Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100 3031344286, 9783031344282

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Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100 Edited by  Tsvetelin Stepanov · Osman Karatay

Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100

Tsvetelin Stepanov  •  Osman Karatay Editors

Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100

Editors Tsvetelin Stepanov St. Kliment Ohridski University Sofia, Bulgaria

Osman Karatay Ege University Izmir, Turkey

ISBN 978-3-031-34428-2    ISBN 978-3-031-34429-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: almagami / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface

This book is a fruit of the serial of communications (in the early COVID days) between Tsvetelin Stepanov, who is a historian of medieval Eastern Europe focusing upon religious and identity themes, and Osman Karatay, who is likewise a historian of Eastern Europe and Central Eurasia, working mostly on ethno-linguistic issues. Karatay focused on the chronology of the monotheisation process in the Middle Ages during the tenth and eleventh centuries, and Stepanov explained its internal and external dynamics. The Turkic acceptance of Islam, which included various peoples over a vast region and which is studied separately for each case, coincides with the spread of Christianity in the northern and eastern parts of Europe, encompassing the baptism of the three Scandinavian countries, Poland, Bohemia and Moravia (Czech and Slovak lands), Hungary, Russia and Bulgaria, the last being the first in the process. The Turkic Islamisation started with the Volga Bulgars, antecedents of the modern Tatars, and continued in the eastern and western parts of Central Asia. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the modern world got its current ethnic and religious epiphany in the course of that compressed process of mass conversions throughout Eurasia. Except for compulsory conversions under mighty imperial powers, various Turkic peoples converted to such religions as Manichaeism and Buddhism, but the conversion of the Khazars, another Turkic people in Western Eurasia, to Judaism seems to have heralded the voluntary conversions of the succeeding ages, however, to Christianity and Islam, as monotheistic religions. The Khazar case relates to the eighth and ninth centuries, and thus we excluded it from the v

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content of this book. It would have been desirable to have papers on the conversions of Western Balkan peoples (i.e. Serbs and Croats), but they also precede our chronology and do not seem to have related to the ‘global fashion of monotheisation’ launched by the—two—Bulgars during the second half of the ninth century. So, Stepanov and Karatay agreed to invite experts in the various cases dealing with our subject to join a common effort to understand the background and course of the wave of conversions mostly in the tenth and eleventh centuries. We may suggest even to restrict the time span to the years between c.860 and 1050 both in the east and in the west. Although there are very valuable studies, individual or collective, on those conversion issues, mainly the great book edited by Nora Berend, who is one of our authors, this book is the first, as far as we know, to group them in a transitive way and to study them under a theoretical framework. We are grateful to the authors joining our project with chapters in their field of expertise. They are all masters of the themes of interest to us. Sue Morecroft checked the texts of various authors with great care and patience. Sam Stocker of Palgrave Macmillan was very interested in the project from the very beginning. Rubina Infanta Rani and Ruby Panigrahi managed the publication process with great patience. We owe thanks to them, as well as to those who worked for the publication of this book, but whose names we do not know. Sofia, Bulgaria Izmir, Turkey  October 27, 2022

Tsvetelin Stepanov Osman Karatay

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Osman Karatay and Tsvetelin Stepanov 2 Approaching  Salvation: Early Process of Christianisation in Viking-Age Denmark and Sweden 27 Władysław Duczko 3 Christianisations in Scandinavia 45 Henrik Janson 4 Bruno  of Querfurt and the Practice of Mission 77 Ian Wood 5 Who  Converted the Poles?101 Przemysław Urbańczyk 6 Great  Moravia: The Uneasy Beginnings of Slavic Christendom113 Alexandar Nikolov 7 The  Christianisation of the Kingdom of Hungary137 Nora Berend

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8 The  Choice of Faith in Early Medieval Eastern Europe: Individual and Mass Conversion165 Vladimir Petrukhin 9 The  Times of St. Tsar Boris-Michael of Bulgaria (852–889; † 907): Between the Real Historical Facts of the Ninth Century and the ‘Facts’ of Selective Memory189 Tsvetelin Stepanov 10 The  Conversion of the Volga Bulgars to Islam215 István Zimonyi 11 Islamization  of the Turks: A Process of Mental Change237 Osman Karatay 12 The  Establishment of Islam in Central Asia: Geo-Cultural Patterns and Geographical Realities265 Erkan Göksu 13 Islam  in India: Acceleration Under the Ghaznavids (Tenth to Eleventh Centuries)301 M. Hanefi Palabıyık 14 In  Partibus Fidelium (Postscript: Conversion as History)323 Vladimir Gradev Index333

Notes on Contributors

Nora Berend  has been Professor of European History at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, UK, since 2018. She graduated from ELTE, Budapest, in 1989, and holds a doctorate degree (1996) from Columbia University, New  York. After a three-year Junior Research Fellowship at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, she taught at Goldsmiths College London for a year and then took up a university post at Cambridge. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Stockholm in 2018. She is interested in medieval religious and cultural interaction, the formation of identity, and how the medieval is used in the present. She is the author and editor of six books and numerous articles. Her publications include At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary (c. 1000–c. 1300) (2001); ed., Christianisation and the Rise of Christian monarchy: Central Europe, Scandinavia and Rus’ c. 950–c. 1200 (2007); and co-authored with Przemysław Urbańczyk and Przemysław Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages, c. 900–c.1300 (2013). Władysław Duczko  holds a PhD (1986) and worked as an associate professor (1990) at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. For many years he was a member of Birkakommité, a committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Literature, History and Antiquities, which collects and publishes artefacts from Birka (Sweden). As a specialist in Byzantine history, he was also chairman of the Swedish Byzantine Society. During the 1990s he ran the excavations of the most important early medieval site of Central Sweden— Gamla Uppsala. In 2005 Duczko returned to Poland to teach archaeology at the Alexander Giejsztor Humanitarian Academy in Pułtusk, where he ix

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was appointed head of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Faculty of History. Duczko has published on Scandinavian VikingAge history, archaeology, art and religion as well as on the connections between the Northern and East Central Europe. Among his books are Birka V–Filigree & Granulation Work of the Viking Period: An Analysis of Materials from Bjorko (1985); Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe (2004); and Moce wikingow (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Erica, 2016). Erkan Göksu  graduated from the Department of History at the Erciyes University (Kayseri, Turkey) in 1998. He holds a master’s degree (2004) from the Kırıkkale University. After that he completed his PhD at Gazi University (Ankara) with his thesis ‘Army in the Anatolian Saljukids’ (2008). He received the title of full professor in 2019. He is a faculty member at Dokuz Eylül University and also a member of the Turkish Historical Society. He has received several awards for his scientific activities. He is the author of several monographs and essays and also translator of some Persian books into Turkish. Among his books are Türk Kültüründe Silah (Weaponry in the Turkish Culture, 2008) and Selçuklu’nun Mirası: Gulâm ve Ikta (Gholam and Fief as the Heritage of the Saljukids, 2011). He translated from Persian the Saljukid parts of Jâmi’al-Tavârih of Rashîd’al-din Fadlullâh (Zikr Târîh Âl’ Saljûk, 2010) and of Ravzat alSafâ of Mirkwand (Tabaka Saljûkiyyah, 2015) and also the Ghaznavid parts of the latter book under the name Gazneliler (Ghaznavids, 2017). Vladimir  Gradev  graduated from the Faculty of Classic and Modern Languages, St Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, in 1987. He completed his doctoral study in the Department of History and Theory of Culture of the same university in 1996 and was elected to the position of associate professor in 2000. In 2005, he received the title ‘doctor scientiarum’ of the same university and later, in 2007, that of full professor. Gradev is the author of eleven books and several translations from French, Italian and English. From 2001 to 2006 Gradev was Ambassador of Bulgaria to the Holy See and the Order of Malta. Henrik  Janson  graduated from Gothenburg University in 1987 and completed his doctoral studies in the Historical Department of the same university in 1998. He became docent (reader) in History at the Faculty of Humanities, Gothenburg University, in 2007, and received tenure at the Department of Historical Studies in 2014. He was elected head of the

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same department in 2019. He was chairman of the Medieval Committee at Gothenburg University, 2001–2002 and 2014–2020, in which context he edited the volume Från Bysans till Norden (‘From Constantinople to the North’; 2005). Janson’s doctoral thesis Templum nobilissimum: Adam av Bremen, Uppsalatemplet och konfliktlinjerna i Norden kring år 1075 (Templum nobilissimum: Adam of Bremen, the Temple of Uppsala and the Lines of Conflict in Europe Around 1075), from 1998, provided a new approach to the concepts ‘paganism’ and ‘Christianity’. In several subsequent studies he has elaborated on the implications of political theology in the North. Janson’s research also concerned the early history of the Archbishopric Hamburg-Bremen; the Medieval Icelandic literature, not least the Eddas; and the modern reconstruction of the pre-Christian religion in Northern Europe. He was one of the initiators of the Project Reykholt och den Europeiska skriftkulturen (‘Reykholt and the European Literacy’) (2002–2006); he was a contributor to the Nordic Centre of Excellence Programme, The Nordic Countries and the Medieval Expansion of Europe: New Interpretations of a Common Past (2005–2013), and to the Pre-Christian Religions of the North (PCRN) project (2008–). Osman  Karatay graduated from the Department of History at the Boğazici University (Istanbul) in 1995. He completed his master’s degree at the Gazi University (Ankara) in 2001 and then his doctoral study at the same university in 2006. In 2016, he received the title of full professor. He is a lecturer at the Ege University in Izmir. He was a co-editor of the sixvolume English book The Turks (2002), Balkanlar El Kitabı (A Handbook of the Balkans, 2006), Doğu Avrupa Türk Tarihi (A History of the Turks in Eastern Europe, 2014), and the six-volume Ortak Türk Tarihi (A Common History of the Turks, 2019). He launched in 2004 the academic quarterly Karadeniz Araştırmaları (Black Sea Studies), which is currently an esteemed journal. Apart from his 14 monographs and several translations, he is co-editor of the English volume Central Eurasia in the Middle Ages. Studies in Honor of Peter B. Golden (2016) and author of the newly published title The Genesis of the Turks: An Ethno-Linguistic Inquiry into the Prehistory of Central Eurasia (2022). Alexandar  Nikolov graduated from the Faculty of History at the University of Sofia (1989). Since 1994, he has been teaching Medieval History at the University of Sofia. He defended a second MA in Medieval Studies at the CEU-Budapest (1996) and a PhD in History at the University of Sofia (2004) and received the degree MPhil in Medieval

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Studies at the CEU (2008). He has been a full professor since 2018. He also specialised in Rome (Istituto Pontificio Orientale), the Vatican City (Archivio Segreto) and Vienna (Institut für Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik). He has participated in many international and national scientific forums and conferences. He is the president of the Association of the Byzantinists and Medievalists in Bulgaria (since 2020). Alexandar Nikolov is author of three monographs and many studies and articles in the field of Medieval History, and co-author of several textbooks in history as well. He also translated several texts from Medieval Latin into Bulgarian, among them Casus Sancti Galli and several treatises of the crusaders’ propaganda (treatises of William Adam, Pseudo-Brocardus, William of Tripoli, Leodrisio Crivelli, Pierre Dubois), texts of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Filippo Buonaccorsi-Callimachus, etc. M.  Hanefi  Palabıyık  graduated from the Faculty of Divinity at the Atatürk University (Erzurum) in 1987. He completed his master’s degree at the Atatürk University in 1991 and then his doctoral study at the same university in 1996. In 2009, he received the title of full professor. He is a lecturer at the Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir and works on early Islamic ̇ history. Among his 11 monographs, he published Valilikten Imparatorluğa Gazneliler (The Ghaznavids from a Governorship to an Empire, 2002); Hz. Peygamber ve Mekke Yılları: Rivayetlere Eleştirel Bir Yaklaşım (The Prophet and His Mecca Years: A Critical Approach to the Traditions, 2009); Gazneli Mahmud (Mahmood the Ghaznavid, 2022); Cahiye Araplarında Sosyal Hayat (Social Life in the Pre-Islamic Arabs, 2022); and Cahiliye Araplarında Kültür Hayatı (Cultural Life in the Pre-Islamic Arabs, 2022). Vladimir  Petrukhin graduated from the Faculty of History at the Moscow State University in 1972. In 1975 he defended his candidate thesis (The Funeral Cult of Pagan Scandinavia) and in 1994 his doctoral thesis (The Problems of Ethnic and Cultural History of Slavs and Rus in the 9th to 11th Centuries). He is a leading researcher of the Institute of Slavic Studies (Russian Academy of Sciences) and professor at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow). Being a specialist in the early medieval history, archaeology and culture of Eastern Europe, Khazaria and Rus’, Petrukhin is the author of more than 500 scientific works, including several monographs on the early Rus’ history. Tsvetelin Stepanov  graduated from the Faculty of History, St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, in 1990. He completed his doctoral study in

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the Department of History and Theory of Culture of the same university in 1996 and was elected to the position of associate professor in 2006. In 2015, he received the title ‘doctor scientiarum’ of the same university and later, in 2018, that of full professor. Stepanov is editor or co-editor of 14 volumes (since 2003), among them ‘Bulgars and Khazars in the Early Middle Ages’ (2003), ‘Civitas divino-humana. In honorem annorum LX Georgii Bakalov’ (2004), ‘Mediaevalia Christiana’ (2005, 2007, 2010), ‘Byzantium as Seen by the Byzantines and the Others’ (2007), ‘Memory and Oblivion in Byzantium’ (2011), ‘Erdélyi István. A Nagyszentmiklόsikincs’ (2016) and more. He is also author of 12 books, three of them published in English (The Bulgars and the Steppe Empire in the Early Middle Ages: The Problem of the ‘Others’, 2010; Invading in/from the ‘Holy Land’: Apocalyptic Metatext(s) and/or Imagined Geography, 950–1200, 2013; Waiting for the End of the World: European Dimensions, 950–1200, 2020) and two in Hungarian (Lovas nomad birodalmak és városlakók. A mások problémája. Budapest: Napkút Kiadó, 2008; Vallások a pogány Bulgáriában. Historiográfiai megközelítések 1980 és 2015 között. Budapest: Napkút Kiadó, 2019). He has published extensively in Byzantinoslavica, Early Medieval Europe, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, Khazar Almanakh, Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana, Byzantina Lodziensia, Medieval Worlds, etc. Przemysław Urbańczyk  is director of the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (Polish Academy of Sciences) and a professor at the Institute of Archaeology (Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University) and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology (PAS). He is a member of various panels of international experts including ESF, Europa Nostra, ERC, ALLEA and ESFRI. His fields of research interests include the archaeology and history of the Middle Ages (early states, Christianisation, urbanisation, geopolitics, civic and ecclesiastic architecture) in Poland, Central Europe and the North Atlantic region; theory of archaeological research; and the methodology of archaeological excavations. He has directed several large grants. His bibliography comprises over 450 publications, which include 16 monographs. He has edited 15 multi-author volumes and several multivolume series—e.g., ‘Origines Polonorum’. Ian  Wood  graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1972, where he also completed his D.Phil. in 1980. He taught at the University of Leeds from 1976, as lecturer until 1989, as senior lecturer until 1995 and then as professor. He retired in 2015, when he was elected Professor

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Emeritus. He has written six monographs: The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (1994), Gregory of Tours (1994), The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe 400–1050 (2001), The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages (2013), The Transformation of the Roman West (2018) and The Christian Economy of the Early Medieval West: Towards a Temple Society (2022). He has been the co-author of four books and the editor or co-editor of eleven. He has published over 200 articles. He was elected fellow of the British Academy in 2019. István  Zimonyi  graduated in Turkology and English Language at the University of Szeged in 1981. In 1990 he defended his dissertation (Candidate of Science corresponding to PhD) at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2003 he carried out habilitation in the field of history at the University of Szeged. In 2014 he became a full professor in the Department of Altaistics and the Department of Medieval Studies at the University of Szeged. His main field of research is the medieval history of the Eurasian steppe and the nomads of Eastern Europe. He is the founder and organiser of the International Conference on the Medieval History of the Eurasian Steppe (eight meetings since 2004). He is the editor of the series Magyar Ő störténeti Könyvtár (Studies in Early Hungarian History) of which 34 volumes were hitherto published. He has published several books, including: The Origins of the Volga Bulghars, 1990; Orientalische Berichte über die Völker Osteuropas und Zentralasiens im Mittelalter. Die Ğayhānı ̄-Tradition, Wiesbaden, 2001 (with H.  Göckenjan); Medieval Nomads in Eastern Europe. Collected Studies. Ed. Victor Spinei, 2014; A magyarság korai történetének sarokpontjai. Elméletek az újabb irodalom tükrében (Key Issues of the Early Hungarian History. Theories in the Light of Recent Literature), Budapest, 2014; and Muslim Sources on the Magyars in the Second Half of the 9th Century, 2015.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6 Fig. 2.7

The Westphalian Tating-ware jug with cross: Birka burial No 854. (Drawing in Arbman 1943, 329, Abb.275:9) 32 The oldest Swedish cross-pendants from cremation grave in Tureholm, Sollentuna parish, Uppland; height 3 cm. (Photo ATA (Antikvarisk-topografiska arkivet, Stockholm) 33 The Jelling rune-stone. Replica. (Photo National Museum, Copenhagen)35 Mould for casting cross- and Thor’s hammer: Trendgården, Jutland, Denmark. (Photo: National Museum Kopenhagen) 36 Cross-pendants: (a). Birka, grave No 835; (b). Vinor, Gotland SHM 22459:6. (Photo: Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm) 37 Crucifix-pendants: (a). Birka, grave No 660; (b). Aunslev, Fyn, Denmark. (Photo: Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm; Østfyns Museer, Kerteminde) 38 Swedish axe with cross: Karslund, Långbro parish, Närke SHM 10400:VI. (Photo: Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm) 41

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Osman Karatay and Tsvetelin Stepanov

There are a lot of questions to be raised in terms of the spread of religions. Is it primarily bound to the power and dynamism of the “owners” and propagators of the (monotheistic) religion, or instead simply to the strength of its philosophical basis and credo? To what degree can we explain a well-spread monotheistic or universal religion without referring to political aspects and processes? And, to what degree can we explain a religion solely in pure spiritual and philosophical terms? Political power seems to be an essential, but not the only explanation for the spread of a religion. Rome, for instance, controlled large territories but did not try to establish its belief system in the conquered areas of the Mediterranean. Mongols were careful and keen in applying their laws (Yasa) in the vast regions populated by foreign peoples that they had conquered, but we know of very few converting to the traditional Mongolian religion. Instead, both world powers submitted to religions under their rule: Rome to Christianity and Mongols to Islam and Buddhism. Examples are countless both from the East and West. Is it simply because “national”

O. Karatay (*) Ege University, Izmir, Turkey T. Stepanov St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_1

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or tribal religions are usually closed to propagating, in Gustav Mensching’s terms? If so, how had they established themselves within the supra-tribal society? Can we envisage a religion or belief system that is not solicitous in talking about itself to other people to convince them of the “true path”? Maybe the believers of “national” religions withheld theirs from other peoples; maybe linguistic boundaries coexisted together with confessional borders. Given that many early societies like the Germanic, Slavic, Arabic and Turkic, having strict political structures, centred around a given tribe and a supra-tribal consciousness, had at the same time almost compounded and common belief systems within their linguistic areas, it might be true and logical to suppose that the religion was then considered to be an element of identity-making with the same gravity and comprehension as the language. Thus, it was perhaps nonsense in their eyes to expect foreign language speakers to accept their religions. This is, however, not the end but the start of the debate. If a polity of a people conquers a foreign people, then the latter is willy-nilly to assume the identity of the conqueror. The values and even the language of the latter are usually not warranted to be saved as they were. Especially a forceful assimilation policy, as in the cases of the Persians over the Medes or the Israelites’ behaviour towards the Samaritans, would also include imposing the beliefs of the hegemons over the subdued people. Then, we cannot say that “national” religions are not at all keen or open to propagating: “Our gods won over theirs.” In the ancient world, we may suppose the existence of an almost universal rule: religions used or had to restrict their—propagating—horizons with the linguistic borders, but when a political power based on a linguistic-­ religious folk extended its borders to foreign regions, then their religious dynamics also started to join the assimilation or real conquest process, since the newly conquered people would be made from “us”. Thus, those religions or belief systems seemingly continued to stay within the “national” borders, in any case, to prove those kinds of theories not attributing propagation activities to them, but indeed they continued to spread. The decline of political might, therefore, also meant a decline (though not an eventual end) of the faith. Communication facilities seem at this point to be of great importance. It is not even an exaggeration to suggest that communication facilities were indeed at the core of the earliest state-­ making processes. From the late periods of antiquity on, patterns seem to start changing. If the Han dynasty centred on Northeast China proper and the Hsiung-nu from Mongolia clashed for domination over the remote Eastern Turkestan

