Borna's Polity Attested by Frankish Sources in the Territory of the Former
International Symposium The Treaty of Aachen, AD 812: The Origins and Impact on the Region between the Adriatic, Central, and Southeastern Europe Abstracts University of Zadar Zadar, September 27–29, 2012 Abstracts of the International Symposium The Treaty of Aachen, AD 812: The Origins and Impact on the Region between the Adriatic, Central, and Southeastern Europe Zadar, September 27–29, 2012 University of Zadar Department of History 2012 Frankish ducatus or Slavic Chiefdom? The Character of Borna’s Polity in Early-Ninth-Century Dalmatia Denis Alimov Borna’s polity, attested by Frankish sources on the territory of the former Roman province of Dalmatia in the first quarter of the 9th century, is traditionally considered to be the cradle of early medieval Croatian state. Meanwhile, the exact character of this polity and the way it was linked with the Croats as an early medieval gens remain obscure in many respects. I argue that Borna’s ducatus consisted of two political entities, the Croat polity proper, with its heartland in the region of Knin, and a small chiefdom of the Guduscani in the region of Gacka. Borna was the chief of the Croats, a group of people that gradually developed into an ethnic unit under the leadership of a Christianized military elite.. For all that, the process of the stabilization of the Croats’ group identity originally connected with the social structures of Pax Avarica and its transformation into what can be called gentile identity was very durable, the rate of the process being considerably slower than the formation of supralocal political organization in Dalmatia.
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