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The Eurasian Avars – sometimes identified with the Zhuan Zhuan (Rouran), which appear in Chinese sources,[1] although this equivalence is questioned (mainly on geographical and chronological grounds )[2] – were a nomadic people of Eurasia, who appeared in central and eastern Europe in the 6th century. They are known to history as Avars, though the Romans called them "pseudo-Avars." Avar rule persisted over much of the Pannonian plain up to the early 9th century.
The 6th Century historian Menander Protector wrote that the language of the Avars was the same as that of the Huns. They wore their hair long with ribbons in it in two braids, a habit borrowed from the Turks , and they have traditionally been thought to be Turkic. Also, it has sometimes been argued that they were related to the presumably Mongolic Zhuan Zhuan. Nevertheless, historian Walter Pohl asserted in 1998, instancing the detailed attempts made by H. W. Haussig in 1953[3] and K. Czeglèdy in 1983[4] and his own methodological objections[5]: "It is pointless to ask who exactly the forefathers of the European Avars were. We only know that they carried an ancient, very prestigious name (our first hints to it date back to the times of Herodotus); and we may assume that they were a very mixed group of warriors who wanted to escape domination by the Turks."[6]
The Avars were driven westward when the Sassanid Persians – allied with the Göktürks – defeated the Hephthalites in the 550s and the 560s. They entered Europe in the 6th century A.D., subjugating peoples such as the Kutrigur Huns as they went. Their first recorded official contact with the Roman world was in the winter of 558/59, when their embassy arrived in Constantinople and negotiated a treaty by which they were to subdue unruly gentes on behalf of the Empire, and receive payments and rights in return.[7] Having been bought off by the Eastern Emperor Justinian I, they pushed north into Germany (as Attila the Hun had done a century before), eventually reaching as far north as the Baltic.
Finding the country unsuited to their nomadic lifestyle (and the Franks stern opponents), they turned their attention to the Pannonian plain, which was then being contested by two Germanic tribes, the Lombards and the Gepids. Siding with the Lombards, they destroyed the Gepids in 567 and established a state in the Danube River area. Their harassment soon (ca. 568) forced the Lombards to try their luck in northern Italy, an invasion that marked the last Germanic mass movement in the Migrations Period.
According to Menander, the Avar leader Bayan (c565 - c600) then commanded 10,000 Kutrigurs to sack Dalmatia in 568, effectively cutting Byzantium's land link with North Italy and the West. By about 580, Bayan had established his supremacy over practically all the various groups of "barbarian" warbands along the Balkan frontier, a monopoly of power that only Attila had briefly enjoyed before him.[8] When the Eastern Roman Empire found itself unable to pay subsidies or hire Avar mercenaries, the Avars took to raiding Roman communities in the Balkans as well. At first, the Byzantines resisted successfully, even crossing the Danube to harass the Avars in their homeland, but the Emperor Maurice's decision to maintain his army camp beyond the Danube throughout the winter instead of returning home as was customary caused the army to revolt (602). The ensuing civil war prompted an opportunistic Persian invasion and gave the Avars a free hand in the now undefended Balkans. An invasion of northern Italy was also attempted in 610. Walter Pohl notes that payments in gold and goods reached the record sum of 200,000 solidi shortly before 626.[9].
In 626, the Avars and the Persians jointly besieged but failed to capture Constantinople. Following this defeat, the Avars retreated to Pannonia, leaving most of the Balkans in the hands of Slav tribes, with neither Avars nor Byzantines able to reassert control. Most of the Avars' subject peoples became independent, with just Pannonia remaining under direct Avar rule.
By the early 9th century, internal discord and external pressure started to undermine the Avar state. It was finally liquidated during the 810s by the Franks under Charlemagne and the First Bulgarian Empire under Krum. After the fall of the Avar Empire around 800 the name Avar and the self-identified constucted ethnicity it carried disappeared within a single generation. An Avar presence in Pannonia is still certain in 871 but thereafter the name is no longer used by chroniclers: "It simply proved impossible to keep up an Avar identity after Avar institutions and the high claims of their tradition had failed."[10] The Avars are also likely to have merged with Slavs, who had formed new states in the region: the principality of Nitra in the north (later Great Moravia) and the Balaton Principality in the central parts of Pannonia. Their remnants were probably the "Huns" encountered by the invading Magyars in the 10th Century. Their hypothetical descendants, the Szekely (who apparently preserved the Avar Dragon Totem well into the 15th century), were relocated to Transylvania in the 12th century. In the Republic of Hungary there are a number of Avar ruins, mostly burial mounds, that display symbols nearly identical to those of the Caucasian Avars.
Some claim that the Avars were the first tribe to introduce the stirrup to Europe. However, the subject is under debate and other candidates for the importers include the Huns.
There are several popular points of origin suggested for the Avar peoples:
Perhaps a suitable synthesis of these ideas may be that they were originally inhabitants of Khwarezmia, and had thus influence in all three areas. If the Avars were ever a distinct ethnic group, that distinction does not seem to have survived their centuries in Europe. Being an 'Avar' seems to have meant being part of the Avar state (in a similar way that being 'Roman' ceased to have any ethnic meaning).
The Romans were persuaded by the Caucasian Turks that their northern neighbours were only "pseudo-Avars", who should properly be called 'Varchonites'. Contemporary Byzantine sources present these Varchonites as being former slaves, who fled from their masters the Turks (i.e. the real Avars), and who started to "call themselves Avars", so as to secure their position as foederati of the Romans.[11] (see also Caucasian Avars). These matters are still highly contentious.
The skeletons found in European Avar graves show heterogeneity, including some Asiatic features, and sometimes contain objects displaying Jewish influences. The reasons for the latter peculiarity are disputed. Some historians link it to the cultures of the Caucasus region, where the Turkish Khazars are supposed to have adopted Judaism as a way of remaining neutral between the Christian Byzantines and the Muslim Caliphate to the south. Others trace it back to 5th Century Khwarezmia, where a form of Mosaic Law was supposedly practised.