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from the second century BC on, this can best be explained by the rise of communication. The Eurasian steppes were in a better condition compared to the rest of the world in terms of mobilization, thanks to the effective use of the horse. The primary result was the rise of the Scythians/Saka tribes. The Mediterranean world implemented ships instead in the same days. Surely, the use of the horse or ship goes beyond the known history, but their effective use in making political formations of the imperial type came much later. Greeks set up colonies everywhere from the Crimea to the Iberian coasts but failed to turn Greece into an empire. This was the task of Rome. Interestingly, early empires both in the East and West did not deviate from the old customs of “national” religions. Latinized Etruscans had to adopt Roman cults (not to quote the Etruscan legacy in the Roman culture, on the other hand); at the same time, some other Latinized subjects in the Apennines stayed out of the same religious processes or interactions. The same is surely also true for the Eurasian steppes in later times. The spread of Turkic languages over non-Turkic peoples coincided with the spread of Old Turkic beliefs and customs, as a natural process; the rulers, however, did not interfere with local peoples outside the Turkic-speaking polity to change their religions. Old Turkic inscriptions dating from the second half of the sixth to the mid-eighth centuries contain many references to God (Sky) and beliefs, as usual and as expected everywhere, but there is not even one sentence on changing religions by force. It is not, however, an established rule, since we know of some deities travelling along the ancient Middle East societies. Herodotus says that Scythians (or, seemingly their subjects in the Northwest Black Sea coastal regions) started to revere the Greek Ares. In general, however, speakers of a certain language were to be members of the same religious community, and a foreign language speaker would, in normal circumstances, have his/ her own deities and religion. So, the change of patterns came after and seemingly independent of early imperial structures. However, from the Late Antiquity on, we have to survey universal religions in terms of their relations with states. This might best be explained with the so-called étatisation processes of those religions that appeared by claiming to be supra-national, but which turned themselves into the true states of certain peoples. It was surely an inevitable fate and a charming alternative insofar as the purposes of the religions were concerned. Asiatic religions gaining some supra-national character in

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the later times stayed apart from that process, though they were also not free of state mechanisms. May we suggest that the étatisation of universal religions (Christianity and Islam, perhaps also Judaism in its post-Egypt days) became a dilemma before them and before their claims? By no means did Christianity have a national character even in the days of the Apostles, and its almost simultaneous acceptance by three unrelated eastern nations at the state level, namely Armenians, Caucasian Albanians and Georgians starting at the very beginning of the fourth until the following fifth century, plus the very enthusiasm of the Egyptian and Syriac populations towards Christianity, showed its supra-national tendency to those would-be sceptics. However, it would also be embraced by the Roman Empire during the fourth century. From then on it would be the religion of the Romans in a wider aspect. For more than five centuries, it continued to be perceived so, in our observation, and the imperial agents were pleased with that situation. Islam emerged with universal messages at the beginning and as soon as it was—almost—established in the Arabian Peninsula or among the Arabs, diplomatic envoys reached the centres of the nearby world powers. It is true that Islam became a state itself, albeit primitive at the very beginning, in the Madinah period of the Prophet Muhammad (622–632), but this should be considered together with the fact that there was no state tradition or experience among the Arabs living then in a tribal society. Only after half a century would the Islamic state catch up with the true level of the then contemporary states. This process of étatisation coincided with the evolution of the Arabic society from tribal to “national”, a process that has never been completed. The dimension of ethnic “passion” among the Arabs in the days when Islam was rising is not an invisible phenomenon. Therefore, when the state tradition was established in the form of a true empire, Islam was then the religion of the “mighty and prideful” Arabs. It is meaningful in this sense that there remained not a single tiny Muslim community of Semitic language in the closer environments of the Arabs even in the early periods of Islam; all of them were assimilated into the Arabic language and “national” identity. This process was above and beyond the “nationalist” policies of the Umayyad dynasty (661–750). Arabic amirs were also delighted with this situation, just like their Roman colleagues in their own cases. Despite many details and exceptions worthy of discussion, the basic framework in the early Middle Ages, with regard to the Christian and Islamic entities, was that both Christianity and Islam were the religions of

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imperial “nations” (Romans/Greeks and Arabs); conversion to any of them would also mean joining one of them, not only in the political but also in the cultural sense. It was not an illusion, however, created primarily by the surrounding “others”, but a real fact produced mostly by the agents of the empires. It is not an exaggeration to assume that accepting Islam or Christianity in the early Medieval era was the same as accepting the hegemony of the concerning empires and “nations”. Among the Germanic or “barbarian” peoples, Clovis and his Franks were surely not the first to accept the invocation of Jesus. The Goths and some others accepted this religion at earlier dates, but the Frankish conversion is a particular case in terms of its consequences. It would not be wrong to say that in general, and as a continent, Europe became Christian seven centuries after the Roman Empire. In the words of Jonathan Shepard, after the eleventh century, only small pockets of pagans were left in the most remote parts of the European continent. The process of Christianization intensified by the tenth century. And by the twelfth century, Europe was the first continent to become almost fully monotheistic. Here is a “continental question”: the chronology of the conversions of European peoples clearly concentrates on and around the tenth century. Why was that a period of waiting, and what happened then to stimulate the wave of conversions? It seems that all of these preliminary notes need some elaboration. Christianity found some adherents among the East European Germanic tribes called the Goths, and also the Vandals, Langobards, etc., in the fourth century and later, however, in its Arian form. It was by no means acceptable for Constantinople, though some early Christian emperors like Constantius II (337–361) and Valens (364–378) were also Arians (it is noteworthy that the latter emperor was killed on the battlefield near Adrianopolis/Adrianople (modern Edirne) by the Goths). The positive aspect of Arianism for Western Christianity was that Italy was invaded by the Ostrogoths and the Roman Empire in the West was annihilated not by pagan Germans but by Arian Christians. In the succeeding decades, the Germanic linguistic identity would disappear from modern Italy, France and Spain, to be replaced by (a Vulgar) Latin. Just in the aftermath of the collapse of Rome, Clovis of the Franks, centred on what is today Belgium and its surroundings, became Orthodox Christian (in fact Christianity was already there among the local people from the second century on and had gained a highly institutionalized form after the Roman Empire’s conversion), likely ca. 513. Could we classify the Frankish case as the latest one of

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the first wave of the state-level Christianization process, which started in the South and East Caucasus and continued with the Roman Empire and then the Germanic tribal formations? Their chronologies cover the two centuries between the very beginning of the fourth century and ca. 513, and the expansion of the Christian “domain” stops almost suddenly with the exception of the British islands and the efforts of the Emperor Justinian I (527–565) to convert some “barbarian” peoples in Eastern Europe. The period dealt with in this book therefore becomes that of the Second Wave of Christianization in that perspective. Germanic invaders accepted the faith of the defeated by their own will, and Christianity was not a “personal estate” of any ruler, state or people in those days. This atmosphere was an incentive for the other still non-­ Christian Germanic peoples of the bigger “Germania”. Thus, even the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons was almost complete before the end of the seventh century. However, the spread of Christianity stopped at the borders of Denmark and the Western Slavs. Thus, let us shift the debate again to the communication and language issue. As an Eastern Norse dialect (Proto-)Danish, compared to Celtic or Latin for instance, was surely not a “foreign language” in those days for the inhabitants of “Germania”, who had dialectal divergences among themselves; still, the Danish people were “others”. Could we assume that the spread of Christianity in that earliest phase stopped at the linguistic boundaries of the “early” Old High German, with Danish in the north and Slavic in the east? Even if we refer to the Franks of Clovis, and not to the other Germanic tribes accepting Christianity in earlier days, those ethno-linguistic-religious boundaries were stable for about five centuries. Thinking about this is one of this book’s goals. It seems that there are no explanations for this Period of Stagnancy like the lack of dynamism or laziness of mainly German priests, etc. (despite some counter-examples or ideas, for instance, that the Byzantine-held territories in Iberia conquered by the Justinian I military units in the mid-­ sixth century never functioned as bases for missionary activities there). Early medieval annals talk about many feverish missionary activities and efforts among near or remote “pagan” peoples. The historical stagnancy seems, instead, to have stemmed from the lack of a positive reply to the adversaries by the addressed non-baptized peoples. They did not want to receive the message of Jesus Christ for a while, until the mid-ninth century. We need to elaborate the reasons for this.

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

The Frank tribal polity turned into a true empire within a period of almost three centuries, unifying the modern lands of France, Benelux, Germany and Northern Italy, and in the 790s spilling over Pannonia, although the autonomous or semi-independent structures kept their existence. Roman Catholicism, if we may talk about it in those times, was the state religion and despite the centre of the faith being in Rome, the empire turned out to be a religious state. Becoming a Christian was likely nothing other than becoming a subject of the Frankish domain at least mentally, or subduing the identity represented by the empire. A Frank was an Orthodox Christian and a Christian was simply a Frank (in a broader sense). This may be too simplistic and can be evaluated differently depending on the specifics of the various periods, but before elaborating other reasons delaying the spread of Christianity in Europe, we need to refer to the most basic facts. This happened in Western Europe in spite of the fact that the Frankish Empire did not rule over the Christian faith, regardless of the mutual relations of interest between the Empire and the Papacy, especially after the mid-eighth century. When we speak of Byzantium or the Eastern Roman Empire, the perception of the “others” in the same way would reach its apex. In Late Antiquity and the early decades of the Middle Ages, Christianized Egypt was too distant while small eastern Christian states like Georgia or Armenia were under the domination of the two “great powers” of the time, Byzantium and Sassanian Iran. The essential point to be regarded by them was that the supreme ruler (Emperor) and highest priest (Patriarch) of the Christians lived in one and the same city, Constantinople. In reality, the leader of Eastern Orthodox Christianity was the emperor in Constantinople. The Scythian peoples or “barbarians” of the North would think otherwise only as long as they were able to hear about the details of some conflicts between the State and Church, such as those during the period of Iconoclasm (720s–843); and those details were none of the business of the common people outside the Byzantine frontiers. Orthodox Christianity was simply the Byzantine Empire, and the imperial administration would have liked to strictly control all within the state or oikoumene. A diligent and zealous Armenian priest, for instance, would easily be excommunicated by the Byzantine authorities for little political reason. That is, religion was sometimes treated as a political tool to control political affairs. Under such circumstances, it was normal for outsiders to equate Byzantium with Christianity. Byzantium stopped serious attempts in spreading Christianity beyond its borders after the 630s

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and the rise of Islam. In other words, some peoples, as in the case of the Bulgars for instance, in the so-called Byzantine periphery of influence resisted or waited longer for accepting the religious messages coming from Constantinople. Furthermore, Christianity lost much ground not only in the Middle East before the newly rising Islam, but in the Crimea and the Black Sea steppes as well, though temporarily. Christianity would regain its lost positions there in the later periods, during the Second Wave. It does not seem realistic to claim that the presence of a solid Iran was a pretext for Byzantium in this sense. Due to state politics, the Sassanian dynasty was clearly cautious of any deep Christianization process in its zone of influence and political interests, though this does not mean that it extinguished its baptized subjects. The missionary activities of the Church did not reach the pre-Islamic Arabs living in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, and this fact should not only be bound to their isolated situation. This can also be said for the central parts of Arabia, where Islam also faced great difficulties in its first phase, but the more populated Hejaz was an interactive region then, engaged in large-scale trade with the Roman Eastern Mediterranean. However, neither the Greeks, Egyptians or Christian Arabs, nor the Christians of Ethiopia tried to propagate Christianity in a systematic effort among the Arabs behind the Roman border. Interestingly, no visible Persian/Zoroastrian spiritual influence also reached the Arabs, even in the regions ruled by the shahan-shahs, like Yemen and Mesopotamia. The position of these Arabs before Christianity can be compared to that of the early Slavs in Eastern Europe: they were both living in a tribal order, thus lacking real state-type institutions. Those having expertise on these issues may suggest that Byzantium could not find opportunities to deal with propagating its official religion due to being heavily occupied on many fronts in continuous warfare. This is not a pure state affair, however, conducted in “spare times”. As said above, members of the clergy both from the Eastern and Western churches were already visiting Slavs from the sixth century on, when they first appeared in the historical sources under that name. One may put forward a hypothesis that both the Arabic and Slavic tribal societies had developed a mental resistance against the political meaning of becoming a Christian. This is what we mean in this introductory part. Do we need to speak about solely “tribal” politics and strategies against the “universal”, monotheistic religions and the “imperial” states representing them? On the other hand, with regard to the Arabs’ and Slavs’ cases, we need to emphasize the very possible influences of the basic approach that

1 INTRODUCTION 

9

missionary activities used to target, as a rule, the top hegemon of a certain country/community. It was such a hegemon that could provide a “shelter” for a widespread evangelization among his people thus easing the job. In contrast to the spirit of the pre-Emperor-Constantine days, later conversions to Christianity, on the so-called country-level, are all related to the same principle. What if there is no centralized polity or mighty monarch? In the case of the old Turks, among whom “popular democracy” was always prevalent, regardless of the mighty presence of the state principal rulers (the most equal among the equals), they were converted to Christianity in several examples, but they were killed or banished from ruling. Among the Slavs and Arabs, there were also tribal magnates. A missionary project among them had to consider dealing with every member of the leading group/clan of a given tribe, and then it had to be done separately for each tribe. If the mission(s) succeeded in a certain tribe, then the other tribes would react and interfere, mostly in harsh ways. The lack of central policymaking mechanisms was likely a great obstacle before those propagators of Christianity who had chosen the most practical way of converting the societal top, and, consequently, almost nothing was practised for a long time. In contrast to the Germans, who lived in tribes under authoritative kings or military chiefs, the Slavs—in Procopius of Caesarea’s terms—lived “in democracy” during the sixth to seventh centuries, that is, having several leaders with weak authority over the society (people used to kill them whenever they wanted and this happened especially during feasting). Excluding those Slavs who had lived on the Empires’ territories, the others converted to Christianity only after they got their own states. Can we also envisage the same for the Danes suggesting that their fragmented political, pre-state, structures prevented Christianity from infiltrating them in the earlier ages? Nor do we need to predict a supra-tribal mechanism producing an overall consciousness against the gigantic “other”. Those societies were in a tribal order not primarily because they were completely unaware of organizations such as the “early state” or “empire”, at least in the first phase of the Early Middle Ages, but perhaps because they were at the peak of the (pleasures of) independent life. The Old Turks had a state tradition at least from the fifth century; however, this does not mean that centrifugal tendencies in the society assigned very short lives to the imperial-type steppe formations (truly, “united tribal unions”, or “imperial confederacies”). If the benefits from being under such a state frame did not exceed the outcomes emanating thanks to the independent tribal life, and if a common

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public opinion was shaped through (the mentalities of) the Eurasian steppe in that way, then they would very easily overthrow the imperial states above them and turn to the stateless era. This has nothing to do with state know-how information, but only a preference. As different as they were from the Old Turks of the sixth to eighth centuries, the Arabic and Slavic tribes under consideration here did not experience a process of state-building before those days, but this does not mean that they were totally alien to the idea of the “state”. As long as a certain level of organization becomes sufficient to provide a social “shelter”, people do not necessarily need to set up further permanent mechanisms to protect themselves, at the expense of liberty. Instead, as was the case with the early Slavs in particular, temporary (mostly military) alliances were kept in reserve against great external threats. Thus, it seems that individuals in tribal-type societies enjoyed more freedom than the subjects of states, and as for making a common opinion, they were not in a lower position in envying and defending their independence than those of the populations ruled by centralized states. Therefore, tribal free-soul people were also expected to resist the proposals containing, either frankly or vaguely, not only the conversion to a certain (monotheistic or “world”-type) religion, but also the inclusion in the political domain of a “great power” associated with, or claiming to be, the “owner” of that religion. In the cases when the message (or indeed, threat) was sent to a state following a pagan-type religion, there were at least twofold resistances: (1) from the society, which did not differ much in tone from the pure tribal societies, since during the first centuries of the Early Middle Ages the presence of a state did not necessarily mean dissolving a tribal structure; in some cases, state and society were associated with each other, so all the “nation” was cautious about the effects of the new faith; and (2) from the state, of which those members who owned and benefited more would be keen to protect their present interests and positions. Thus, it did not matter too much whether the peoples around, who were religious “others” in the eyes of the concerning imperial statesmen (be they Graeco-­ Romans, Franks or Caliphal Arabs), had a state or not, in terms of developing a common resistance starting in the minds of almost all categories of the society. We must underline, however, that this resistance had, as usual, a collective character. Thus, we could define it as the era of collective cautiousness. Individuals getting out of the tribal status quo permanently or temporarily would act more freely. They might have been sincerely

1 INTRODUCTION 

11

influenced by the message, or messengers, of the universal religion, or have found it more useful and lucrative to adopt that faith. Collective cautiousness and resistance, sometimes in a form of anger, would turn on the converted individual, regardless of whether he was the supreme ruler or any ordinary man of the commoners. In several known cases in Eastern Europe, during Late Antiquity, baptized rulers were killed by their own people, and the conversions in Danube Bulgaria and later in Hungary were bloody enough, representing a reflection of that collective resistance. Nor does it seem too different among other East and North European peoples at the early stages of conversions. In this survey, a test according to the ethnicities and lifestyles of peoples may also be illuminating in some aspects. What we mean here is to observe the behavioural patterns of the natives and migrants of Europe separately. Of the latter group we have the Huns, Bulgars, Avars, Khazars, Hungarians and Pechenegs, as the significant examples. Although the Huns (ca. 375–469) came to Europe during the First Wave of Christianization, where a roughly Christian world was represented by the two “wings” of the Roman Empire and by several Arian Germanic tribes, and in spite of many attempts by eager missionaries, which included even the translation of Christian texts into the Hunnic language, the baptism of the Huns as a people, or en masse, was never an actual subject in those days. The same was also true for the Avars, who were baptized only after they were annihilated as an ethnic entity and as a state in the last decade of the eighth century. The Avar period (ca. 562–790s) covers just the “years of stagnancy”. Christianity was made familiar to the Huns and Avars, first of all in the personality of their close allies, the Germanic tribes, and later on, already on Roman soil. Therefore, neither the Huns nor the Avars were uninformed about that religion. Their coolness seems to have stemmed primarily from political anxieties: simply, it meant submission to the enemy or the possibility of being defeated by the enemy by non-military means. It seems that the cases of the Bulgars and Magyars are also not notably different from those of the Huns and Avars, in spite of the contrary view of the scholarly majority. If you begin the histories of the Asparukh’s Danube Bulgaria and Magyars respectively in 680 and 895, you will say that they accepted Christianity eventually and decidedly after several generations, in contrast to the Huns and Avars. But their histories in Eastern Europe begin much earlier than that of the Avars, and just after that of the Huns. Despite the establishment of Patria Onogoria or of the conversion of Kubrat, the renowned ruler of “Old Great Bulgaria” (630s–660s), and

