bulgarian tarkhan who had drowned in the waters of the Tisza. This event and the Bulgarian name of an earth-and-timber fortress at Csongr£d/C em i- grad in the Middle Tisza region suggests that the Bulgarians had indeed occupied some territories prior to the peace treaty of 832. A contemporary mid-ninth century source — the Bavarian Geographer — lists the eastern Abpdriti (Osterabtrezi) of Dacia among the subject peoples of the Bulgarian Em pire,18 whilst the entries for the years 863 and 883 in contemporary w est­

ern annals explicitly state that the armies of Bulgaria, in alliance with the Eastern Frankish Empire, had attacked Moravia, which lay on the western bank of the Garam River. In a description by the Persian Djaihani from around 870, the Bulgarians (w.n.n.d.r) and the Moravians (m.r.da) lived a ten day journey apart.19 Transylvania is only mentioned in the final years of the Bulgarian occupations in contemporary records: in 892, an embassy sent by Am ulf, the king of the eastern Franks, requested that Laodimir (Vladimir), the Bulgarian khan, "should forbid the sale of salt to the M oravians''.20 This is the only indication that the Bulgarians had seized some of the salt mines in southern Transylvania (at Vizakna, Marosujv^r, and Kisakna), and that they traded salt to other lands. Though the Hungarian chroniclers make no mention of the Bulgarian occupation of Transylvania and have preserved the mem ory of Bulgarian overlordship only in the Tisza region, the fact that salt was mined and traded leaves no doubt that a considerable part of the Maros Valley had indeed come under Bulgarian control.21

The Bulgarian occupation of Transylvania is amply documented in the archaeological evidence. The inhumation burials brought to light on the left bank of the Maros near Als6tatarlaka, opposite Maroskarna, contained a series of vessels whose form, material and decoration was unlike any other earlier or contemporaneous Transylvanian pottery, but which is practically indistinguishable from the Bulgarian pottery of the time. Inhum ation buri­

als with "M aroskam a-type" vessels, beads, knives and pagan food offer­

ings have been uncovered in Gyulafehervar and its environs (Kudzsir, Partos, Olahgorbo, Szdszsebes, and Sebesany). A pair of earrings was found in one of the Olahgorbo burials. Inhumation burials have also been found near Marosujv6r and Kisakna; some contained Maroskama-type pottery (Magyar- szentbenedek), some a series of female jewellery resembling the earrings from 01ahgorb6, which are of a type that has no known antecedents in Tran­

sylvania (found at Csombord). Bulgarian archaeologists soon proved that the only parallels to the jewellery from Csombord and Olahgorbo are the sim ilar ornaments from ninth and tenth century cemeteries in Bulgaria. In other words, they can be considered the evidence of Bulgarian settlers.

18. G e o g r a p h u s Bav a r u s , Descriptio pagorum Slavonum 2.

19. D ja i h a n i = G a r d iz i. = G o m b o s, Catalogus ... III. 1006.

20. Annales Fuldenses, ad A. 892.

21. Meditations based on later place-names, for instance, Slankamen, dating from the ll-1 2 th century, as regards never existing salt mines are untenable

hypoth-Since at the time of these finds similar earrings and pendants had been published only in reports of excavations of Moravian cemeteries, the H un­

garian archaeologists of Transylvania who had excavated and published the Csombord cemetery were convinced that they had stumbled on a his­

torical curiosity: the graves of Moravian settlers in Transylvania engaged in salt m ining and salt trading. As far as Csombord was concerned, this view was accepted by Romanian and Saxon scholars, too, who had been misled by a pair of simple iron spurs from Als6tatarlaka which they considered a sure indication of Moravian presence in the ninth century. W hereas the fact is that Carolingian spurs, and their imitations, were rather widespread in the eastern border zone of the Carolingian Eastern Frankish Empire during the eighth to tenth centuries — an impressive number of sim ilar spurs has been found in Dalmatia for example — and they were also current in the Danubian Bulgarian Empire, as well as among the tenth-century H ungar­

ians.

