Other Europe in the Middle Ages : Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans
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Th e Other Europe in the Middle Ages curta_f1_i-x.indd i 10/30/2007 7:02:55 PM East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450 General Editor Florin Curta VOLUME 2 curta_f1_i-x.indd ii 10/30/2007 7:02:57 PM Th e Other Europe in the Middle Ages Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans Edited by Florin Curta with the assistance of Roman Kovalev LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008 curta_f1_i-x.indd iii 10/30/2007 7:02:57 PM Cover illustration: A mask-on-horse pendant from Vratsa. Courtesy of the History Museum in Vratsa. Th is book is printed on acid-free paper. A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISSN 1872-8103 ISBN 978 90 04 16389 8 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Th e Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani- cal, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to Th e Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands curta_f1_i-x.indd iv 10/30/2007 7:02:57 PM To the memory of Petre Diaconu (1924–2007) curta_f1_i-x.indd v 10/30/2007 7:02:57 PM curta_f1_i-x.indd vi 10/30/2007 7:02:57 PM CONTENTS Preface .................................................................................................. ix Introduction ........................................................................................ 1 Florin Curta Confl ict and coexistence: the local population of the Carpathian Basin under Avar rule (sixth to seventh century) .......................... 13 Tivadar Vida Avar chronology revisited, and the question of ethnicity in the Avar qaganate ...................................................................................... 47 Peter Stadler New remarks on the fl ow of Byzantine coins in Avaria and Walachia during the second half of the seventh century .............. 83 Péter Somogyi Bulgars in the Lower Danube region. A survey of the archaeological evidence and of the state of current research ....... 151 Uwe Fiedler Avar-age metalworking technologies in the Carpathian Basin (sixth to eighth century) .................................................................... 237 Orsolya Heinrich-Tamaska Two worlds, one hoard: what do metal fi nds from the forest- steppe belt speak about? .................................................................... 263 Bartłomiej Szymon Szmoniewski Th e earliest Avar-age stirrups, or the “stirrup controversy” revisited ............................................................................................... 297 Florin Curta A note on the “Hungarian sabers” of medieval Bulgaria .............. 327 Valeri Iotov curta_f1_i-x.indd vii 10/30/2007 7:02:58 PM viii contents Danube Bulgaria and Khazaria as part of the Byzantine oikoumene ............................................................................................ 339 Veselina Vachkova From ‘steppe’ to Christian empire and back: Bulgaria between 800 and 1100 ....................................................................................... 363 Tsvetelin Stepanov A broken mirror: the Kıpçak world in the thirteenth century ..... 379 Dimitri Korobeinikov Th e Cuman bishopric—genesis and evolution ............................... 413 Victor Spinei References ........................................................................................... 457 List of contributors ............................................................................. 483 Index .................................................................................................... 485 curta_f1_i-x.indd viii 10/30/2007 7:02:58 PM PREFACE Most papers in this book were originally presented in three special ses- sions at the 40th and 42nd editions of the International Congress on Medieval Studies held at Kalamazoo in 2005 and 2007, respectively. Th e aim of these sessions was to provide a fresh perspective on East- ern Europe during the early Middle Ages, one that would draw strongly on the experience of researchers from that region working on Avars, Bulgars, and Khazars. To that end, the session organizer drew on the knowledge and expertise of a number of specialists from Bulgaria, Hun- gary, Romania, Austria, and Poland, in addition to Germany and the United States. Papers at the Kalamazoo Congress drew attention to the interaction between societies in the early medieval Eastern and Western Europe. One pointer to that was dress, as revealed by both archaeological exca- vations and examination of manuscript illuminations. Burial assem- blages in western Hungary, but also in northeastern Bulgaria produced a number of artifacts for which good analogies exist only in Merovingian and Carolingian-era assemblages. “Avar” or “Bulgar” dress was a com- bination of elements of various origins, which was viewed as “exotic” enough to be marked as special in ninth- and tenth-century manuscript illuminations. Constructing the image of the Other was no doubt based more on preconceived ideas than on actual experience with the ways of life and customs of the Other(s). But the Kalamazoo papers suggested that something more important may have taken place in the early Mid- dle Ages: dress depended upon the social and political context, and Avar and Bulgar envoys to diff erent courts employed diff erent ways of dress- ing to convey diff erent messages about their identity, as well as that of their rulers. Th e “exotic” appearance of what was otherwise called the “nomadic component” of Avar and Bulgar culture served not only for a self-defi nition towards outsiders, but also as a source of self-identifi - cation and (re-)“invention of traditions.” Mid-eleventh-century anony- mous apocrypha written in Byzantine Bulgaria in Old Church Slavonic propagated a bright vision of the Bulgarian past, portraying the reigns of Boris, Symeon, and Peter as the glorious days long gone. Moreover, Boris appears as “Michael Qagan,” a ruler with a Christian baptismal name, but with a pre-Christian title operating as a symbol of a non-Byz- antine form of group identity. curta_f1_i-x.indd ix 10/30/2007 7:02:58 PM x preface Several original papers resulting from this multinational collaboration were presented for inclusion into this volume: Tivadar Vida, Orsolya Heinrich-Tamaska, Peter Stadler, and Tsvetelin Stepanov. In order to fi ll some lacunae, but also to draw attention to some of the most important topics of current research on the “other Europe”, additional articles were commissioned from Péter Somogyi, Uwe Fiedler, Bartłomiej Szymon Szmoniewski, Valeri Iotov, Veselina Vachkova, Dimitri Korobeinikov, and Victor Spinei. Engaging in this kind of interdisciplinary and multinational research has been an arduous task. However, its rewards amply off set the diffi cul- ties in communication that existed at times. It was, undoubtedly, a most exhilarating experience from which I emerged richer in knowledge and more hopeful. I take this opportunity to express my deepest thanks to all contributors. Th ey have all been remarkably cooperative in the process, making editorial revisions, meeting deadlines, and making suggestions to improve the book. I hope that the participants who made the three Kalamazoo sessions so stimulating and memorable will share my plea- sure in making the fresh insights contained in these papers accessible to a wider public. In the process of bringing together the various contributions included in this book, I was fortunate to receive the assistance of several institu- tions and individuals. First of all, I gratefully acknowledge the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, the organizer of the Con- gress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, for its continuous support of congress sessions dedicated to medieval Eastern Europe. I also thank Dumbarton Oaks and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for providing generous hospitality during the academic year 2006/2007and allowing me to concentrate my eff orts on fi nalizing this work. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to several people who, at diff erent points, helped me with the many tasks associated with the preparation of this book. I am particularly grateful to Roman Kovalev (College of New Jersey) and Peter B. Golden (Rutgers University) for their assistance and support. curta_f1_i-x.indd x 10/30/2007 7:02:58 PM INTRODUCTION Florin Curta “A stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech.” So wrote Jordanes in the mid-sixth century about the Huns.1 About thirty years later, John of Ephesus was no more complimenting about the Avars, “the fi lthy race of long-haired barbarians.”2 Four centuries later, Emperor Nicephorus II Phokas expressed his contempt for Peter, Emperor of Bulgaria, in similar terms. According to Leo the Deacon, Nicephorus saw Peter as nothing but a princeling clad in leather skins ruling over a Scythian people, poor and unclean.3 In the 1200s, the Russian Primary Chronicle called the Cumans “godless Ishmaelites” and explained that Moab and Ammon, the sons whom Lot begat from incest with his daugh- ters, were the ancestors