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of the certain presence of many other examples—known or unknown to us—of the acquaintance of the Bulgars and Magyars with Christianity, we see them keeping their old beliefs for about two to three centuries, without signalling a positive answer to Christianity in its entirety. The aim of this introduction is not to discuss the reasons for an acceptance or rejection of Christianity, but to find out the incentives that led many peoples to convert to Christianity in the West (of Euro-Asia) and to Islam in the East (of Euro-Asia) in a restricted period of time. The clear visions for the First Wave (roughly the fourth and fifth/sixth centuries), the Period of Stagnancy (the seventh to mid-ninth centuries) and the Second Wave (mid-ninth to mid-eleventh centuries) of Christianity should attract our attention. May we dare to suggest a speculative comment that if the Huns and/or the Avars had survived to the so-called Second Wave, they would also have accepted Christianity in the Bulgar and Magyar manners, with only minor differences in tone? The Pechenegs migrated from the north of Lake Aral to the north of the Black Sea ca. 893, just in the First Phase of the new age of perception of Christianity, in our terms (see in this book the chapter by Ian Wood). They did not know in detail the changes of politics and socio-religio-­ political impressions in Central Asia in connection with Islam, and encountered the non-Christian Magyars and Rus’ in that part of Eastern Europe. They did not need to set up a centralized administration there, primarily because their loose “federal” structure was enough to successfully fight with such centralized powers as Khazaria, Byzantium and Bulgaria. Byzantium and the newly baptized Danube Bulgaria never posed a threat to them, and in the Byzantine eyes they, the Pechenegs, were the central determinant factor in the northern affairs, as reflected in the treatises of Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the mid-tenth century. In contrast to almost all peoples of Europe and Asia on the borders of Christianity and Islam, they remained apathetic for adopting any of those religions until their extermination as a people in the 1090s by Byzantium and also by the Cumans/Kipchaks. Their surviving elements scattered in various parts of the Balkan Peninsula and eventually accepted Christianity; however, this does not help us in analysing their once collective attitude. The Cumans moving to Europe, in contrast to their predecessors the Pechenegs, entered a totally Christianized environment in the 1030s, before which date both the Kievan Rus’ (post 988) and Hungary (post 1000) had been baptized, but this did not alter their approach and they behaved exactly the same as the Pechenegs. The Cumans were the masters

1 INTRODUCTION 

13

of the Black Sea steppes for two centuries (ca. 1070s to 1230s); however, except for individual choices from both the upper and lower strata, they kept their Old Turkic beliefs at the societal level. They lost their lands to the Mongols, who started invading Eastern Europe in 1236, and a significant part of them took refuge in Bulgaria and in Hungary. However, in Hungary, their baptism in the late thirteenth century under the compulsion of the Papacy was also not without problems, as Nora Berend explains in detail in her chapter. The Cumans lived in the same socio-political style as the Pechenegs. They were indeed stateless. This provided them with both a satisfactory tribal independence and, meanwhile, the possibility of recruiting great united forces in the necessary conditions. The personal choices of this or that tribal leader did not matter to the other leaders and even to the common tribesmen. The basic incentive for their lack of interest towards Christianity should be the same social psychology and mentalities as those of the early Slavs and Arabs mentioned above and was surely identical with the Pecheneg case. Western Slavic peoples were baptized only after they got their states (Poland and Great Moravia), as mentioned above, and this can also be envisaged for the West Balkan Slavs. In the lands of modern Bosnia, which remained as a buffer zone between the Croatian and Serbian entities, people resisted Christianity for some time. Later, when they developed and expanded their state long after the Second Wave, quite surprisingly at a first glance, they turned decidedly to Bogomilism as a state religion. The so-called Age of Crusading (post 1095) followed the Second Wave of Christianity. It was directed not only towards the Middle East but also to the East Baltic zone. In those days, Bosnia felt too much the pressures of the Papacy, which constantly ordered the Hungarian kings to solve the “Bosnian question” by military means. They were surely difficult days for the Hungarian crown, which had no great problem with its Jewish, Muslim and Cuman families, but had to observe the Papal orders and the Bosnian mission was only an additional duty. Interestingly enough, the Bosnians obstinately kept their Bogomil faith, indeed a Christian heresy, under those conditions. This, of course, does not exclude the fact that both the Eastern and Western Churches were represented in the country from the very beginning onwards. So, in addition to the Pechenegs and Cumans, the Bogomil Bosnians constituted the third main entity in the region that remained uninterested in Orthodox Christianity, even in the days after the Second Wave.

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Peoples had their own conditions and reasons for their choices of religions, and it is very difficult to develop overall theories that are crucial and, most importantly, valid for all societies. Surely, even the incentives of the Pechenegs and Cumans, both of them stateless and nomadic-like societies, were different in many senses. Khazaria is a particular case not only in those days and in the region bordering both Europe and Asia and the Islamic and Christian lands, but also in the entire world history (on Kievan Rus’, plus Khazaria, see Vladimir Petrukhin’s chapter in this book). Its history covers the Period of Stagnancy of Christianity and the early generations of the Second Wave (of Christianity), which is shared by Islam, too. The very enmity between them and the Arabs during the first century of Khazaria (ca. 642/650s–737) certainly built great psychological barriers between the Khazars and Islam. In this first phase, this Eurasian empire was also at odds with Byzantium, clearly and primarily because of the struggle for the Crimea. That also meant a reaction towards the “Byzantine” religion. The Khazarian documents of the tenth century, written many generations after their conversion to Judaism, do not differentiate between Muslims and Christians in that sense for this early period. Those reactions likely constituted a prominent stimulus for their acceptance of Judaism as appreciated by the entire scholarship concerning Khazaria. Qagan-beg Joseph’s reply to Hasdai b. Shaprut of Andalusia, a famous historical document written in ca. 965, sends positive signals to the Muslims clearly for political reasons. On the other hand, the relatively good situation of Muslims and Christians in Khazaria in its last generations reveals the very mental changes in the country, which coincide with the international political climate of the post-860s world, which likely developed under that climate. The constant warfare and struggles in Eastern Europe between 860 and 865 included almost all peoples and states from Khazaria, in the east, to Francia in the west, and Byzantine diplomacy was at the centre of all these clashes and fights for domination. The famous missionary envoy Constantine (St. Cyril, d. 869) seems to have got the support of the Hungarians living then between the rivers Dnieper and Don, and of their overlords, the Khazars. His mission there is dated to 861. Khazaria was mainly interested in punishing the Rus’ polities along the Kiev-Novgorod line, who also threatened Byzantium: in 860, the Rus’ ships even reached Constantinople. The Khazars did this satisfactorily on that occasion but could not exterminate those Varangian formations. The buffered Danube Bulgaria had to accept Christianity in 864–866, as an obligatory exit from

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the crisis, and Great Moravia proved to be a rigid state against the Eastern Franks. What were the long-run outcomes of those wars? Khazars (and probably Hungarians) frankly rejected baptism in 861, but caused Great Moravia to accept the Byzantine mission lead by St. Cyril and Methodius in 862 (see the chapter of Alexandar Nikolov on Great Moravia in this book) and urged Boris-Michael of Bulgaria to become Christian in 864 (on how the Bulgarians preserved the memory of their baptizer St. Boris-Michael, see the chapter of Tsvetelin Stepanov in this book). The Varangians’ rise on the Dnieper-Baltic line was surely a great source of anxiety for the Khazars, but it was Byzantium that had to think more about this new power, for the Varangians plundered many times not only the Empire’s Crimean forts, but also directly the Constantinople and North Anatolian shores. Between Khazaria and Rus’ there was a great buffer zone inhabited by the Hungarians and then, from 894 on, by the Pechenegs; and the Khazars were proved to be able to control the Rus’ threat, thanks to them. Besides, a generation after the conversion in the 860s, Bulgaria had stopped acting as the Byzantines wished, and thus continued to be the primary rival and enemy of the empire in South-East Europe. Thus, in the eyes of the Khazars, in our opinion, Byzantium and its religion no longer posed a substantial threat to Khazaria, in which a pagan majority and a great number of Muslims and Christians were ruled by a Judaic minority. Pax Khazarica would continue its existence for one more century, but Khazaria had to be careful in some other newly emerging fronts, as explained in Osman Karatay’s chapter in this book. The Pechenegs and Cumans disappeared from history leaving very few traces confined mostly to the cultural domain. Their attitudes towards Christianity do not seem to have radical divergences from each other. As regards Bulgars and Magyars, also of oriental origin, they have kept their presence, the former in a different way. Slavic subjects of the Danube Bulgar state started to behave differently from the “independent” western and eastern Slavic tribes, clearly from the beginning of the ninth century. Although the Bulgar rulers succeeded in keeping them under their domination, the ethnic tensions especially in the third quarter of the eighth century reflected in the sources might have caused a kind of alienation towards the state. Mighty rulers of the succeeding era like Kardam and especially Krum (802–814) and Omurtag (814–831) proved to have the upper hand against Byzantium and extended their territories to the south, to further regions inhabited by Slav- and Bulgar-speaking tribes in what is

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now Northern Macedonia. Christianity had by then been well-established among the Slavic population there, since they were under Byzantine rule. It would not have been difficult for Christianity to find a way to infiltrate the alienated pagan Slavic subjects through those baptized Slavs. Bulgar rulers, especially Omurtag, tried to prevent it from spreading, however, in vain. On the eve of the Bulgar conversion in 864, we can sketch out such a picture that as an ethnic unity the Danube Bulgars were seriously anti-­ Christian in almost all segments of the society, especially in the upper strata, e.g. the ruling clan (or families with power) and the magnates or warlords. Their old Slavic subjects or neighbours were moving towards Christianity on the road of the newly subjected Slavs. But the Bulgars on the Lower Danube were the closest and fiercest enemies of Byzantium from 679 on. Christianity was the religion of the enemy, in spite of their several cooperative actions with the Eastern Franks in those days. Boris-­ Michael (852–889) seemed no different at the beginning of his career; however, when he was “ambushed” by the Byzantines in 863, he had to accept baptism from Constantinople. Boris proved to be sincere in the new religion or was at least aware of the fact that it was a one-way choice, as shown in his brutal reaction to the anti-Christian uprising of some of the Bulgar magnates (bolyars) soon after the conversion, and later in the punishment of his own son Vladimir (889–893), who became the new ruler of the country after his father’s “retirement” in 889: Vladimir not only renounced Christianity by relying on popular support, but also tried to re-orientate Bulgaria to the West. But the sincerity of Boris-Michael does not mean that he had given up those political concerns. Just after the peace with Byzantium in 864 and after establishing control over the affairs in the country in 866, he started to flirt with Western Christianity, this time with Rome and the Papacy. Interestingly, he did not want the religion of the enemy, but of the ally, although both were the same. Political motivations were surely determinative in those processes. Clearly, he did not want to come under strong Byzantine influence or domination. He should have estimated that the remote Frank estate in Central Europe or the Papacy was less dangerous in that sense. This can be compared to the approach of their cognates on the Volga River, who did not envisage any possibility of coming under the Caliphal rule by accepting Islam. In any case, both the baptized and non-­ baptized Bulgars on the Danube had the same concerns. Between 866 and 870, Boris-Michael accepted a mission from Rome, but he was unable to establish Western Christianity in his domain. However, his manoeuvres

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became fruitful, and he succeeded in getting an independent “Eastern” church in the 870s. This would change the course of religious history in Eastern Europe. The positive signals taken from the Franks by the Bulgars can be compared to the case of the Hungarians. Migrating to Central Europe in ca. 895, they were the enemies of both Christianity and the Germans/Franks as well as the Bulgars for about a century, but when they became friends through marriages with the former, it was only a moment for the Hungarian king Vajk to be baptized in 1000. Some of the tribes who had already entered the Magyar confederation before the 890s, the Onogurs for instance, had a close acquaintance with Christianity from at least the seventh century on; noteworthy individual conversions are shown by the presence of Patria Onogoria near the Azov Sea, but the Magyars in their entirety had not changed their societal position towards Christianity before the last decades of the tenth century. Their long-lasting lack of interest should have had some political reasons, which were likely not much different from those of the Danube Bulgars before the 840s. General Khazar policies also might have had some impacts on such decisions. The basic difference, however, was that many things had changed at the time when the Hungarians came to Central Europe. They came to the Danube basin just after the baptism of Bulgaria and Great Moravia, and when the Hungarian rulers of the late tenth century came to more peaceful terms and started to flirt with the noble German houses, they were receiving news from Poland and then Kievan Rus’ about their conversions to Christianity. Apart from the Pechenegs, who expelled the Hungarians and settled in what is roughly the southern part of modern Ukraine, namely all neighbours of the Hungarians in their new country were already Christians. After getting rid of the anxieties about the political consequences of a possible conversion, they would naturally tend to obey the choice of the majority of peoples in the region, at least in order not to remain alone there. However, the Hungarian conversion was not so easy and without opposition. Without the German help to crush the anti-Christian uprisings, it seems that it would have been very troublesome to firmly establish Christianity among the Hungarians. It is not easy to guess the political motivations of the Poles in the mid-­ tenth century (on some interesting issues concerning Poland’s conversion, see the chapter of Przemisław Urbańczyk in this book). They had just become a centralized kingdom; however, this may not be a determinant factor. We want to refer to the case that Germany, or Saxony in truth, was

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being annoyed by pagan Slavic incursions on the eve of the Second Wave. This can be compared to the position of the Central Asian Turks in the same days towards the borders of the Islamic Empire. That is, Germans/ Christians and Arabs/Muslims no longer posed a great threat to the West Slavs and the Central Asian Turks, respectively, and perhaps vice versa. Moravians accepted Christianity and did not lose their independence; this might have sent positive signals to the Poles. Furthermore, Great Moravia was crushed not by any surrounding Christian state, but by the “pagan” Hungarians coming from the east. Although Poland was fragile enough against the great Hungarian might, that the latter were mostly busy in Western Europe should have contributed to saving Poland, and also the Bulgarians and the Byzantines in the Balkans, from fierce Hungarian raids or devastating invasions. Under those conditions, converting to Christianity would not have caused any casualties in Poland; on the contrary, it would have been more useful to join the “club” of Christian peoples and countries against the pagan Hungarian and, perhaps, Pecheneg threats. So, in the Polish case, too, one can observe the same political motivations and impressions as those of the others. As the religion of their enemies, the Germans, they remained for many centuries suspicious of Christianity. However, when they got the upper hand and were faced with other threats of non-Christian origin, the tendency changed. Most probably the choice of Great Moravia should also be studied within the same terms. After the complete collapse of the Avars in the first decade of the ninth century, the Central European Slavs developed a formidable state of their own and did not surrender to the (Eastern) Franks, both in a political and religious sense. Christianity was the religion of their main enemies. But when the Frank threat unified with that of the Bulgars in the middle of that same ninth century, the Moravian rulers had to find an exit so as not to be “sandwiched” between the allied Eastern Franks and the Bulgars of Boris-Michael. Byzantium was the most important alternative refuge, and the dynamic help came from the then distant Hungarians at that time living in the Don basin, who were instigated by the Byzantine agents to interfere in Central European affairs. Thus, the Moravians were ready to accept a mission from Byzantium which, led by the brothers Constantine and Methodius, brought the Glagolitic script to Great Moravia in 862. At least two phenomena are very interesting in the Moravian case. Firstly, Great Moravia kept its independence thanks to the aid of both Byzantium and the Hungarians; however, the country would soon be

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invaded and crushed by the latter. Secondly, the Moravians acted in the same terms as the Bulgars. In order to keep their independence from “Western (German) Christianity” and to recruit Byzantine help, they had to turn to “Eastern Christianity”, but they eventually became a member of the Western “club”. The Danube Bulgars did the converse: after being baptized by Constantinople in 864, they referred to the West (Rome) to save their ecclesiastical independence (866–870) and eventually surrendered to the East (Constantinople) in 870, albeit keeping their autonomous church. Thus, the conversions of Bulgaria and Great Moravia should be studied interactively. For the Rus’, then, it was mostly a question of following the popular fashion. The “Russian Primary Chronicle” also known as “Povest’ Vremmenykh Let” does not give a clear reason for the rejection of Islam by Knyaz Vladimir (d. 1015), except for some lifestyle pretexts (including perhaps his fear of circumcision that was not recorded in the annals!). Muslim propagators or envoys from Volga Bulgaria invited him to Islam, while likely over-expressing some prohibitions. Nevertheless, the sources do not tell of a harsh position from him towards the invitation. Besides, there is no account about his stance before the lifestyle presented by Christianity. Let us again turn to the political agenda of the age. Judaism was deleted from the alternatives at the very beginning, due to the poor conditions of Jews throughout the Earth, which was a punishment of God, as narrated by the same source. Indeed, Judaism was the official religion of Khazaria, which was destroyed in the 960s by Sviatoslav, the predecessor of Vladimir. It was not meaningful to accept the faith of the one-time enemy. The same was true for Islam, too. Not only the Volga Bulgars, with which both Sviatoslav and Vladimir waged wars, but also Khazaria with its significant Muslim troops should have represented Islam in the eyes of the Kievan leading persons. As for Christianity, it was Sviatoslav who, on the instigation of Byzantium, attacked and destroyed in 968–971 the eastern parts of the Christianized Danube Bulgaria. The Rus’, or the Varangians, had also attacked the Byzantine lands many times, including the imperial capital. However, in the days of Vladimir, Byzantium or Christianity was not among their enemies. They did not perceive any threat from the empire; in contrast, they posed a threat to it, especially for the towns in Crimea. Furthermore, Kiev had experience of Christianity from the mid-tenth century, in the person of Vladimir’s grandmother Olga. In the presence of non-Christian peoples in the close vicinity like the Hungarians who often annoyed Galicia and Volhynia, and also the

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Pechenegs who often invaded the Rus’ territories from the south and even managed to kill the famous Sviatoslav in 972 when on his way back from Danube Bulgaria (besides the long-lasting rivalry with the Muslim Volga Bulgaria), it was to the benefit of the Rus’ qaganate to join the Christian “club” so as to be able to recruit the military help of Byzantium in cases of emergency. Clearly, there was no alternative or even a possibility of coming under (any kind of) Byzantine political domination. The Rus’ people, living far from Byzantium, were decidedly eager to keep their independent position. Developments after the conversion in 988/9 showed that nothing had changed in regard to their position towards Byzantium, occasional clashes with which were ordinary as in the pre-­ Christian days. On that point, one could underline that Byzantium failed in creating a “commonwealth”, in contrast to the hypothesis of Sir Dmitrii Obolensky. The cultural influences of the empire on the Kievan Rus’ and other converted peoples of Eastern Europe were inevitable through religious channels, but they did not coincide or go hand in hand with political influences. This is indeed the consequence of the main theme that we advocate in this introduction. Those people accepted Christianity on the condition and expectation that they would keep their full independence, and they succeeded in this. Other alternatives such as coming under Byzantine domination of any kind or the influence of any political content, as long as the main pivot became the interests and policies of Byzantium, were the main barriers before their conversion to Christianity. Thus, in the course of the tenth century, the well-established notion and expectation of equating Christianity with Byzantine political domination were given an end by the Danube Bulgars. With one exception—tsar Peter I (927–969), they continued to be the main rival and closest enemy of the empire in South-East Europe for more than one century after their conversion, showing meanwhile to other rulers and aristocrats that any people could be Christian without accepting the Byzantine upper hand. It was nonsense for the Serbs and Croats in a pagan Slavic identity to resist both the Christian and non-Christian Bulgars without taking up Byzantine or Frankish support. They were situated just between Rome and Constantinople and, as expected, were included in the Christian “club”. An alliance of the two peoples with Byzantium from the very beginning of the story from the first decades of the seventh century on should have been a positive stimulus to approach them, or their ruling strata, towards Christianity. The Franks’ interference post 812 here and in the Croats’ case, in particular, should also be added. The centrifugal tendency, on the

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other hand, that delayed their conversion for about two centuries, should be related to the Slavic tribal societal life mentioned above. So, both the indigenous peoples in, and the newcomers to, Central and Eastern Europe seem to have behaved with almost the same incentives as for participating in the Christian world. So, what was happening in the area where the Scandinavian peoples lived? (On Christianization in Scandinavia see here the chapters of Władysław Duczko and Henrik Janson.) Was it hard for them to receive and adapt themselves to the waves of changes of image created in the east of Europe? The Danes just to the north of the Hamburg Church or in the vicinity of the Frisian Christian establishments, whose members feverishly conducted their missionary activities among the Nordic peoples, waited for about five centuries to accept Christianity. The same is true for Sweden and Norway. Propagation of the Christian faith started well at the beginning of the Period of Stagnancy but did not yield much except for some individual conversions. Interestingly, Harald, a king of the Danes among several other kings, was baptized on the eve of the Second Wave, but was ousted by other kings, who even endeavoured to destroy Hamburg in the succeeding days. This much resembles the attitudes of some Turkic peoples towards Christianity and Islam in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Another similarity of the Danish case to the Turks is that it was not the missionary but the commercial activities that were more fruitful when speaking about introducing a monotheistic religion among the common people. Interestingly, distant Sweden was open to Christianity to a smaller degree at the top level in those days. May we again refer to political concerns? The Swedes never faced and perceived a threat from the Frankish realm and felt themselves mighty enough to organize military expeditions to unbelievably remote countries like modern Azerbaijan and to conquer Finnic and Slavic lands on the Novgorod-Kiev line. In any case, suspects of the Christian missions were prevalent among both the magnates and the commoners there and an uprising gave a bloody end to the mission in Sweden. That reaction was stimulated mainly by political concerns. Consequently, Frankish bishoprics would wait for more than a century to restart their acts. The Nordic spirit was fervent especially from the mid-eighth century on; their ethnical impulse of passion, in Lev Gumilëv’s terms, was at its apex. Not only had they wanted to keep their independence, both culturally and politically, but they also tried to establish hegemony over other countries. It is by no means accidental that the Viking spirit was dead by the mid-eleventh century. It would not be true historically to claim that

