The Medieval Hungarian Historians

The various works in which the Hungarians of the Middle Ages recorded their own origins and early doings are of great value not only for the history of Hungary and the Magyar people, but also for the whole of south-eastern Europe. But before they can be safely used as sources they require much editing and interpretation. Studies by Hungarian and German scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are now of course out-dated. Mr Macartney spent some years going through the documents and all the critical literature, and here presents the fruits of his work in a short form containing all that needs to be known for safe and profitable use of the texts. The present book has as its first part a long introductory essay on the development of the Hungarian historical tradition; its second part is an analytical guide to the separate documents, carrying summarised descriptions of MSS, editions, date, contents, reliability, relations to other texts, and so on, and including references to Mr Macartney's own contributions in the Studies. It is intended for Western students not able to read Magyar.

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Published in 1999, Professor C.A. Macartney was one of the foremost 20th-century authorities on the history of the Danube basin. His life’s work included the re-examination of the sources relating to early Hungarian and Pontic history. This selection of his studies (some of them hardly accessible because they were published in wartime conditions) illuminates one of the dark corners of medieval Europe and tackles controversial questions in the history of the nomadic steppe peoples, such as the Magyars, Pechenegs, Kavars and Cumans. Macartney’s treatment of the earliest Hungarian written sources and their interpretation laid the foundation for his shorter book, The Medieval Hungarian Historians. The present volume brings together for the first time, and indexes, his series of detailed studies on this material; penetrating in both its analysis and scholarship, this work remains indispensable for our understanding of the period and its historiography.

Lavishly illustrated, the book contains seventy five historical maps and colour plates which visualize the historical background of Hungary and introduces its early history to a broader readership. The early history of Hungarians is embedded into the history of Eurasia and special attention is given to the relationship of the Hungarians with the Khazars and the Bulghar-Turks. The first part deals with methods and sources which can be used for elucidating the ancient history of the Hungarians, relying on research into linguistics, archaeology, anthropology and natural history. The second part traces how the Hungarians came into the Carpathian Basin and answers such questions as: who are the Magyars, from where did they come and how did they conquer the land? It reconstructs and examines their early political and social structure, the economy, and religion, and compares the Hungarian medieval process with the ethnogenetic processes of the Germanic, Slavic and Turkic people.

The Economy of Medieval Hungary is the first concise, English-language volume on the economic life of medieval Hungary, covering the structures of economic life, human-nature interactions in production, taxation, money and commerce.

Now recognised as the standard work on the subject, Realm of St Stephen is a comprehensive history of medieval Eastern and Central Europe. Pál Engel traces the establishment of the medieval kingdom of Hungary from its conquest by the Magyar tribes in 895 until defeat by the Ottomans at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. He shows the development of the dominant Magyars who, upon inheriting an almost empty land, absorbed the remaining Slavic peoples into their culture after the original communities had largely disappeared. Engel's book is an accessible and highly readable history. 'This is now the standard English language treatment of medieval Hungary - its internal history as well as its regional and European significance.' --- P W Knoll, University of Southern Carolina (From 'Choice') 'A lively and highly readable narrative ' --- Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona (From 'Mediaevistik')

Hungarian historical writing has long been distorted by the culture of the historians: the 300-year long Habsburg German-Austrian rule, the nationlistic concepts of the nineteenth century, and more recently, the Communist doctrines. This work corrects these biases by reassessing the bad reputation of the orphan Hungarian king, Istvan II.