Recent excavations of the Roman Apulum in Gyulafeh§rv&r have brought to light the remains of a ninth-century settlement (overlying partly the third- century Roman destruction layer and partly the sixth-century Gepid settle­

ment) which featured a number of huts with sunken floors containing pot­

tery shreds with smoothed-in decoration resembling the Marosakna ves­

sels. The cemetery of the settlement was identified to the w est of the one­

time Roman castrum in Zalatna street; it contained inhumation burials with Maroskarna-type vessels, as well as a few Slavic-Bulgarian urn graves, char­

acteristic amphora-shaped flasks and pots bearing potter's marks. The ex­

planation for their presence is obviotis. There is reliable evidence that an­

tique Singidunum had been called "W hite castle" (Belegrad) by the Bulgar­

ians already in the ninth century after its white coloured Romano-Byzan- tine stone-walls. This name was also applicable to Apulum. The Bulgarian name of Belegrad was, in the tenth century, translated into H ungarian by the Hungarian settlers, and since it became the residence of the second most important leader, the gyula, the Hungarians called it Gyulafeherv&r, "the white castle of the gyula”. This nam e has survived to the present day in spite of the fact that in 1003, King Stephen broke the power of the mighty gyulas. The Saxon settlers of the twelfth century translated the Hungarian name into German (Weyssenpurg), whilst the name used by the Transylva­

nian Slavs (Bellegrad) was transmitted into the Romanian (Balgrad).22 The cemeteries of the M aroskam a-Csom bord population differ signifi­

cantly from the contemporaneous Slavic urn graves, from the Avar inhu­

mation burials of the preceding epoch, as well as from the tenth-century H ungarian graves. They are unique even in comparison to other Bulgarian cemeteries, for the latter were biritual by the ninth and tenth centuries, and reflected a mixture of Bulgarian-Turkic (Proto-Bulgarian) inhumation burials

— in which the dead were laid to rest with their costume, rich food offer­

ings and, often, their horse — and of the cremation graves of the Slavic 22. Recent Romanian historiography rejects the fact of Bulgarian rule in Transylva­

nia, nor does it acknowledge it even in Wallachia. Romanian archaeology calls these Bulgarian finds remnants of the "Dridu culture", a name reminding us of a Neolithic culture.

population. The small cemeteries unearthed at Maroskarna, Csombord and other Transylvanian sites resemble the Proto-Bulgarian burial grounds of Bulgaria. Considering the empire-building policy pursued by the Bulgarian khans, it is not in the least surprising that they should have sent Bulgar- Turkic warriors, rather than Bulgar-Slavs, to rule over the alien Slavic popu­

lation of Transylvania.

These small ruling strata of warriors lived a rather secluded life in Tran­

sylvania. The surrounding, subjugated Slavic population had little

influ-Fig. 6. Danubian Bulgar silver earrings from the Csombord-cemetery

ence on their material culture, their settlements and their cemeteries. The yellow flask of Lower Danubian type found at Marosnagylak, the northern­

most Bulgarian settlement, suggests that they probably received their sup­

plies from the mother country, to where the bulk of the m ined salt was transported.

The main road to Transylvania from Bulgaria protected on both banks of the Danube by brick and stone forts led through the Olt Valley along the old Rom an military road. A few Roman forts were restored in order to ensure its safety, and the Bulgarians' secure hold over southern Transylvania was ensured by the fort of Apulum-Belegrad. Another road that passed through the Bodza Pass from Constantia on the Danube was similarly protected by earth-and-tim ber fortresses which were later rebuilt in brick (Bucharest, Ploesti-Bucov and Slon-Prahova). Yet a third road wound its way from the Danube Bend in the Dobrudja to the brick fortress at Focsani, and from there (through the Ojtoz Pass| to the Transylvanian Slavs, who had settled in the Olt Valley and in the Cernavoda region, as confirmed by a Bulgar- Turkic vessel of Maroskarna-type found at Kezdipolyan.

Bulgarian finds have also been found along the Danube at Orsova, in the Tem es region, and up as far as Szentes along the Tisza, w hich m akes Csongr£d the northernmost outpost of Bulgarian occupation.

The small group of Bulgarian conquerors and the single Bulgarian forti­

fication in Transylvania at Belegrad on the right (northern) bank of the Maros proved unable to withstand the onslaught of the Hungarians in 895. Their houses and settlements were set aflame, and Transylvanian Hungarian tra­

dition had not even preserved the memory of their rule. The people known to us from the Csombord cemetery apparently surrendered, and continued to live on in the area for some time into the tenth century.