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Christianity gave an end to the Vikings, for it seems they accepted the new monotheistic religion in a period of decline of their “ethnical passion”. This does not mean, however, that they lost their power; instead, they turned into “nations”. Here, one should at least remember the conquest of Britain by William the Conqueror (in 1066) as well as another conquest, that of Sicily and South Italy by the Normans (the second half of the same eleventh century). In any case, the Danes experienced the same fate as the Bulgars. In their acts, Danish kings such as Gorm and Harald can be compared to Omurtag and Boris in Danube Bulgaria. Gorm and Omurtag, respectively, tried to annihilate Christianity in their countries, while Harald and Boris had to accept baptism under forcible conditions and later became sincere believers. However, there is more than one century between the Bulgar and Danish conversions. As in Bulgaria, Christianity was rapidly established among the Scandinavian peoples and it only took a moment for the rulers of Sweden to follow the Danes in that way. This process seems to have nothing to do chronologically with the spirit of Imperium Christianum of the Franks, in Wallace-Hadrill’s terms, defined around the rule of Louis the Pious (814–840), the successor of Charlemagne (d. 814), but with the mentioned political processes changing and influencing the imaginations and consciousness of the “client” peoples. However, the Frankish empire would soon face a period of dissolution. That Denmark accepted an official baptism and that nothing changed in terms of its political situation might have given a positive impression to the rulers of Sweden. But Christianity was still viewed as a means of political hegemony, as W. Duczko explains well in his chapter, and the bishops baptizing king Olof were invited not from Denmark, Francia or elsewhere, but from a duchy of Poland, which was by no means to claim political superiority over Sweden. The majority of the country’s population was not ready to accept that choice, and the king had to recruit support from Denmark and Norway to keep his position, as was happening in Hungary in those days. There are almost no exceptions, including Central Asia: in order to convert the “political multitude” into a universal monotheistic or imperial-­ type religion, people and first of all the ruling strata needed to be convinced that their position would not be shaken. For that they waited until the last decades of the ninth century as the earliest date, and it was surely not the case that all or the major elements of the society and concerning polities came to that point altogether in a moment. There always remained

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a significant and balancing compound resisting—for various reasons—the conversion, which mostly gathered around political concerns. Messages like the notable men would keep their privileges and positions or the common people would find more suitable environments in a Christian or Islamic society were not true answers to the sentiments, judges and thoughts of the old faith that were still in favour and in opposition to the new monotheistic religion. Thus, a “civil” war broke out in almost every instance. This cannot be viewed as the nature of the phenomenon of religious conversion. It happened in the ninth to eleventh centuries (in the Second Wave containing both Islam and Christianity) almost everywhere, but not in the fourth to sixth centuries (the First Wave of Christianity). At the centre, it seems, there were some concerns regarding political submission. Thus, no people accepted Islam, as a people and polity, by their own will in the earliest three centuries, which coincides with the Stagnancy Period of Christianity. On the other hand, since Muslim propagators did not differentiate between the social and political positions of people while inviting them into the religion, Islam gained in a short time more ground among the common people in non-Islamic countries, including China and Southeast Asia, compared to Christianity in non-Christian countries. That is, overall, Christianity, starting with individuals, continued to act as an organized structure supported by the state, while Islam, getting its own state at the very beginning, continued in more individual ways and manners. In any case, both monotheistic religions achieved state-level conversions only after the other peoples were convinced of political “immunity”. That was not a choice or strategy of the religion-owning empires, in a contradictory way, but the result of the political processes starting in the 860s both in the East and West and outside the wish and will of the concerning imperial structures. Interestingly, the Danube Bulgars started it in the West and the Volga Bulgars started it in the East (as regards Volga Bulgaria’s case, the reader can see some details in the special chapter by István Zimonyi; the same theme was also briefly dealt with in the chapter written by Osman Karatay). Disregarding individual conversions that might have included tens of thousands of people in total in a wide timeline, we should bear in mind that the Volga Bulgar state officially accepted Islam around the year 900, the ruler of the Karakhanid state in the eastern part of Central Asia became Muslim in the 940s (see in this volume the chapter of Erkan Göksu), and the massive Islamization of the Oghuz, living between the

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two, can be dated to the end of the tenth century (as can be seen in the chapter by Osman Karatay). As for the general and overall pictures, the Islamization of the Turks can be well compared to the Christianization of the Roman Empire in terms of their historical consequences among all conversion stories. Interestingly, both happened roughly three centuries after the emergence of the relevant monotheistic religions, and both conversions refreshed the dynamics of the religions concerned. The crucial difference, however, is that while Rome represented a unique and mighty empire, the Turks had several states and traditions, instead of a Eurasia-wide unitary empire. Another difference is that it was not Rome but a “successor” state, that of the Franks, which extended the borders of Christianity to the rest of Europe; even the baptism of parts of East Central Europe is connected in a way to the activities of Frankish (and Saxon, e.g. in the days of Otto I) politicians and missionaries, including Saxony, Croatia, Great Moravia, Poland and Hungary. The explanation of this fact is not difficult: the lands of these countries were indeed in the diocese of the Church with a centre in Rome, and the Franks were the “beloved children” of the Papacy. The Eastern Church in Constantinople eventually got the upper hand in Bulgaria, Serbia and Rus’. The Turks were, on the other hand, responsible for spreading Islam directly to the rest of Central Asia, Caucasus, Anatolia (from the last decades of the eleventh century) and a great part of India, and indirectly to the rest of India and Southeast Asia (see here the chapter by M. Hanefi Palabıyık on the Islamization of the Ghaznavids and India as a whole). As for political history, one is wondering whether we could claim that the deeds of the Turks in the eleventh century may be compared to the Völkerwanderung of the European (mostly Germanic, though partly “Hunnic” and “Slavic”) peoples at the end of the Classical Age: both the German- and Turkic-speaking peoples constituted new and formidable ethnic structures in some lands that they went to, but were also transformed and even assimilated among the local populations in many places. This introduction aims at presenting an overall picture through the editors’ eyes. The authors of the separate chapters certainly have different ideas in many cases. Even the editors do not think exactly in the same way on many issues. In science, this is indeed a normal practice. The editors do not share the idea of a brief repetition, or even renewal of the historical knowledge on the related conversion cases, on which scholarship has already produced an immense literature. It seems that a continent-level, indeed Euro-Asian, viewpoint is what we lack in the studies. A

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chronological grouping of some monotheistic conversions in the Middle Ages exposes very interesting coincidences, which could and sometimes should be revisited altogether. It is clear that the focus on a certain case may be local or regional, but the question is, can it be adequately studied and interpreted without putting it in wider (even global) frameworks and dimensions? The “Spirit of the age” may have mattered for wider populations in remote countries. Thus, we needed to make an “introduction” both with this Introduction and the book as a whole. It is a hope of the editors that further studies will shed light upon the medieval religious developments to understand the big picture of “monotheization” in a better way.

CHAPTER 2

Approaching Salvation: Early Process of Christianisation in Viking-Age Denmark and Sweden Władysław Duczko

The conversion to Christianity of Scandinavia in the Viking Age (700–1100 AD) was a long and complex process in which were involved secular and ecclesiastical powers of Western Europe and elites of Norsemen. This process was extended through the centuries of this historical period, when the mobility of the Norsemen—Viking raids, colonisation of foreign countries, creation of trading networks—increased contacts with the Christian world, mostly in Western Europe, eventually leading Northern societies to acceptance of new religion. In this paper, I would like to restrict description of this process to Denmark and Sweden to show how

This paper is a revised and updated version of my article “The Missionary Period of Christianisation in Viking-age Denmark and Sweden”, in: Jerzy Ga ̨ssowski (ed.), Christianization of the Baltic Region, Pułtusk, 2004

W. Duczko (*) Gieysztor Academy in Pułtusk, part of AFiB Vistula, Warsaw, Poland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_2

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these two countries, close to each other through the early history, were connected even during the time of Christianisation. The earliest attempt to introduce Christianity to Scandinavians was made by a missionary bishop Willibrod of Northumbria acting from Frisia. At the very beginning of the eighth century, he went to Jutland to meet the Danish king Ongendus, who, as it soon appeared, was not interested in foreign religion. Returning to Frisia bishop took with him thirty Danish youths and baptised them, planning to teach and use them in future evangelisation. If any of those youths were used in missionary attempts during the eighth century, it was not documented. The later missionary undertakings directed towards the North were enterprises arranged in cooperation between the Franks and the Papacy. To a surprisingly high degree, those early missions were arranged within families of the responsible churchmen. The main person in the initial period, archbishop Ebo of Reims, was a foster-brother of Emperor Louis the Pious; a relation of Ebo was the head of the church in Swedish emporium Birka bishop Gautbert, whose nephew Nithard was working there as a priest; another of Gautbert’s nephews, Erimbert, was also a priest in Birka in the 850s. The mentioned archbishop Ebo was responsible for a new mission to Danes in early 823. Authorised by Pope Paschalis I, he went to Denmark where he met King Harald Klak. Nothing positive happened, but it paved a road for the next attempt. The occasion was given by the same King Harald, who came of his own will to the imperial palace in Ingelheim, where he and his family were baptised, with emperor and his wife as sponsors. Rimbert’s Vita Anskarii from the 870s gives a different version of the events. Harald, who was ruling over only one part of Danes, was expelled by another Danish king and went to the Francia asking for help from Emperor Louis the Pious. After baptism, he returned home in the company of a mission led by monk Ansgar, was expelled again and came back to Louis who took care of him. The baptism of members of the Danish royal family was a success, but at the same time, a political failure. The monk Ansgar, a Saxon from Benedictine cloister in Corbie, appeared, however, in this affair as victorious. The Emperor appreciated his abilities and decided to make him a leader of another mission, this time to Svitjod, Sweden, the land of Svear. According to Rimbert, the Svear asked directly for a mission through the envoys to the Emperor Louis; they told stories about people that yearned for the true religion and, what was much more important, about their

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king who was in favour of the presence of Christians in his realm. In 829, Ansgar as a pope’s legate and the representative of the Emperor, started out on his journey in the company of the monk Vitmar. During their travel the Vikings robbed them of all gifts and ecclesiastical items; after long and troublesome journey they reached Birka, the trade emporium of Svear, situated on the island of Björkö on the Lake Mälar in the middle of Svitjod. Ansgar was granted permission, by King Björn and his men, for evangelisation, and stayed in town for one and a half years. In this time Ansgar managed to give services for the local Christians, most of them slaves, and convert an unknown number of people, among which was only one man of high standing, Hergeir, the praefectus vici, the royal representative in Birka. The mission to Sweden was successful enough to convince Frankish emperor that it could be of value to give missions directed towards the North a more solid base. In 832, he founded a see in Hamburg and made Ansgar its archbishop; the confirmation came from Pope Gregorius IV who decided that the see will work within people of Sweden, Danes and Slavs. After 845, when Danish King Horik the Elder destroyed Hamburg, Bremen was made the new site of the see, and since then it was known as the Hamburg-Bremen see. The developments in Sweden energetically promoted by Ansgar promised a good continuation which is why the next mission was sent there at once. A relative of archbishop Ebo, bishop Gautbert, was chosen as the leader of the mission and officially made to be the Pope’s legate. Together with his nephew, Nithard Gautbert arrived to Birka, where he was received well and given permission to build a church. After five years, in 837, the end of the mission came suddenly: a violent revolt exploded, Nithard was killed and bishop Gautbert expelled. This outburst of anti-Christian sentiments is seen by scholars as local event restricted to Birka. However, research has shown that it was only a part of much larger uprising that possibly had its origin in Old Uppsala, most famous cultic centre of Svear. The uprising was caused, as a hypothesis based on Vita Anskarii will have it, by the king of Uppsala Anund. Obviously, he tried to make Christianity more acceptable among Svear, and when the thing refused to accept his proposition, he started to act irresponsibly provoking a rising against him, under which he was expelled from the kingdom and left for Denmark. In the meantime, the rebellion expanded reaching eventually Birka, with recorded consequences. It can be taken for granted that mighty chieftains stood behind this explosion since they were alarmed by the spreading of

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Christianity, which could disturb equilibrium of Svitjod’s social structure. They saw it as a danger to their position of power, and when even the king, for his political reasons, approached the new faith, they moved into action, convincing people that they have to use violence against Christians. While rebellion destroyed the missionary work in Sweden, the conversion of Denmark was proceeding slowly without dramatic violence. Ansgar visited the Danes, but their king although well disposed was not interested in changing religion. Nevertheless, he knows that in some cases Christianity could exercise positive influence on the trade and did not hesitate to give permission to build a church in most important Danish emporium Hedeby. Rimbert tells of a fairly great number of already baptised people living there, but even about much more catechumens, people who were learning about the religion and only waiting for baptism as long as possible, thinking that it was good for them to do it just before they were dying because they would enter the eternal life pure and without sin. After visitations of Danes, Ansgar decided to revive the mission to Birka. He expedited a hermit Ardagar who stayed with Hergeir, the pious governor of Birka. In the long run, such arrangement was not satisfactory. Ansgar tried to persuade Gautbert, the official head of the Birka-mission, to return and continue his work, but he refused explaining that he did not dare, suggesting instead that the archbishop himself should go. Finding the suggestion convincing he decided to go. Before the journey, he asked Danish king Horek for help and was provided with a letter to Swedish king Olof. In 854 Ansgar, in the company of bishop Gautbert’s nephew Erimbert, arrived to Birka. It took a long time before the thing at the town and another one, probably of regional importance, gave permission for evangelisation and building the church. King Olof offered a plot of land for a chapel and another plot with a house for living. After some time Erimbert left Birka and bishop Gautbert decided to send a Dane Anfrid to Sweden. He stayed there just for a while and Ansgar replaced him with his own priest Ragenbert who during the journey was killed by Vikings. Yet another Dane, Rimbert, was sent, who managed to arrive safely at Birka, where during the 860s he took care of the local Christians. He was also the last known missionary from the Hamburg-Bremen see working amongst the Svear during the second part of the ninth century. When Ansgar died in 865 and Rimbert (not the one from Birka) became his successor, the German missions to the North ended for at least half a century. Our picture of the Christianisation of the North during the ninth century consists mostly of the information from one Vita, the Life of Ansgar.

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It was, however, not the goal of its author, Rimbert, to collect all facts and give a detailed picture of all missionary operations amongst Norsemen. He focused on Ansgar and the missions sent by the Hamburg-Bremen see and nothing else; the workings of other missionaries were out of his scope. Up to now we were using the historical, written sources, but what kind of information about the early missions can we obtain from archaeological sources? The Central Sweden is the area best suited for presentation of material remains identified as traits of missionary operations. How do the finds from Birka, the capital site of the mission, look? In the cemeteries around the town, there are many inhumation burials in or without coffins, or in the chambers graves that are dated to the ninth century. To identify amongst these graves a particular grave as a burial of a Christian who died when the Frankish missions were operating in town is very difficult. The employment of inhumation is a criterion that cannot be solely used for recognition of the deceased Christianity because of the long time (since the late Roman period) of the existence of a tradition of inhumation burials in Svitjod all high-status burials of people belonging to elites. An example of this is a place close to the Borg (Fortress) at Birka: it is a concentration of inhumation graves, which are sometimes put on top of the other, giving impression that the people buried here were Christians for whom a special restricted area was consecrated. However, none of the graves at this place was provided with Christian items and nothing otherwise indicates that this concentration had something to do with new religion. The situation is different in graves in other parts of Birka burial grounds. In a female grave Bj 1079 were found two items of Frisian origin, bronze brooches shaped like crosses; of the same provenance was another item in this grave, a bronze key of a type interpreted as a symbolic key to haven, an amulet that enjoyed great popularity on the Continent and the British Isles. There are several other graves of the ninth century that contained one category of artefact with clear Christian connection, a ceramic jug of Tatinger type, decorated with large crosses, manufactured in Westphalia and often recognised as liturgical vessels for wine or baptismal water (Fig. 2.1). There is a continuous debate about the correctness of this identification, but the fact that the cross is present on the pots gives good indication of the existence of a Christian milieu in Birka. Connection with Christianity, this time manifested by an item from Ireland, appeared outside Birka, on the island of Helgö, where existed a large complex of settlement sites with long houses and workshops and places for pagan offerings. In one of the houses was found a crozier-head

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Fig. 2.1  The Westphalian Tating-ware jug with cross: Birka burial No 854. (Drawing in Arbman 1943, 329, Abb.275:9)

in Irish style with elements typical for Christian items produced on the island. The Irish artefacts are seldom found in Sweden, that’s why it is not easy to explain the presence of crozier at the Swedish island on which the pagan rituals were celebrated. Perhaps this was the reason to send an Irish bishop to this place to make an attempt of conversion of orthodox Svear? That at the time of the rebellion 837 Christianity was gaining place in society of Svear tell archaeological finds from central Svitjod. On burial grounds between Stockholm and Uppsala, in five female graves dated to the first three decades of the ninth century, were found, among characteristic for period necklaces of glass beads, small cross-pendants in bronze (Fig. 2.2). These crosses are the oldest locally made Christian symbols in Sweden and, probably, first material traces of spreading the new faith within main part of the realm of Svear. The efforts to establish a Church among Danes and Svear came to a temporary standstill at the end of the ninth century when part of the Danish population moved to England and some under Prince Olof came from Sweden and established in Hedeby a centre of his power. This situation lasted until the 930s. In the Rerum Gestorum Saxonicarum, written by Widukind, there is information that King Henry I in 934 defeated the Danes and forced their ruler Chnuba, who belonged to the Swedish dynasty of Hedeby, to baptise. What followed is in Adam of Bremen’s Gesta from the 1070s. Adam tells us about an attempt to renew the Norse mission from Hamburg-Bremen see by archbishop Unni, who in 936

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Fig. 2.2  The oldest Swedish cross-pendants from cremation grave in Tureholm, Sollentuna parish, Uppland; height 3 cm. (Photo ATA (Antikvarisk-topografiska arkivet, Stockholm)

travelled to Denmark and Sweden. First he went to Jutland for meeting with king of the new dynasty of Jelling, Gorm the Old. The king refused baptism but allowed evangelisation. Next a visit was paid to Birka, where Unni found out that the Svear had relapsed to paganism and that nothing could be done there at the moment; that the state of things was hard for the archbishop who died in Birka in September 936. Unni’s successor Adaldag did not even try to go on mission to Norsemen and occupied himself with structural arrangements by appointing in 948 bishops for three Danish towns—Slesvig, Ribe and Århus; two Danish bishops—Liafdag and Odinkar the Older—were also consecrated for Sweden. About nature of these appointments wrote Adam of Bremen explaining uncertain situation in both countries which made it impossible for bishops to come to their sees. The consecrations arranged by Adaldag were parts in planning for the future of the Church in the North. The main part of this plan was the eventual baptism of the rulers. Strangely enough, none of the Norse kings was baptised by the bishop from Hamburg-Bremen, a fact that apparently bothered Adam who was always trying to elevate his see at any cost. It is reflected in the story of conversion of kings from the Danish dynasty of Gorm the Old. Adam’s version made a deep impact on historiography, which for a long time was unable to recognise that it based its visions on political fiction delivered by ecclesiastic novelists. Adam presents King Gorm as a reptile, killer of the priests. This savage ruler was not approachable for the offer of salvation from the mission of

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archbishop Unni, who, however, won for the new faith, his son Harald, known as Bluetooth. Adam’s picture of pagan father and Christian son became an instrument for interpretation of archaeological sources. It was applied to the remains in the residence of the dynasty in Jelling in central Jutland, where in the mid-tenth century was constructed a complex of buildings—halls and wooden church—and monuments consisting of two big mounds and two rune-stones, all these constructions surrounded by a palisade. There is still standing here a big rune-stone with pictures of Christ and a lion and an inscription telling that “King Harald bade be made this monuments after Gorm his father and after Thyra his mother, that Harald who won for himself Denmark all, and Norway, and made the Danes Christians” (Fig. 2.3). One of the monuments King Harald Bluetooth mentions on his documentary stone was the Northern mound, in which an empty chamber was discovered. The chamber was obviously opened some years after its construction. The chamber had been opened in ancient times and almost all Danish scholars are certain that here was the burial-place of King Gorm, who, being heathen, was transferred to a grave in the wooden church build on the spot by his pious son Harald. The chamber was lacking human remains but not artefacts, of which almost all were of Christian character: a little cross of bronze, a small silver chalice, a fragmentary paten, two mounts with cross decoration and fragments of wooden carvings showing a man similar to the figure of Christ on Harald’s stone; among other items were fragments of a carriage and an end-piece of metal with animal head. The inventory of the chamber indicates that it was a Christian burial of a woman. In light of this, the popular theory of translation of King Gorm to the wooden church raised between the mounds appears as rather improbable. What the archaeological finds show stands in conflict with the testimony of the written sources: if the chamber in the Northern mound was the grave of Thyra and, as it is now claimed, even Gorm, there is enough material to see this burial as Christian, which means that King Harald was not the first Christian ruler of the Jelling dynasty. The account of the King Harald’s baptism in Adam’s version—the king was forced to it by Emperor Otto—is seen as propaganda conducted by the Hamburg-Bremen see. A different account is offered by Widukind in his History of Saxons from 970, where he talks only about the trick performed by the priest Poppo, which made an impression on Harald and eventually opened him to conversion. How popular was conversion amongst people is a long-discussed problem. For the illustration of this it

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Fig. 2.3  The Jelling rune-stone. Replica. (Photo National Museum, Copenhagen)

became habitual to refer to a Danish find of a casting mould in which crosses and a hammer of Thor pendants were produced (Fig. 2.4). The mould with Christian and pagan symbols might be also interpreted either as sign of religious syncretism of the Danes or religious indifference of the jewellery maker. Besides these explanations, there is yet another one: we have here the clearest example of conversion of symbols. The hammer belonged to the most popular of Norse gods, Thor, and it was a mighty symbol that was difficult to get rid of when the religion was changed. It seems that this item, so close in form to the cross, was “converted”

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Fig. 2.4  Mould for casting cross- and Thor’s hammer: Trendgården, Jutland, Denmark. (Photo: National Museum Kopenhagen)

together with the Danes and for a while continued to be used, this time as a Christian symbol. The Christianisation of the Danes went at a faster pace since the conversion of King Harald and his rise from the 960s to the status of the most powerful ruler in Scandinavia. It seems, however, that his greed for power and forceful Christianisation turned many Danes and even his son Sven against him, which ended in a rebellion and the king’s violent death ca. 987. Adam describes the relation between Harald and Sven in similar way as he presented relations between Gorm and Harald: the latter is pious and almost saintly, the son is a vicious heathen. But Sven was Christian, perhaps in the beginning more of a kind described by Widukind, but no later, when after a successful plundering expedition to England his prestige and wealth made him to the most influential Norse ruler and pious Christian. His son Canute continued his father’s work in a very successful way: between 1014 and 1034 he was the ruler of a whole empire, the North Sea Empire, and in this capacity was acting as the only real king of Scandinavia. He used to send English bishops and priests to Denmark, but after a while he accepted the authority of the Hamburg-Bremen see. This authority was challenged by King Sven Estridsson (1047–74) who had own plans for the organisation of Danish Church that was connected directly with Rome and the Pope; these plans were never realised. Despite all the problems, Denmark was turning into a true Christian country. During the second part of the eleventh century, a stable system of regular dioceses was established and in 1104 the process of building the structure of Church was completed by foundation of archbishop see in Lund with authority over the whole Norse Church. The establishment of a mighty royal Danish dynasty in the mid-tenth century eventually had repercussions in Sweden. The narrative sources are silent about missions from this time, but archaeology gives some

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indications as to what was going on there, at least concerning Birka. It was here that the Christian symbol in form of a cross pendant appear in the graves of the elite of the Svear, in female inhumations in coffins and in the chambers. These crosses, made of silver sheet, are either of straight Latin types or, more often, of circular English type, the latter most probably designed in Denmark (Fig. 2.5). There are also more elaborate specimens made of filigree and granulation, such as pendants, also from Birka, found in rich female burials no. 501, 750 and one, most interesting, a little crucifix from grave no. 660 (Fig. 2.6a). The latter item was seen as the oldest Swedish-made crucifix, but recent finds of two similar crosses in Denmark— one made of gold (Fig. 2.6b)—point at this country as a place where presence of skilled jewellers working in granulation and filigree techniques throughout the tenth century were responsible for production of such small master-pieces of art. Sometimes we have opportunity to see how the need for Christian items was satisfied in Birka: in the coffin of female grave no. 511 was placed a large bronze cross of an Insular ring-type, probably a souvenir from plundering of the Ireland. The finds of crosses are restricted only to Birka, and there is a question as to what happened with the Christians after the town’s disappearance.

Fig. 2.5  Cross-pendants: (a). Birka, grave No 835; (b). Vinor, Gotland SHM 22459:6. (Photo: Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm)

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Fig. 2.6  Crucifix-pendants: (a). Birka, grave No 660; (b). Aunslev, Fyn, Denmark. (Photo: Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm; Østfyns Museer, Kerteminde)

The usual answer is that they moved to the new royal town of Sigtuna founded in the early 980s. Our knowledge of the oldest phase of Sigtuna is still limited, but it seems that it was a place that from the beginning was thought to be Christian. At least King Olof Skötkonung presented himself in about 995 as Christian ruler when he started his coinage in Sigtuna: on the copies of English pennies were crosses and even inscriptions in nominee domini. The eleventh century was a period of intense Christianisation of Svitjod. The ongoing conversion was influencing society mostly by making impact on mentality and by introducing new customs, for instance the fashion of raising rune-stones with crosses and inscriptions mentioning Christianity of the people raising monuments and, which is equally important, ending of producing and using traditional female ornaments, for example the oval brooches. The process of spreading foreign religion was not strong enough to create new institutions or even to diminish the strength of old structures. The royal power remained weak, still unable to break

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well-functioning networks of local centres with their own rulers controlling the thing, the main institution working at lower and higher levels of society. Even the centre of the Svear in Old Uppsala remained intact and played a significant role in focusing opposition against too drastic changes. Adam of Bremen’s description of Ubsola, the cult-complex with a golden temple and a sacred grove, serves as a symbol of the old pagan world which continued to function under the pressure of the new. Uppsala was apprehended as the last bastion of Scandinavian paganism aggressively fighting the approaching Christianity. The reality was not entirely like this. When Adam was writing his Gesta, the majority of the leading groups in central Svitjod had already converted and in Uppsala itself were standing, since about the mid-eleventh century, several rune-stones raised by Christian families. At the beginning of the eleventh century, King Olof decided to build the basis of church structure in Svitjod. For this he needed a mission with a bishop. To invite one from Denmark was excluded, because when sponsored by another ruler, baptism was usually connected with political submission. To ask King Sven was excluded, because he was the stepfather of Olof, who was a son of Mieszko I’s daughter of Piast dynasty of Poland. It was then clear that the mission had to be supported by a ruler who was not interested in forcing Olof into political dependency. Such a ruler was his maternal uncle, the Polish Duke Bolesław Chrobry. In 1008, the close friend of Bolesław, an influential Saxon aristocrat and missionary bishop Bruno of Querfurt, was visiting Poland and while staying there had sent a mission to the Svear headed by a bishop and a monk. The mission had baptised not only the king and his two sons, but also a thousand people and seven districts. The reaction to these events came at once and stopped any further work of the mission. The baptism of the king and many people was understood as a serious assault on the society of the Svear. In distorted piece of information about the reaction Adam of Bremen, who does not connect it with the mission of Bruno, tells that it was provoked by Olof’s plans to destroy the pagan temple at Old Uppsala. More accurately it probably should have been said that Olof had attempted to introduce Christianity as common religion. The general assembly, the thing, the arena in which the conflict had started and where it eventually was resolved, have decided to allow King Olof to be Christian but not in Svitjod. Olof accepted the terms and decided to move south, to the province of Västergötland. Olof shows up in the sources after 1014, a year after the death of King Sven Haraldsen and his son Canute’s first steps as a builder

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of Empire in England and Scandinavia. Before Canute left for England in 1015, he and King Olof Skötkonung entered into a pact. This pact was meant to keep Olof under control of his Danish half-brother. At the same time, Norwegian king Olav, after a longer stay in England, came back home together with many bishops and priests, of which some went on missions to Sweden. One of them, a certain Wolfred, was too eager and destroyed a figure of the god Thor standing at the place of the thing: Swedes killed him and his body was plunged into a swamp as an offering. In an attempt to keep out of the English-Danish-Norwegian influence, King Olof turned his attention to the traditional centre of the Norse mission, the Hamburg-Bremen see. A deal was made with archbishop Unwan who sent bishop Thurgot to West Gothia, where he founded a bishopric in Skara. The king had ambitions to make Skara an ecclesiastical centre that could be employed for farther expansion inside Sweden, but this ambition proved to be abortive, because Lund, the major town in neighbouring Scania, a favourite place of King Sven and Canute, became the most important town of the region dominating the Swedish Church during the whole medieval period. Archaeology gives its own picture of the changes in the society of the Svear during the eleventh century. In contrast to the situation in Denmark, where the first churches were erected by the wealthy chiefs on their properties for private use or sometimes in the sites with regional function, nothing similar as yet is known from Svitjod. The lack of churches meant that for a time the new Christians buried their dead in traditional burial grounds close to the dwelling places. A good example of such a cemetery is Hässelby near Uppsala: to the part with cremation graves belonging to the Viking Age, in the west a part with only inhumations in coffins was attached; except one all dead had their heads in the west; grave goods were absent; each grave was marked on the surface by the rectangle of stones. Another cemetery belonging to much wealthier people than those in Hässelby was excavated at Valsta, not far from Sigtuna. Inhumation was introduced here already in the second half of the tenth century, but was not exclusive throughout next century: cremation continues to be used parallel to inhumation. Around 1100, a kind of ideological manifestation happened in the part of the cemetery. The big mound erected in the mid-­ ninth century was transformed into a Christian symbol: on the top of the mound were made graves of stone plates that created a form of a cross. In the early 1080s, the great Pope Gregory VII shows concern for the Swedish Church and through the letters and exchange of priests asks King

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Inge the Older to work more for its development. The development that the Pope wished did not happen at once. It took almost a century before Sweden could be called Christian. In the meantime, at the beginning of the twelfth century, there were six bishoprics within the Gothic provinces and Svitjod: Skara, Linköping, Eskilstuna, Strängnes, Sigtuna and Aros/Västerås. Some decades later occurred decisive changes, of which the most important was the translation in about 1140 of the bishopric from Sigtuna to Old Uppsala, where in 1164 was finally established the archdiocese, thus finishing process of building the main fundament of the Church in Sweden. The time of missions was definitely over. The continuity was in hands of parish priests and kings, who, in case of stubborn pagan resistance, could have the help of an axe with a cross (Fig. 2.7).

Fig. 2.7  Swedish axe with cross: Karslund, Långbro parish, Närke SHM 10400:VI. (Photo: Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm)

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Bibliography Adam of Bremen, “Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum”, Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches, ed. W. Trillmich, Darmstadt, 1978, 160–499. Adam of Bremen. History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Francis J. Tschan, New York, 1959. Ahnlund, N., “Ansgar och den nordiska missionen”, Rimber, Ansgars levnad, trans. Gunnar Rudberg, Stockholm, 1930, 4–50. Almgren, B., “Thors märke” och himmelrikets nycklar, Uppland 1942, Uppsala, 1942, 7–17. Almgren, B., Bronsnycklar och djurornamentik, Uppsala, 1955. Andersen, H., “The graves of the Jelling dynasty”, Acta Archaeologica, 66 (1995), 281–300. Andersson, G., Valsta gravfält. Arlandabanan. Arkeologiska Undersökningar, UV Stockholm, Rapport 1997: 9/1 (2), Stockholm, 1997. Arbman, H., Birka I. Die Gräber. Tafeln; Text, Stockholm, 1940–1943. Bonnier, A.  C., “Kyrkor, dopfuntar och gravmonument”, Kristnande i Sverige. Gamla kallor och nya perspektiv, ed. Bertil Nilsson, [Projekt Sveriges kristnande. Publikationer. 5.], Uppsala, Nilsson, 1996, 181–216. Duczko, W., The Filigree and Granulation Work of the Viking Period. Birka V, Stockholm, 1985. Duczko, W., “Vikingatida bysantinska metallsmycken i arkeologiska fynd från Skandinavien”, Bysans och Norden. Acta för Nordiska forskarkursen i bysantinsk konstvetenskap 1986. [Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis Figura Nova Series 23], Uppsala, 1989, 125–132. Duczko, W., “Byzantine Presence in Viking Age Sweden. Archaeological Finds and Their Interpretation”, Rom und Byzanz im Norden. Mission und Glaubenwechsel im Ostseeraum während des 8.-14. Jahrhunderts, Bd. 1, Mainz, 1997a, 291–311. Duczko, W., “Gamla Uppsala”, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, Bd.10, L. 5/6 (1997b), Berlin-New York, 409–418. Duczko, W., “Real and Imaginary Contributions of Poland and Rus to the Conversion of Sweden”, Early Christianity in Central and East Europe, ed. Przemysław Urbańczyk, Warszawa, 1997c, 129–136. Duczko, W., “Continuity and Transformation: The Tenth Century AD in Sweden”, The Neighbours of Poland in the 10th Century, ed. Przemysław Urbańczyk, Warsaw, 2000a, 7–36. Duczko, W., Vikingarnas tid—konflikter och kompromisser i Gamla Uppsala, Myt, makt och manniska. Tio uppsatser om Gamla Uppsala, Stockholm, 2000b, 31–36.

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Duczko, W., “A.D. 1000—the Point of no Return for the Kingdom of Sweden”, Europe Around the Year 1000, ed. Przemysław Urbańczyk, Warszawa, 2001, 367–378. Duczko, W., “Danes and Swedes in Written and Archaeological Sources at the End of the 9th Century”, Wulfstan’s Voyage. The Baltic Sea in the Early Viking Age as Seen from Shipboard, eds. A. Englert and A. Trakadas, [Maritime Culture of the North 2], Roskilde, 2009, 58–71. Excavations at Helgö XVI. Exotic and Sacral Finds from Helgö, eds. H. Clarke and K. Lamm, Stockholm, 2004. Europe around the Year 1000, ed. P. Urbańczyk, Warszawa, 2001. Floderus, E., “Brandgravar med kors”, Fornvännen, 35 (1940), 129–132. Gahrn, L., “Sveariket och påvebreven om ärkestiftet Hamburg-Bremen”, Historisk Tidskrift (Sverige), 1994, 189–202. Gräslund, A.-S., The Burial Customs. A Study of the Graves on Björkö. [Birka IV], Stockholm, 1980. Gräslund, A.-S., “Ideologi och Mentalitet. Om religionsskiftet i Skandinavien från en arkeologisk horisont”, OPIA [Occasional Papers in Archaeology], 29 (2001), Uppsala. Hallencreutz, C.  F., “Riksidentitet, stiftsidentitet och den vidare Europa-­ gemenskapet”, Kristnande i Sverige. Gamla kallor och nya perspektiv, ed. Bertil Nilsson, [Projekt Sveriges kristnande. Publikationer 5], Uppsala, 1996, 243–268. Holst, M. K., Jessen, D. M., Andersen, S. W., and Pedersen, A., “The Late Viking-­ Age Royal Construction at Jelling, Central Jutland, Denmark. Recent Investigations and Suggestions for an Interpretative Revision”, Praehistorische Zeitschrift, 82/2 (2012), 474–504. Hyenstrand, Å., “Helgö, Birka and the church of St Gautbert”, Thirteen Studies on Helgo, ed. Agneta Lundstróm, [Statens Historiska Museum, Studies 7], Stockholm, 1988, 64–71. Knutsson, K., “Seminariegrävningarna i Hässelby 1978–1981”, Fjölnir, 1 (1982), Uppsala, 7–12. Koczy, L., “Misja św. Brunona wśród Suigjów”, Annales Missiologicae, 5 (1932–1933), 82–102. Marxen, I. and Moltke, E., “The Jelling Man and other paintings from the Viking Age”, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 12 (1988), Odense, 107–121. Nerman, B., När Sverige kristnades, Stockholm, 1945. Nordahl, E., “...templum quod Ubsola dicitur... i arkeologisk belysning”, AUN, 22 (1996), Uppsala. Olsen, O., Hørg, hov og kirke, København, 1966. Randsborg, K., The Viking Age in Denmark. The Formation of a State, London, 1980. Roesdahl, E., “Denmark—A Thousand Years Ago”, Europe around the Year 1000, ed. Przemysław Urbańczyk, Warszawa, 351–366, n.d.

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Roos, J., “Sigtuna. Staden, kyrkorna och den kyrkliga organisationen”, OPIA, 30 (2001), Uppsala. Sawyer, P., “The Christianisation of Scandinavia”, Femte tvårfaglig Vikingesymposium, Aarhus Universitet, 1986, 23–37. Sawyer, P., “The Process of Scandinavian Christianization in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” The Christianization of Scandinavia. Report of a Symposium held at Kungälv, Sweden 4–9 August 1985, eds. Birgit Sawyer, Peter Sawyer and Ian Wood, 1987, 68–87. Seegrün, W., “Das Papsttum und Skandinavien bis zur Vollendung der nordischen Kirchenorganisation (1164)”, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, 51 (1967), Neumünster. Selling, D., “Problem kring vikingatida keramikkannor”, Fornvännen, 46 (1951), 275–297. Staecker, J., “Legends and Mysteries. Reflections on the Evidence for the Early Mission in Scandinavia”, Visions of the Past. Trends and Traditions in Swedish Medieval Archaeology, Lund Studies in Medieval Archaeology, 19, [Riksantikvarieämbetet Arkeologiska undersökningar no. 24], Stockholm, 1997, 419–454. Staecker, J., “Rex regum et dominus dominorum. Die wikingerzeitlichen Kreuzund Kruzifixanhänger ais Ausdruck der Mission in Altdänmark und Schweden”, Lunds Studies in Medieval Archaeology, 23 (1999), Stockholm. Staecker, J., “Monumenten i Jelling—myter och realiteter”, Från stad till land. En medeltidsarkeologisk resa tillägnad Hans Andersson, Stockholm, 2001, 73–88. Thirteen studies on Helgö, ed. Agneta Lundström, [Statens Historiska Museum, Studies 7], Stockholm, 1988. “Vita Anskarii, Rimberti”, Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches, Darmstadt, 1978, 16–133. Wamers, E., “Hammer und Kreuz. Typologische Aspekte einer nordeuropäischen Amu- lettsitte aus der Zeit des Glaubenwechsels”, Rom und Byzanz im Norden. Mission und Glaubenwechsel im Ostseeraum wahrend des 8.-14. Jahrhunderts, Bd. 1, ed. M. Müller-Wille, Mainz, 1959, 83–107. Wessen, E., and Jansson, S.B.E., Upplands Runinskrifter 4.1. Text. Stockholm, 1958. Wood, I., “Christians and Pagans in Ninth-Century Scandinavia”, The Christianization of Scandinavia. Report of a Symposium held at Kungälv, Sweden 4–9 August 1985, eds. Birgit Sawyer, Peter Sawyer and Ian Wood, 1987, 36–67. Zachrisson, T., “De heliga platsernas arkeologi—materiell kultur och miljöer i järnålderns Mellansverige”, Den heliga platsen. Handlingar från symposiet Den heliga platsen Härnesand 15–18 september 2011, eds. E. Nyman, J. Magnusson and E.  Strzelecka, Skrifter i Humaniora vid Mittuniversitetet, 1 (2014), Sundsvall, 87–126.

CHAPTER 3

Christianisations in Scandinavia Henrik Janson

Introduction For a very long time, the Christianisation of Scandinavia was considered a rather uncomplicated affair. After a prelude in the ninth to the eleventh century, where the ecclesiastical organisation was developed largely under the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, the three Scandinavian kingdoms all got their own archbishop sees in the twelfth century. They became three different church provinces, starting with the archbishopric of Lund in Denmark 1103/1104, followed by Nidaros (Trondheim) in Norway 1152/1153, and (Old) Uppsala in Sweden in 1164. The Christianity in question was understood as a solid monolithic institution that met a paganism which, was perceived as a just as monolithic pre-Christian religious culture of the different nations.

H. Janson (*) Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_3

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The Moment of Conversion Such a clear-cut understanding is in good accord with many written sources. The most famous is to be found in the small village Jelling on the Jutland peninsula in western Denmark. Here stands, as part of a complex set of monuments, a rune stone which declares that King Harold ordered the memorial to be made in honour of his parents, and it is specified that he was ‘that Harold who won himself all of Denmark, and Norway, and made the Danes Christians’. A similar stone was raised at the island Kuli at the cost of central Norway, when, as the inscription seem to say, ‘Christendom had been 12 years in Norway’. No stone makes the same claim for Sweden, but on the island Frösön in the lake Storsjön, in the somewhat peripheral province Jämtland (north-central Sweden), there stands a stone which asserts that a certain Östman Gudfastarson ‘ordered this stone to be raised and the bridge built, and commanded to Christianize Jämtland’. The proclamation by King Harold on the Jelling-stone is matched by more or less contemporary written sources from within the Ottonian Empire. In the second part of the 960s, a certain Routger, monk in Cologne, described how, on the instigation of Archbishop Bruno of Cologne (d. 965), King Haroldus of the Nordmanni, ‘with a large part of his people, subjected to the king of kings, Christ, and rejected the emptiness of idols’. The wording indicates that King Harold and his people were baptised. Another contemporary writer, the Saxon monk Widukind of Corvey, mentions a miracle which was performed by a certain Poppo immediately before Harold’s conversion. Widukind claims that it was this miracle that convinced King Harold to subject to Christ as sole God and order peoples under his dominion to reject idols. The rune stone in Jelling is accordingly confirmed by other contemporary sources. A scene took place in the 960s, in which the king of Denmark publicly converted to Christianity and ‘made the Danes Christians’. In cases where there are no rune stones, we can still find literary sources describing a kind of public turning point with regard to a certain legal unit. These accounts are often much younger than the actual events, but one of the earlier examples concerns Iceland and was written by the Icelandic priest Ari Þorgilsson ‘the wise’ around 1130. Ari describes how the Icelandic law-speaker, who personified the legal community of the Icelandic commonwealth, at the legal assembly of all Icelanders, the Alþing, in the year 1000, manifestly redrew to contemplate in marked

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solitude over the question of religion. He lay down and spread his cloak over him, without talking to anyone for the rest of the day and the whole following night, and finally, in the morning, he reached the conclusion that it was necessary to have one common ‘law’ to maintain peace in the Icelandic society. He therefore decided that everyone on Iceland should be Christian [aller menn scylldi Cristner vesa], and those who had not yet been baptised should receive baptism. According to Adam of Bremen, however, who wrote around 1075, the Icelanders had been Christianised in his time, during the pontificate of Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen (1043–1072). Archbishop Adalbert had also, according to Adam, appointed the first bishop of Iceland, named Isleifr. He admits that the simple lifestyle of the Icelanders before that did not differ very much ‘from our religion’. However, even if Adam around 1075 claims that the Icelanders were converted to Christianity and got their first bishop with Isleifr 1050s, Ari ‘the wise’ could still around 1130 recall several bishops in Iceland before Isleifr, among them indeed three Armenian bishops: Peter, Abraham and Stephen. Ari’s depiction of how the Icelandic law-speaker in full integrity decided that the whole people should become Christian, and the accounts about how King Harold, after his own decision, ‘made the Danes Christians’, carry with them important legal implications. No external power whatsoever had, according to the version given by Ari, impinged on the decision of the Icelandic people. The decision had been taken, in full autonomy, through its law-speaker, by the Icelandic people itself. Such a narrative could function to safeguard the Icelandic commonwealth from external ecclesiastical appropriation of rights, which was often accompanied by political subjection. Harold’s decision, on the other hand, advocated the opposite ambition. When taking the public decision to make the Danes Christians, he ordered, in the words of Widukind of Corvey, all ‘subjected peoples to reject idols’ [idola respuenda subiectis gentibus imperat]. Harold’s conversion disqualified all other interests of their religious rights, and hereby functioned to implement his own political power among ‘subjected peoples’. Concerning the Kuli-stone in Norway, there is much more uncertainty regarding which point in time and what event the inscription may refer to. The history of Norway during this period relies mainly on sources from the thirteenth century, and it is therefore often connected with great difficulties to date specific historical events and to interpret their contemporary significance, in particular. The representations of events in sources

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that are two centuries younger, as the Icelandic sagas, risk to say more about the time they were written than about what actually happened, especially when it comes to religious matters to which there was a powerful theological framework intervening in the interpretation. What the sources seem to signal regarding Norway, however, is that there were contacts between Norway and England in the first half of the tenth century, during the reign of king Æthelstan of England (924–939). Under a Norwegian king referred to in later tradition as Håkon Aðalsteinsfóstri, ‘the good’ (ca. 920–960), these contacts led to some Christian impact in Norway, but all that is very legendary in the sources, and Håkon ‘the good’ is hardly attestable at all in contemporary sources. Slightly less legendary, if not much, is the reign of Olav Tryggvason (ca. 995–1000), to which a strong tradition of missionary activity is attached in late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century sources. Coins struck with the influence of English coinage in the late tenth century seem to confirm that a king with the name of Olaf ruled in Norway at that time. Olaph Trucconis filius, king of the Nortmanni, is also mentioned by Adam of Bremen in the mid-1070s as the first Christian of that people, but he later doubts that this Olav was really a Christian at all. Later literary sources abound with material about Olav Tryggvason, but very little is actually known about him. With regard to the conversion of Norway, however, the later tradition nonetheless holds Olav Tryggvason to have been an important forerunner to the greatest of all saints in the Scandinavian Middle Ages, King Olav Haraldsson of Norway (d. 1030). Through Olav Haraldsson Norway definitely developed into a kingdom of its own in relation to Denmark, and through him this kingdom was definitely integrated in the Latin Christian world of the eleventh century. Some scholars have also presumed that the Kuli-stone referred to an event during Olav Haraldsson’s reign. Others have argued that it was rather some event during the rule of Olav Tryggvason. Still others believe that the stone refer to the time of Håkon ‘the good’ around 950. We might conclude that there is no clear answer to the question which event the twelve years on the Kuli-stone refers to. As the concepts Northmen and Danes were not necessarily mutually exclusive terms at this time, it might even be possible that the Kuli-stone refers to the same event as the Jelling-stone. As we have seen, King Harold brags on that stone of having conquered both Denmark and Norway, and we are then told that he had made the Danes Christians and had ordered all ‘subjected peoples

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to reject idols’. The Northmen living on the shores of ‘the northern way’ could possibly still have been counted among the Danes. At least their language continued to be referred to as ‘Danish tongue’ far into the Middle Ages. However, this is highly speculative, and the question of which event the Kuli-stone refers to is best left open. The Frösö-stone in Jämtland can be dated on stylistic grounds to the second half of the eleventh century. Some scholars have even argued for the early twelfth century. The style is clearly derived from the rune stone tradition in central Sweden, but the province of Jämtland was positioned along the border between medieval Norway and Sweden. At the end of the Viking Age, it adhered to the realm of the Swedish kings. From the twelfth century it came under the Norwegian kingdom, until it was finally subjected to Sweden in the seventeenth century. When Östman Gudfastarson ordered the stone to be erected, and Jämtland to be Christianised, these actions definitely came with some claims to exclusive power in the region, and Jämtland actually remained under the Uppsala archbishopric in ecclesiastical matters all through the Middle Ages, even if subjected to the Norwegian kingdom. The Christianisation of Sweden is otherwise a complicated and even controversial matter. The understanding of Sweden’s religious conditions in the Viking Age was long dictated by the picture given in the history-­ writing of the archbishopric Hamburg-Bremen, especially Adam of Bremen’s work Gesta hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, written between 1074 and 1076. This is a picture of a kingdom largely dominated, until the end of the eleventh century, by the most barbarian heathendom, focused around the cult at the temple Uppsala. Adam refers to Uppsala as ‘the capitol of barbarian superstition’ [caput supersticionis barbaricae]. He also gives a vivid description of this temple: it is totally made of gold, it contains statues of three gods—Thor with a sceptre, Fricco with a gigantic phallos, and Wotan with arms—and every ninth year there is a big feast at Uppsala for all the provinces in Sweden [Sueonia]. Here the mixed sacrifices of humans and animals, one head of all creatures that are male, counts in great numbers. The gods are placated with their blood, and the bodies are suspended in a grove close to the temple in which every tree is sacred due to the death and decomposition of the sacrifices. This is by far the most detailed contemporary description of a pagan cult in Scandinavia, written probably in the beginning of 1076 and complemented with marginal notes in the years that followed. One of these marginal notes claims that shrine was located on a flat plain surrounded by

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mountains, which make it look like a theatre. This is a strange complementary information. It fits Old Uppsala, where the temple is supposed to have stood, particularly badly, since this site is situated on a small ridge stretching into the Uppsala plain, a part of the wide Uppland plain, with no mountains whatsoever in sight, anywhere. Other indications in the text, such as the initial statement that the temple was made totally of gold, seem to signal to the reader that Adam’s description of the temple Uppsala is not to be read literary. Since the middle of the twentieth century, therefore, some scholars have rejected Adam as a source to what happened in Uppsala all together, suggesting that the Uppsala description should rather be read allegorically. Pointing out that Adam of Bremen is the only source to a ‘pagan’ cult in Uppsala in the eleventh century, some scholars indeed maintain that there was no pagan cult place in Uppsala at all. It has been argued that what Adam actually describes is a church and a church organisation in Sweden, which, with support from the Gregorian church movement, opposed the claims from Hamburg-Bremen to ecclesiastical superiority. Such an organisation is actually referred to by Pope Gregory VII, in a letter from 1080 to King Inge of Sweden. In order to challenge the claims of Hamburg-Bremen, the pope here infused legitimation in a competitive church organisation in Sweden, which he called the ‘Gallican church’ [gallicana ecclesia]. There are well over one thousand preserved Christian rune stones in Uppland from precisely this period, obviously raised by the local elite, which support the conclusion that a church organisation was established around Uppsala in the second half of the eleventh century. Nonetheless, in Sweden, according to Adam of Bremen, the moment of conversion would come when the Uppsala temple could be destroyed. That moment would mean, that the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen gained the exclusive ecclesiastical power it deserved to have, according to Adam. On the other side of the Baltic Sea, in Finland, the moment of conversion is connected to a crusade in the 1150s by the Swedish king Erik Jedvardsson (d. 1160), who was later to be promoted as a national saint in Sweden. The event is only mentioned in much later sources, primarily saints’ legends, and scholars today acknowledge that most of what is told about these events, including the killing of the bishop Henrik by the Finnish peasant Lalli, is more or less purely legendary. Later crusades, from the thirteenth century onwards, directed from Sweden towards more remote parts of Finland, in Karelia, are today

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understood as struggle about dominion with Novgorod in this region. In archaeological materials, finds of Christian character have now been detected long before the 1150s, but the legendary activities in the 1150s by St. Erik and St. Henrik obviously played an important role for the archbishopric Uppsala in claiming exclusive ecclesiastical rights in what became the part of medieval Sweden called Finland. Of course, the possibility cannot be totally ruled out, that such a moment of conversion for this territory was also what Erik Jedvardsson aimed for in the 1150s, but the sources do not allow for any definite conclusions in that direction.

A Background As time passed, history writing filled the moment of conversion with meaning. In medieval history writing, it marked the end of a world still lost to the consequences of the original sin, constantly in turmoil because of the mortal vices playing their evil demonic play with the poor terrorised souls of humans. The moment of conversion reconnected the human souls to God’s grace, made it possible for Christ to conquer the hearts of the converted, chased the demons of the vices away from their lands. The moment of conversion marked the beginning of the rule of Christ. This became a momentous shift also in modern philosophy of history. So momentous indeed that with Hegel this Augustinian divide developed to the most important breaking point in history, separating history from pre-history, state from pre-state, and of course Christianity from the pre-­ Christian era. It even came to mark the beginning of the Middle Ages, with the awkward consequence that when Ansgar (801–865), the ‘apostle of the North’, entered Scandinavia to preach the gospel in the ninth century, he travelled from the Middle Ages of the Frankish Empire into the still pre-historic era of the Scandinavian North, because in Scandinavia the Middle Ages was not counted to begin until the completion of the conversion in the eleventh century. As a modern theme in history writing, the narrative of the ‘Christianisation of Scandinavia’ was shaped while the missionary activities around the world were still important issues to Christian churches and still an important instrument of power and cultural hegemony for the states and empires of Europe. The moment of conversion came to represent a great and decisive divide in human evolution, a divide between barbarism and civilisation. In this context, concepts like ‘pagans’ and ‘missionaries’, ‘apostle of the Germans’ and ‘apostle of the North’ gained their modern

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meanings. Until well into the second half of the twentieth century, the moments of conversion were understood to have taken place against a background of a compact paganism, in a contrastive shift between darkness and light. Even in the previously Roman parts of the Germanic-speaking world, Christianity was long held to have perished completely after Rome’s fall, without leaving any traces, and the pre-Christian Germanic religion to have ruled the lands from the Alps to Scandinavia in the early Middle Ages, when missionaries like Bonifacius and Ansgar allegedly brought the light of the Christian gospel and ‘civilisation’ to the barbarian pagans. In the last generation of research, this picture has changed. In the previously Roman territories, Christianity did prevail as Rome lost its influence in the sixth and seventh centuries. What developed was a dispersed and decentralised landscape of what Peter Brown has famously called ‘micro-­ Christendoms’. Concerning the non-Roman territories, as Scandinavia, the knowledge of religious conditions during these centuries is extremely vague. There is, however, no question that the influence from Roman culture had made a distinct impact also in Scandinavia already in Roman times. That this impact included knowledge about the Christian religion, perhaps even in different forms, does not only seem inevitable, but is also made probable from archaeological material. Of course, that is not to say that Scandinavia was ‘Christianised’ in the Roman era, but the new Roman state religion was certainly not unknown in Scandinavia in late Roman times.

Early Eastern Connections In the period after Rome’s fall in the west, in the so-called ‘Dark Ages’, when the point of gravity of the Christian Roman world in the sixth and seventh centuries shifted towards the eastern Mediterranean and Constantinople, the written sources provide almost no information about Scandinavia. It could be noted though, that the East Roman bureaucrat Jordanes in 551 saw some kind of relation between the Goths living by the Black Sea and the Scandinavian North, because he placed the origin of the Goths in Scandinavia. In the sixth century, this implied a relation between Scandinavia and the Roman border province Scythia (minor) at the Black Sea cost, with the metropolis Tomis, by the Danube delta. The anonymous geographer of Ravenna  points in the same direction around 700, referring to ‘many geographers’ who called the island Scanza, i.e. the Scandinavian peninsula, Scythia antiqua, ‘Old Scythia’.

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A corresponding linking of the Goths and Scandinavia can also be found in the Carolingian Empire. In a work—possibly from around 830 or a few decades older—called De inventione linguarum, often  ascribed to the famous Hrabanus Maurus, abbot of Fulda, it is explained that a certain kind of letters called runstafar had once been invented among Northmen. In one, slightly more discerning version of the text we are told that these letters were called rune by the Northmen. It is proclaimed that the Goths and the Vandals, when they departed out of the lands of the Northmen, brought these letters with them, and as they became Christians, their priests used these letters when they translated both the Old and the New Testament to theotisca or theotonica. If these comments actually derive from Hrabanus Maurus is far from certain, but at least they seem at some stage to belong in a limited circle around Hrabanus, who speculated around these questions in the second quarter of the ninth century. Around 840 new materials had been brought into this discussion. By then one of Hrabanus’ pupils, the learned Abbot Walafrid Strabo of Reichenau, came to write about a thing that puzzled him. Why were there Greek words, such as the rather fundamental word kyrica, ‘church’, in his own language? Walafrid’s answer expanded on the role of the Goths, who he says had ‘our, i.e. the Teutonic language’. He explains that the Goths had been converted to Christianity very early, when they lived in the provinces of the Greeks. They translated the holy books into their own language, and these books can, says Walafrid, still be found among some peoples. Indeed, he could actually report that trustworthy monastic brothers had informed him that ‘among some of the Scythian peoples’ [apud quasdam Scytharum gentes], especially the Tomitans, the Divine Service was still today [hactenus] celebrated in this language’. Walafrid Strabo had obviously received new and rather astonishing information. Trustworthy monks had brought him the news that in his own time, among some peoples in Scythia, there still existed translations of the holy scriptures to Germanic language. Indeed, still Gothic or at least some kind of Germanic language—‘our language’—was used as liturgical language among some Scythian peoples. Walafrid connected the Goths with the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, who turned to the Arian Christianity in the fourth century and then became famous for invading different parts of the Roman Empire. But Tomis and adjacent areas had a Catholic Bishop already representing the Goths at the First Church Council in Nicaea (325), when Arianism was rejected, so there actually existed a Catholic Gothic church before the

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conversion of some of the Goths to Arianism. Indeed, around 400 the Patriarch of Constantinople John Chrysostom, in order to combat Arianism, both gave a church in his city to the Catholic Goths, initiated conversion activities along the Danube, and sent a bishop to the Goths in Crimea  (where Gothic was spoken at least until the 16th century). He even allowed them to use their own language in the liturgy and showed his sympathy for this otherwise despised group by taking part in their Gothic liturgy. In the ninth century, these spectacular events were long forgotten, and the church of Tomis and Scythia minor had been violated by several invasions through the centuries. The whereabouts of the adherents to the Tomitan church, the ‘Tomitans’, is therefore not immediately self-evident at this time. If, however, there existed ‘churches established among barbarian peoples’, as Walafrid had been informed, they were, according to the Church Council of Constantinople in 381, to be governed according to what had been ‘constituted by the fathers’. A higher degree of variation was consequently accepted outside the Roman parts of Europe. To these fragmented indications of a Christian culture in the East which used a Gothic-Germanic language as liturgical language, and possible connections between Scythia minor, the city of Tomis and Scandinavia, could also be brought a much-discussed passage in the Life of Constantine-­ Cyril/Kyrillos (d. 869). Constantine-Kyrillos is known as ‘the apostle of the Slavs’, but he was also the inventor of the Glagolitic script for the Slavonic language. In 860, there had been a severe attack on Constantinople performed by a group called Rus. According to a contemporary report from Patriarch Photius I of Constantinople (858–867, 878–886), the attackers were of a nation that ‘was obscure, insignificant, and not even known … dwelling somewhere far from our country’ and ‘sundered off from us by so many lands and kingdoms, by navigable rivers and harbourless seas’. Photius first referred to them by the wide and in Constantinople pejorative designation Scythians, but he later revealed that they were called Rus. The attack on Constantinople in 860 came as a huge surprise and a great shock. One measure taken, to cope with the new threat, was to immediately send an embassy from Constantinople to the Khazars (860–861). The leader of this embassy was the brilliant Constantine-­ Kyrillos. Stopping for the winter in the cultural crossroad Kherson on Crimea, he made a surprising discovery: a psalterium and evangeliary written with ‘Rus letters’. This discovery must have been especially relevant

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since the Rus’ attack of 860 was likely an important reason for the Byzantine mission to the Khazars. He also found a man who spoke that language and learned the language from him. He was informed about the script and got to know the sounds of consonants and vocals. That knowledge could of course become very useful in subsequent diplomatic contacts with the new power of the Rus’. But Constantine-Kyrillos was also an ingenious linguist and scholar, and it is somewhat striking that only a few years after this event, he used runes as templates for some letters in the creation of a new alphabet for the Slavonic language. There have been many theories about what alphabet and what language Constantine-Kyrillos discovered at Crimea. One is that the text originally read not Rous’ski but Sourski, and referred to Syriac writing. Such a scribal mistake would have been small and common, but in the end, this explanation has proven highly unlikely since not a single manuscript of the Vita, in any branch of the manuscript tradition has the reading Sourski. The textual evidence therefore shows that the reading ‘rus letters’ [rusъskymi pismeny] stood already in the original. In addition to that, Sourski is also an unlikely reading due to the fact that the author of the Vita explicitly speaks not only about consonants but also about different vocals, which the Syriac alphabet did not have at the time. A complementing argument would be that there might actually not have been any vocals in the manuscript, but the author of the Vita might have come up with this idea himself. However, he does not do that for any other language, and it does not really seem as a sound methodology to emend all the manuscripts and then explain away the content of what is said, only to produce the reading one prefer. Now, if the original spoke about ‘Rus letters’, what did the name Rus refer to in the Byzantine world at this time? There are a few sources that directly answer this question: A group who referred to themselves and their people as Rus had arrived friendly in Constantinople already in 839. They were sent on with an embassy to the Franks, where the Carolingian court of Louis the Pious (814–840) made an investigation about them. It was soon concluded, that they were Sueones, the people to which the Franks only a few years before had sent a missionary monk named Ansgar. Still more than a century later, in the 960s, Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, who knew the Byzantine world well from his own diplomatic activity, mentioned the Rus as those ‘who we with another name call Northmen’. He also says, ‘There is a people in the North that the Greeks due to the appearance of the body call ruosii, but we, however, due to their

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geographical location call Northmen’. Consequently, until the 960s, the Rus were tightly identified with Scandinavia, and even if not all who were referred to as Rus in the sources necessarily spoke old Norse, there is clear evidence in Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetos’ De administrando imperio, from around 950, that there was a sharp distinction between the Slavonic and the Rus’ language, and the Rus’ names he enumerated for the Dnieper rapids were undeniably Scandinavian. That is to say, in the middle of the tenth century, the Rus’ language referred to the Scandinavian Old Norse language. There is no reason to doubt that this was the case also in 861, especially since the Rus’ were identified as Sueones in 839. The interpretation that the ‘Rus letters’ were old Norse letters was suggested early on, but it was soon rejected with the argument that it was unlikely that the Gospel and the Psalter were translated into the language of pagan Scandinavians. However, only 20  years before Constantine-­ Kyrillos’ discovery in Crimea, Walafrid Strabo reported that the holy books which the Goths had translated to Germanic, could still be found among some peoples, and he had learned from trustworthy monastic brothers that ‘among some of the Scythian peoples … the Divine Service was still today [hactenus] celebrated in this language’. Walafrid had evidently quite recently spoken with monks who had visited Scythia and discovered that there still existed churches and a liturgy based on the Germanic language, using Germanic, or ‘Gothic’ translations of the holy scriptures. It is important to remember that the alphabet which was connected to the Goths in the Frankish world was the runic alphabet. Runes had also been used in early Germanic Christianity from the Goths on the Balkans to the Anglo-Saxons of the British Isles from late Roman times. It is indeed a valid hypothesis that the ‘Rus letters’ of Vita Constantini actually could have referred to Gothic-Scandinavian runes.

The Franks As the Viking raids of the ‘Northmen’ severely started to haunt the Frankish Empire in the early ninth century, the response included infiltration through ecclesiastical institutions, which was a method already in use to establish control in the newly conquered province of Saxony. A central figure in this strategy was Ansgar, who was later to become the first archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen (834–865), and known in more modern times as the ‘Apostle of the North’. We know about these events mainly through the Life of Ansgar, Vita Ansgarii, written ca. 870 by Ansgar’s

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successor Rimbert (865–888). This was a text that was aimed to be read at the huge Frankish monastery Corbie. As all saint’s lives, the Life of Ansgar presents a dark background against which the saint can shine in its full brightness. Scandinavia consequently appear as a place of rather compact pagan darkness, to which Ansgar, as the first, brought the light of the Gospel. Nonetheless, there are interesting pieces of information that slips through. Of certain significance in our context is when we get to learn that what triggered Ansgar’s expedition to Sueonia around 830 was actually an embassy from the sueones to the Frankish emperor Louis the Pious. Among other things this embassy had informed the emperor that there were ‘many among their people’ [multos in gente sua] who wished to receive ‘the cult of the Christian religion’ [christianae religionis cultum], and even the king of the sueones was inclined to allow ‘God’s priests’ to reside there. These are the words of the sueones filtered through the language of high-ranking clerics of the Frankish Church. They probably cannot differ very much from what happened, since the author call the monk Witmar, who accompanied Ansgar on the trip and still lived in Corbie, as witness. Rimbert obviously expected that Witmar would be in the audience, when his text about Ansgar was to be read. The sueones however, had certainly not spoken of ‘God’s priests’, but of Frankish priests, and they did with all probability not refer of ‘the cult of the Christian religion’, but rather of services according to Frankish observance. What is rather clear from this passage though is that there were ‘many’ [multi] among the sueones who were well acquainted with and well disposed towards Christianity already in the early ninth century, before the arrival of Ansgar and the Frankish church. This, however, comes no surprise since the archaeological material has long indicated that there were Christian components in Scandinavian society for centuries before the conversion stories we find in the written sources. According to Rimbert, the king of the sueones, called Bern, received Ansgar and his following well in the royal harbor Birka. He gave them license to preach, and anyone who so wanted was allowed to aspire to their doctrines. There were many [plures] at that place—they seem not to have left Birka—who, favouring their legation, gladly listened to ‘the doctrine of the Lord’ and were baptised. The Frankish delegation was even able to convince the king’s councilor Herigar, praefectus of Birka, to be baptised, and ‘not much later’ Herigar also built a Frankish church [ecclesia] on his own hereditary property. After one and a half year, in the early 830s, Ansgar and his following returned from the sueones to the Frankish court.

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Their expedition among the notorious Northmen had been a great success story, and it caused great enthusiasm at the court of Louis the Pious. They even brought with them a letter from King Bern himself to the emperor, ‘written’ by the king’s own hand ‘according to their own customs’ [more ipsorum deformatis]. That the king of the sueones himself could produce a royal charter which was to be officially transmitted to the emperor of the Franks, bears witness of a quite advanced culture of writing. The passage is usually interpreted as if the letter was written with runes, which seems rather evident. If so, that might help to explain the sudden interest in runes that can be noticed among Frankish writers at this time, and it might actually even explain the interest of Walafrid Strabo in the remains of Gothic/Germanic literature and liturgy in Scythia. ‘Scythia’ designated the parts of Europe laying north-east of Weichel and the Danube, and we know that Birka and Sueonia was counted into Scythia still in the middle of the tenth century when Archbishop Unni of Hamburg-Bremen, who died in Birka 936, is reported in the Annals of Corvey to have died in ‘Scythia’. When Walafrid therefore says, around 840, that he had been informed by ‘trustworthy monastic brothers’ about what happened ‘today’ among ‘some of the Scythian peoples’, these brethren might actually have been Ansgar and his retinue. There is no doubt that Ansgar and Witmar spectacularly returned to the Frankish Empire with a unique knowledge of a thitherto almost completely unknown world, and they even brought with them a letter written in an exotic script, which probably provoked questions about the early writing in Germanic language and about the Goths. In the following years, Louis the Pious initiated a new wave of Frankish church policy in the North. In Denmark, there were not enough foothold to build up a Frankish church from the inside, but in Sweden a certain Gautbert was appointed bishop under the name Simon, ca. 834. He also received the pallium from Rome, which indicated his own status as Archbishop and Sueonia’s status as Roman/Frankish church province. From his correspondence with Abbot Hrabanus Maurus of Fulda, we know that during these years, in the second half of the 830s, there was a Frankish metropolitan church under construction somewhere among the sueones, probably not far from Birka. Hrabanus Maurus, Walafrid’s former teacher, supported Gautbert’s building project by sending several sacred books, three altar cloths for three altars, bells, priestly garments and many other things, to Sueonia. However, this grandiose project ended abruptly in the 840s. One of the Frankish priests was killed, and Gautbert was

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thrown out of the country. He became bishop of Osnabrück and never returned to Sweden. Still there was a continuation of this enterprise, but, as it seems, mainly thanks to Ansgar. Ansgar was appointed bishop in 834 on the instigation of Louis the Pious. He received the pallium from the Rome and consequently the status as archbishop. He was also enforced by a letter from Pope Gregory IV, from which we learn that his episcopal seat was to be Hamburg, and his jurisdiction as a bishop was limited to the rather insignificant Nordalbingia, the Saxon land east of the Elbe, on the border to Denmark. But Ansgar did not limit his field of operations to Nordalbingia, since he could also claim the title of imperial-papal legate to the North, a title he shared with Gautbert, and actually also with Archbishop Ebo of Reims (d. 851), who had been the first to receive that title in the early 820s, though without much effect. Ansgar and his church became severely economically weakened by the political development following the death of Louis the Pious in 840, and due to the poor state of the Hamburg-church the monks in his following returned home to their monastery. An attack on Hamburg by the Northmen in 845 definitely convinced Ansgar to give up his young archiepiscopal see. A few years later, however, he managed, through the East-­ Frankish king Louis the German (ca. 806–876), to take over the adjacent bishopric Bremen, which from the late 840s became his new base of operations. Around 850, from this new base, Ansgar now began to gain some progress in Denmark. He was sent several times by Louis the German to King Horic I (d. 854), who finally allowed him to build a Frankish church with baptismal rights in Schleswig. A few years later, after some initial hostility, Horic II (d. after 864) also gave him the right to build one in Ribe. He even permitted to have a church-bell in the church in Schleswig, which was a controversial matter. In Denmark, consequently, there were in the 850s and 860s Frankish Churches built in Schleswig and Ribe, two of the cities closest to the border between the Danes and the Franks on the peninsula Jutland. Speaking of Schleswig, Rimbert declares that there were many people there who had already been baptised in Dorestad and Hamburg, and several others now followed their example and got baptised. There were however also, he says, an ‘innumerable multitude’ who died in their baptismal clothing. The reason was that they had gladly become catechumens, because by that step they were allowed to enter the church and take part

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of the divine service, but they wanted to postpone the baptism. They believed that it was best to be baptised as close to death as possible in order to be cleansed of all sins and enter heaven spotless. This seems to have been a widely spread idea in Viking Age Scandinavia, since we still find indications of this practice on Swedish rune stones in the second half of the eleventh century. Both in Vita Ansgarii and on the rune stones we find the same old Christian phrase about dying ‘in white robes’, which means to die in the baptismal clothing. The catechumenate, prima signatio, was obviously a widely preferred status for centuries in the North, and this step was actually called cristning in Old English, which shows how important this status once was. How the Scandinavians had come to embrace this old Christian idea—famous through the example of Constantine the Great—is hard to explain if their first contact with Christianity was with Ansgar. Infant baptism had been the norm in the Roman-Frankish and in the Byzantine world since the fifth century. Around 850, consequently, both Gautbert and Ansgar had given up their former sees, and instead, they both headed episcopal sees within the church province of Cologne. On the instigation of Louis the German, Ansgar clung to his aspirations in the North. His role as legate still gave him some legitimation for continued actions. As we have seen, he made progress in Denmark around 850, and seven years after Gautbert had left Sweden, Ansgar also sent, in the early 850s, an eremite to his old contact Hergeir in Birka. That was however to infringe on the rights of Gautbert, and in Vita Ansgarii Rimbert is very careful to explain that this priest had only been a kind of private house-priest for the praefectus of Birka. When Hergeir soon died, the eremite immediately returned home, and for the next step Ansgar understood that he had to have ‘negotiated’ [coepit] the plans with pontifex Gautbert, who still held the (archi)episcopal rights in Sueonia. The next step was a second trip to Birka, on the assignment of Louis the German, by Ansgar himself. It was performed ca. 853 after extensive preparations. Gautbert agreed to appoint—because that was his right—a priest for Sweden, who was to go with Ansgar. King Horic I in Denmark sent words to King Olef in Sueonia to prepare for the arrival of the imperial legation. The king was positive to accept Ansgar’s requests, but found it wise to obtain consent from two separate thing-meetings, first in Birka, then ‘in another part of his kingdom’. Both thing-assemblies agreed, however, that the priest should be allowed to stay among them and conduct the mysteries of Christ without any hindrance. King Olef hereby declared

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that among the Sueones it would be permitted for the Franks to build churches and have priests present. The priest that Gautbert had appointed, which was his nephew Erimbert, was given a building in Birka by King Olef, which he could turn into a chapel [oratorium], and Ansgar bought another lot with houses for him to live in. After Ansgar’s second trip to Sweden there were accordingly at least three Frankish churches in these parts, two in Birka: Hergeir’s private church and Erinbert’s chapel, but there was also the metropolitan church that Gautbert had left behind, which still must have existed at least in the form of a juridically valid institution containing the archiepiscopal rights in Sueonia. When Gautbert died in 860, Ansgar and his church in Bremen started to prepare for convincing the papacy not only to move the archiepiscopal rights of Hamburg to the bishopric of Bremen, but also to make Bremen the archiepiscopal seat for the Danes and the Swedes. The papacy denied them these rights. In a papal letter from 864, Pope Nicholas I declared that Bremen and Hamburg should be merged to one archiepiscopal see, but the seat of this archdiocese was to remain in Hamburg, and by referring to the papal letter from Pope Gregory IV for Ansgar, from 834, he repeated that Ansgar and his successors should be archbishops of the Nordalbingians, and Ansgar himself enjoyed the honour of legate among the sueones, the dani, and the slavi, but that was his personal right and would not be automatically transferred to his successors.

The Dark Ages The letter of Nicholas I of 864 placed Rimbert in a complicated situation when he succeeded Ansgar as archbishop in 865. The Frankish church was well on its way, in both Denmark and Sweden. Rimbert could actually report that under the priest Erimbert’s time in Sueonia, the resistance completely perished, and the devotion for the ‘divine religion’ in these parts grew completely without any hindrance. Following Gautbert’s death in 860, both Erimbert and his successor had gone home. After that Ansgar had again aspired for the archiepiscopal rights in the North by once more appointing a priest for Sueonia. This time it was a certain Dane who was well received by the king and the people, and still when Archbishop Rimbert finished the Vita Ansgarii ca. 870, this priest was ‘freely’ celebrating ‘the divine mysteries’ in Sueonia.

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When Rimbert laid down his pen ca. 870, the temporary light he had shed over this development was exchanged for an almost complete darkness due to a serious lack of written sources. Even if he had to press his story into the strait-coat of a saint’s life’s form, and even if his goal made him twist the story to put Hamburg and Bremen in the best possible position, his information is an invaluable record of the situation from the point of view of a Frankish episcopal institution in the mid-ninth century. What followed was a period that has almost completely been depicted through much later sources—through Adam of Bremen from the mid-­1070s and the Icelandic saga literature which dates mainly from the thirteenth century. The few contemporary sources we have has mainly been overlooked. Such a source is Vita Rimberti, The Life of Rimbert, which is a poor parallel to Vita Ansgarii, written not long after Archbishop Rimbert’s death in 888. In spite of its poor literary qualities, however, the Vita Rimberti provides some ideas about how Rimbert handled the dilemma that Nicholas I had caused Ansgar and him by the letter of 864. From Vita Rimberti we learn that Rimbert frequently had visited Sueonia, [frequenter … dum iret ad Sueoniam], and he had continuously appointed priests to the churches there, beyond the sea, founded [constitutae] as they were in the midst of pagans, far from the episcopal seat in Bremen. However, says Rimbert’s anonymous biographer in his rhapsodic account, through these priests and churches the pagans could hear the word of God, and Christian captives could have consolation. He also reports that Rimbert at least once visited Schleswig where he had built a church, and where a miracle took place as he liberated a captive, a chained nun. We also learn that Rimbert solved the dilemma of the missing legatine rights by claiming to have ‘inherited’ these rights from Ansgar [successionis iure quasi herededitarium]. The years after Rimbert’s death, however, saw a deep crisis for the church of Bremen. The fusion between the bishopric Bremen and the archbishopric Hamburg was severely challenged by Cologne. Only with Archbishop Unni (916–936) and with the victory of the East-Frankish king Henry I, ‘the Fowler’, over the Danes in 934, the doors were opened to the North again for the Hamburg church in Bremen. King Henry’s victory was a game changer as it forced the subjected Danish King Chnuba to be baptised. A decade later, in 948, we hear about three bishops connected to bishoprics in Denmark—Liafdag of Schleswig, Hored of Ribe and Reginbrand of Aarhus. They might have been understood as suffragans of Archbishop Adaldag of Bremen (937–988), but the picture is far

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from clear, and Archbishop Bruno of Cologne (953–965), the brother of Otto the Great (936–973), was soon to challenge the status of Bremen as archbishopric again. From Bruno came the initiative to the spectacular conversion scene of Harold Bluetooth, which put Cologne in the centre of the action behind the Jelling-stone and the conversion of the Danes. It seems possible that Archbishop Unni was the one who took advantage of Henry the Fowler’s victory of 934, since he sets off for Birka very soon after the new possibilities had opened. The three bishoprics of Denmark that turn up in the minutes from Ingelheim in 948 might very well have been the result of plans for the Danish church organisation that Henry the Fowler and Archbishop Unni drew up already in 934–935. If the scene in which King Chnuba was baptised in 834 was led by Archbishop Unni of Bremen, it probably made good sense for Archbishop Bruno of Cologne, who challenged the status of Bremen as archbishopric, to make the Danes Christians from Cologne in the 960s. That there was more to the picture than met the eye with Chnuba’s and Harold’s conversions, is clear also from the account of Widukind of Corvey. Of the two contemporary commentators of Harold’s conversion, Routger of Cologne adhered to the more radical monastic reform-­currents in the tenth century. He had no problem to depict Harold’s conversion in black and white, in pagans and Christians. Widukind of Corvey, however, was a more old-fashioned Benedictine monk, who thought of the monastic reform movement as a ‘persecution of monks’, and he indeed saw some nuances in this event. In fact, Widukind actually contradicts the Jelling-­ stone. According to him, Harold’s conversion was not what had made the Danes Christians. ‘The Danes’, he says, ‘have been Christians since ancient times, but none the less they were serving idols with a gentile rite [idolis ritu gentili servientes]’. What these idols were, and what this gentile ritus might have been, is not clear, but it is quite clear, however, that to this Benedictine monk from the mid-tenth century the Danes had actually been Christians for ages. In the heading of the chapter in question Widukind, or at least an almost contemporary writer, wrote: De Danis, quomodo Christiani perfecte facti sunt, i.e. ‘On the Danes, how they were made complete Christians’. A generation later, in the second decade of the eleventh century, Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (1009–1018) gave support to Widukind’s picture. The christianitas of the Danes had been, as Thietmar says, ‘renovated’ through the conversion of King Harold. The Danes had once deviated from the cultura of their forefathers, and by this deviation from the proper

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cult they had opened up for ‘gods and demons’ [dii et demones]. It is hereby quite obvious that neither to Widukind in the 960s nor to Thietmar in the early eleventh century were the Danes non-Christians before the baptism of Harold, only bad Christians. Nevertheless, King Harold— backed by Bruno of Cologne—claimed the opposite, namely to have made them Christians. Another prelate, who like Routger was snared by the most radical currents of his time, was Bruno of Querfurt (1004–1009). After far-reaching missionary activities in Central and Eastern Europe, he had turned up at the court of Duke Bolesław ‘the Brave’ of Poland in the winter of 1008–1009. From here he wrote a letter to King Henry II of the Holy Roman Empire (1002–1024), in which he, among many other things, told the king that he had received news from Sweden. The king of the Swedes, or senior suigiorum as Bruno calls him—probably in order not to compare him to the rex, ‘king’, Henry, who was not yet emperor—had been baptised by a bishop that Bruno had sent ‘across the sea’. With this king, a thousand men [homines] and seven peoples [plebes] had received the same grace, but there was also another group, who did not fancy this development and therefore threatened to kill those involved. Due to them, the king and the bishop decided to temporarily give up the place where the baptism had taken place, but with the intention to return. All this had recently been reported to Bruno by messengers, whom he now sent back to find out how it went. This episode, of course, concerns a major event in Swedish society, and it would have been very interesting to know how it ended. Bruno, however, never got to hear the end of the story, since he died a martyr’s death among the Prussians already in March 1009. However, the same grandiose episode is actually also to be found in Adam of Bremen’s work from the 1070s. Here we learn that the king in question was Olof Eriksson ‘Skötkonung’, and the name of the bishop which Bruno of Querfurt had sent to Sweden was Thurgot. Bruno had referred to the opponents who drove the king away as ‘the rest’ [ceteri], but Adam calls them pagans [pagani]. He furthermore claims that the conflict was about the Uppsala temple, and when Olof withdrew, he explains, it was according to an agreement by which King Olof was given the right to become Christian and build a church in whichever part of Sweden that he found to be best. King Olof then immediately founded an episcopal seat in Skara in Västergötland [in occidentali Gothia]. Thurgot now became bishop there

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over ‘both the famous Gothic peoples’, the västgötar and the östgötar, but Adam was here obviously thinking of the famous Visigoths and Ostrogoths. Two hundred years after Bruno’s report, we find the same momentous events described in Snorri Sturluson’s Saga of Olav Haraldsson from the 1220s. Here, however, the context, content and chronology have been seriously mixed up. Nonetheless, the conflict is recognisable. The ceteri of Bruno and the pagani of Adam are in Snorri’s story appearing as the proud ‘peasants’ [bœndir]. They are headed, at the Uppsala thing-­meeting, by the impressive lawman Thorgny, who in defence of the later saint, King Olav Haraldsson of Norway, stood up against the obstinate Swedish king, Olof Skötkonung. The confrontation in question was obviously of a huge magnitude and consequence, but whatever it was about, it seems not to have been conversion to Christianity. King Olof Eriksson had actually already from the mid-­990s produced unmistakably Christian coins in the recently established town Sigtuna, not far from neither Birka nor Uppsala. Olof can of course still have been unbaptised, in the common Scandinavian manner, but he was definitely not a stranger to Christianity when Bruno’s envoys convinced him to be baptised in 1008. One important thing is evident from his minting though: it reflects a profound influence from Anglo-­ Saxon England, and therefore it might indeed have been a choice of some consequence when King Olof in 1008 chose to align to Thurgot, Bruno and to the Ottonian Empire.

The Ecclesiastical Homogenisation Process In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Latin Church went through an intense homogenisation process, shaped by the monastic and Gregorian reform movements, rigorous demands for celibacy among the clergy, tithe, a closer relation to Rome, crusades, etc. A new Christianity took form in Western Europe, and in many ways the transformation that the Church undergoes in this period is the same in Scandinavia as in the rest of Western Europe, even though the bishoprics that now were established in the North are new and seem to become part not only of a new ecclesiastical structure but also of a new urban landscape: old urban settlements as, for example, Uppåkra, Birka and Kaupang in Skirigssal are for still unknown reasons deserted in the tenth century. From a charter edited by Emperor Otto III in 988 we learn that to the three German episcopal sees on Jutland known from 948—Schleswig,

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Ribe and Aarhus—a fourth had recently been added, on Funen, called Odense. The charter answered to a request from Archbishop Adaldag of Bremen, who, probably with royal backing, claimed these four as his suffragan sees, even though the juridical status of the archbishops of Bremen had not changed since Nicholas I denied Ansgar the archiepiscopal rights in the North. Around 990, however, the East-Frankish ecclesiastical expansion in Denmark reached a temporary stop, as Harold Bluetooth’s son Sven Forkbeard (d. 1014) rebelled against his father and, according to Thietmar of Merseburg, ‘transformed the God of Heaven and earth to a devil’ [Deum caeli et terrae diabolo mutavit]. This meant that the East-Frankish bishops of the four mentioned episcopal sees had to leave Denmark and stay out. Adam of Bremen later, in the 1070s, explains this setback as a general rejection of christianitas in Denmark led by Sven Forkbeard, who ‘trusted in his idols’ [sperans in ydolis suis]. Thietmar of Merseburg, who was an immediate contemporary to these events, had reached much the same conclusion, lamenting the fact that such a moral disaster as King Sven was allowed to live long enough to conquer England in 1013. However, there is no doubt that Sven Forkbeard was a Christian ruler. He was first buried in York minster, but his remains were later brought back to Denmark by an English noblewoman, and he was reburied in the monastery ‘which this king built himself to the honour of The Holy Trinity’, as an anonymous author wrote around 1040, in the Encomium Emmae Reginae, to the widow of Sven’s son Knut the Great (1018–1035). The location of Sven’s burial place in Denmark is not known for sure, but there are reasons to assume that it was in the young town of Lund in Skåne, but it could possibly also have been in the even younger Roskilde. Thietmar of Merseburg tells almost the same story as the Encomium, and he mentions the same unnamed English matrona as the person who brought back Sven’s remains. Naturally, however, he does not mention the monastery, as that would have given the persecutor Sven a much too civilised and Christian appearance. Instead, Thietmar shortly connects the place of Sven’s burial with Scithia and the Scyths, and while the Encomium says that Sven had prepared a tomb [tumulus] for himself at the monastery, in which his two sons also had him buried, Thietmar is inclined to make it look as if they ‘covered him with a gravemound’ [tumulant]. It is evident, however, that while the King Sven had driven the German bishops and the imperial church out of his realm, he was still advancing the Christian institutions. Lund and Roskilde are two of several new towns in

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Scandinavia that seem to have been founded at the end of the tenth century, or around the year 1000. Later they came to play an important role as episcopal sees. Other such examples are Oslo and Nidaros (Trondheim) in Norway and Sigtuna in Sweden. Around the year 1000, the English influence is evident in most of these places, not least through minting. In Denmark and Norway, we also get to know English bishops: Gotebald of Lund under Sven Forkbeard, and Bernard of Lund (d. ca. 1025) and Gerbrand of Roskilde (d. ca. 1030), under King Knut in Denmark; and the bishops that King Olav Haraldsson brought with him to Norway in 1015: Sigfried, Grimkil, Rudolf and Bernard whose location and duration of office is slightly obscure, even though Grimkil seems to have served in Nidaros (Trondheim) ca. 1015–1031, and Rodulf in Iceland for a couple of decades from the 1030s. Sigfried controlled the episcopal office in the Mälar-region, Suedia—comprising Sigtuna and Uppsala—in Sweden, where he served until the early 1050s, but he also took on the episcopal duties in Norway after Grimkil had left in ca. 1031. Before these four bishops, Adam of Bremen mentions another English bishop by the name Iohannes. Allegedly arriving in Norway in the 990s, he is claimed by Adam to have converted King Olav Tryggvason and baptised both him and his people [quiregem conversum cum populo baptizavit], which is definitely an event that would fit with the Kuli-stone, if only we could assert that it actually happened that way. In the end of the tenth and during the first two decades of the eleventh century, the English impact is obviously very strong in Scandinavia, but around 1020 the development took another turn, as the strong alliance between Pope Benedict VIII (1012–1024) and Emperor Henry II of The Holy Roman Empire began to have effect. In April 1022, a now lost papal letter to Archbishop Unwan of Bremen seems to have encouraged the archbishop to pursue—with royal backing—a more active policy against the North. It was high time, because bishop Gerbrand of Roskilde was with king Knut in England, and from a royal charter written in June the same year we may conclude that Knut was well on his way to make Gerbrand [Roscylde parochie Danorum gente] archbishop of Denmark. On the way home from England, however, Gerbrand was kidnapped  by Unwan. This flipped the whole church political situation in the North. King Knut changed foot and started to collaborate with Hamburg-Bremen and the Empire. The relations became especially intense when Emperor Konrad II (1024–1039) came to power in 1024. Knut attended Konrad’s coronation to emperor in Rome in 1027 and betrothed his daughter

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Gunhild (ca. 1020–1038) to Konrad’s son and planned successor Henry (III) (1039–1056). Scandinavian rulers and their English bishops seem to have found it best to comply with the increasingly stronger position of the archbishop of Bremen, and from ca. 1020 the influence of Bremen and the empire grew in Scandinavia for some decades. It reached a peak during the highborn Archbishop Adalbert (1043–1072), who came to power in 1043 and accompanied King Henry III when he entered Rome in 1046 to depose no less than three popes and install a German prelate on the papal throne to crown him emperor. Adalbert soon received two new papal letters of privileges for his archiepiscopal see, and he obviously thought that by those he had secured his status as archbishop of the whole northern world. In the middle of the 1060s, when he completely dominated the court of the young King Henry IV (1056–1106), Adalbert was even close to get the papacy to make him patriarch of the North. In Scandinavia, however, his envoys were brusquely rejected at the court of King Emund of Sweden (ca. 1050–1063), where Bishop Osmund, the head of the ‘Gallican church’ in Sweden, opposed them with the argument that they lacked papal approval to their claims. In Norway, King Harald Hårdrade (1046–1066) did the same. Finally, even Adalbert’s rather close ally, King Sven Estridsson of Denmark (1047–1076), denied the archbishop his metropolitan rights and prohibited the Danish bishops from visiting the provincial synod that Adalbert repeatedly demanded them to attend in the second half of the 1060s. The reason would in the end become evident to Archbishop Adalbert and his successors: they actually still lacked the rights that Pope Nicholas I had denied Ansgar in 864. A few years after Archbishop Adalbert’s death, under his successor Liemar (1072–1101), to whom Adam of Bremen dedicated his invaluable work, the situation went totally out of hand in the outbreak of the Investiture contest. In the fatal confrontation between King Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire and Pope Gregory VII, Archbishop Liemar stood firmly by the king’s side, and he therefore suffered hard from the policy of Gregory VII. Already in December 1074 he was suspended from his office, and in February 1075 he was excommunicated because, as the pope wrote to Sven Estridsson some weeks later, the heads of the world had started to contempt ecclesiastical law and fallen into such disobedience [inobedientia] which was idolatry [idolatria]. In this extreme confrontation between the main authorities of the western world, old aspects of power came into new light. The maxim that

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subjected groups had to maintain their fidelity to their masters in order to uphold their status as Christians was widely established, not least in the East-Frankish relations to different neighbouring groups in the north-­ east. Even the very nature of a cult was decided by if it was performed in accordance with the will of the allegedly legitimate superiors. A Christian cult could in a moment be transformed into a pagan cult—in the eyes of the observer—by a revolt, or by the failure to prove fides, ‘faith’/‘fidelity’, by paying tribute, or accept any other forms of symbols of subordination. An illustrative example is the representation of the cult of Svantevit on the island Rügen in the southern Baltic Sea. In Chronica Slavorum by the Saxon priest Helmold of Bosau, from ca. 1170, and in Gesta Danorum by the Dane Saxo Grammaticus, from ca. 1200, we learn about the cult of this ‘pagan god’ Svantevit. According to both these authors, however, Svantevit had been the old Christian saint sanctus Vitus, patron of the abbey of Corvey. They claim that in the Carolingian era the island of Rügen had been made tributary to the empire and given to monastery of Corvey. It was, accordingly, the monastery of Corvey that in the ninth century had introduced the veneration of Sanctus Vitus on Rügen, who, linguistically correct, in the local dialect was rendered as Svantevit. Later, however, the people of the island wanted their freedom [libertas] back. To achieve this, they cut the ties to Corvey and the empire, drove away the Frankish priests and kept the tax revenues on the island. According to Saxo, they were quite happy with their own Vitus, and hereby they ‘turned service into superstition’ [servitudinem in superstitione mutarunt]. ‘Saint Vitus’, says Helmold, ‘whom we acknowledge as a martyr and a servant of God, is venerated by them as God, and thus they put the created before the Creator’. In the moment when the Rügians threw out their Frankish lords they ‘turned the Christian religion into superstition’ [Christicolis religionem verterunt in supersticionem]. Consequently, to Helmold and Saxo—and actually to a general understanding in the twelfth century—Svantevit was a Christian saint that by a revolt had been cut off from the body of Christ and the Church. The inhabitants of Rügen upheld the worship of Sanctus Vitus—and were actually even allowed to do so after the Danish king Erik Emune (1134–1137) in 1136 had forced them to become 'Christians'—but since they had cut off the bond to their original Saxon lords, they had, according to Helmold and Saxo, failed to uphold the fides, which actually meant both ‘faith’ and ‘fidelity’. This worship, therefore, had been detached from God and had no longer anything to do with christianitas. From a theological point of

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view, it had been transformed into idolatry. Such a transformation of a Christian cult into idolatria was evidently a very natural development to Helmold and Saxo, and this must actually have been a widely accepted way of thinking, because the monks in Corvey even made claims on Rügen in the twelfth century, maintaining that the pagan Svantevit had originated from their Sanctus Vitus. This maxim was of course a very useful tool when dealing with subordinated groups on the fringe of the empire, but in the clash between Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII—between empire and papacy—mutual accusations about breaking with the legitimate authority suddenly reached the very top of society. Therefore, Gregory VII could write to Sven Estridsson of Denmark in April 1075 and imply that Archbishop Liemar of Bremen, whom he had excommunicated for disobedience [inobedientia] in February, had turned to idolatry. Because, as he clearly stated elsewhere: ‘anyone falls into the sin of paganism [paganitas] who, while claiming that he is a Christian, disdains to obey the apostolic see’. Taste those words! So, in the spring of 1075, the most urgent case to convert in the North was, from a papal point of view, the archbishop of Bremen. Within a year, even King Henry IV was excommunicated. From a practical point of view, it was hard to use the term paganitas directly on the religion headed by these sacred authorities, but from a theological viewpoint there was actually no difference. Writing at the same time for Liemar and from the point of view of the royal party, Adam of Bremen looked into the Scandinavian world and found the most painstriking example of inobedientia in Sweden. From this kingdom the empire expected subjection to Hamburg-Bremen, but instead the disobedient ‘Gallican church’ shepherded the religion of Gregory VII, who, according to the royal party in early 1076, had illegally, by money, invaded the throne of St. Peter, cloaked violence with religion, filled the church with the filthy stench of fornication, and he was ordered to step down and leave room for a pope who instead would worship the true St. Peter. The conflict regarding Scandinavia could only find a solution after Archbishop Liemar’s death in 1101, when the three Scandinavian kings quickly gathered to sort out their disputes in order to catch the moment when the papacy could act independently of an archbishop of Bremen to create a new, separate Scandinavian church province. In one of the following years, probably 1103, the Archbishopric of Lund was constituted, and even if the challenge from the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen was not

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quite over, the structure for the future was set. From an organisational point of view, the ‘Christianisation of Scandinavia’ had reached, if not its end, so at least a symbolically important milestone. When the kingdom of Sweden got its archiepiscopal see in (Old) Uppsala in 1164, the three Scandinavian kingdoms had become three different church provinces with their seats in Lund, Nidaros (Trondheim) and (Old) Uppsala, but already in the preparations for the elevation of Lund, there seems to have been some considerations over this distinction. In the so-called Florence list from around 1100, we find an enumeration of 17 episcopal sees in Scandinavia, and this enumeration is divided by kingdoms. The Florence list shows that already by 1100 the Scandinavian north had come a long way in the West-European ecclesiastical homogenisation process.

Concluding Remarks Harold Bluetooth’s Jelling-stone, and the monuments it is part of, is to be found on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. The motivation is that they on the one side ‘are striking examples of pagan Nordic culture’ and, on the other, ‘illustrate the Christianization of the Danish people towards the middle of the tenth century’. The guiding idea behind is that the moment of conversion was a rather clear-cut event, by which the society changed page. Both the paganism and the Christianity are understood as distinctly separated monolithic worlds. In recent years, these categories have become increasingly problematised. Both have been deconstructed as ideas grown out of nineteenth century nationalism, and paganism also as an answer to the modern need for a certain organic origin for each nation. Germanic religion was in that context perceived as sharply separated for example from the Slavonic religion, and their only point of relation was thought to lay way back when they separated organically from each other in the Indo-European family tree. While there is not yet any generally accepted new approach to the pre-­ Christian, pagan, religion in the North, the understanding of Christianity has been rigorously deepened. Christianity did not arrive in Scandinavia in the form of a monolithic church, which once and for all converted and Christianised whole nations in one moment. Christianity had many faces. It was over one thousand years old when Scandinavia became a separate Church province ca. 1103. It had been

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rolling around Europe in many waves and many directions; and it consisted of many coexisting layers. The populations in the north were not unpolluted ethnic conservation cans for Germanic, or for that matter Finnish paganism. Within the world leading Finnish folkloristic research, it was concluded already in the nineteenth century that folk narratives constantly crossed linguistic and cultural boundaries, and it should be remembered that Christianity was to a large extent an oral religion during its first thousand years. It competed in that respect with all other orally transmitted story worlds. The written sources can only provide a very fragmented knowledge about the development. They give an incomplete picture of the institutionalisation, but the picture is even more incomplete when it comes to the Christianisation on a more confessional and cultural level. The archaeological material could be of help here, but there are many complicated methodological problems in interpretation and reconstruction of a religious context for archaeological remains. The picture given by the written sources is also severely biased by the fact the Hamburg-Bremen church has produced the two completely dominating pieces of history writing in Vita Ansgarii and Adam of Bremen’s Gesta. Adam’s work also influenced the first internal Scandinavian history writing. Even the English church activities in the North is largely known through Adam’s work. We can however be rather confident in that there was a much more extensive impact from the British Isles than Adam lets us understand. On the whole, we need not doubt that there were many more church political activities than Hamburg-Bremen’s history writing admits. Random preserved information such as that there were three Armenian bishops on Iceland in the eleventh century, and that there were some peoples in Scythia who had biblical books in Gothic translations and even upheld divine services with liturgy in Germanic language still in the mid-­ ninth century, indicate that we have to be careful not to limit our understanding of early Christianity to what we always have expected to find. If there were three Armenian bishops in Iceland, how many were there in the rest of Scandinavia? A quick return to Svantevit may serve to illustrate another point. As we saw above, it was obvious in the twelfth century that Svantevit was St. Vit, but he was not anymore accepted as the true St. Vitus by the Saxons. We also saw how the Danish king Erik Emune, when he had Christianised Rügen in 1136, had let the population keep up the cult of Svantevit. Even more astonishing is the information given by Saxo, that another Danish

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king, Sven Grathe (1147–1157), had actually brought forth gifts to Svantevit, something that, if true, would have been completely impossible if Svantevit was a pagan god. It would be quite understandable though, if Sven Grathe believed that it was St. Vit and ignored and even opposed the Saxon policy. Saxo actually complains that other neighbouring kings sent gifts to Svantevit without taking into consideration that it was sacrilege. In spite of the fact that all sources identify Svantevit with St. Vit, that St. Vit was an extremely popular saint among the Slavic-speaking populations in central and north-central Europe, and that the name fits perfectly from a linguistic point of view, a never-ending flow of research are still trying to press Svantevit into the nineteenth century scheme of an Old-­ Slavonic pantheon. These forces are so strong that even if all sources agree, the historical circumstances and linguistics fits perfectly, it is still for some reason almost unthinkable and sacrilegious to say that Svantevit was not an ethnic Slavonic pagan god but the Christian Sanctus Vitus who was the object of a widespread veneration in a multi-linguistic perhaps to some extent wild-grown religious landscape around the Baltic Sea. Such a multi-linguistic milieu can be sensed in Adam of Bremen’s description of the town Jumne at the mouth of Oder. This town is, says Adam, ‘a very widely known trading centre for the barbarians and the Greeks that live round about’, and in the town lives ‘Slavs and many other peoples, Greeks and barbarians’. With the Greeks, Adam referred principally to people who followed the Greek-Orthodox rite. The ‘barbarians’ are likely Scandinavians. Anyway, along the shores of the Baltic Sea there obviously lived quite a few people whose rite was Greek-Orthodox. It can also be worth noting how Adam describes the feast-day of St. Olav (Haraldsson) on 29 July. He says that this day is constantly remembered by ‘all peoples of the northern ocean, Norwegians, Swedes, Goths, Danes, and Slavs’. So, how was it then with the word ‘church’? All the mentioned ‘peoples of the Northern ocean’ used the same word for ‘the house of the Lord’, which caused Walafrid Strabo to wonder already around 840: how had the Greek word κυριακóν ended up in his own language as the word for the house of the Lord: kyrica. Indeed, this is the word for ‘church’ in all Germanic languages, except, strangely enough, the language of Wulfila’s Arian Goths. By them, as in all other Mediterranean Churches including the Nestorian Church of Persia, in the Arabic, and in the ‘Celtic’ Churches as far as Ireland, the word for God’s house was derived from the Greek word εκκλησία, Latin ecclesia, