The First Five Hundred Years

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top 1000The Cuisine of Hungary
The Cuisine of Hungary

By George Lang

Published 1982

  • About
The last stage of the migration of the Magyar tribes was the result of intrigues and manipulations between the Byzantine Empire and Slavic kingdoms. Forced to leave the Khazar Empire (Asiatic Turkey of today), they kept moving in a southwestern direction, reaching the Carpathian basin at the end of the ninth century. By 896 their permanent homeland was conquered.

The word Magyar, which became the name of the entire nation, was originally the name of the dominant ruling tribe. It comes from magy, which was another word for the Voguls; and ar meant “man” in Csermisz, the language that is the forerunner of Finnish. Ungarn, Hungary, Venger, Hongrois, etc., came from the ancient Russian Ugrin—the name by which the Hungarians were known to the Slavs.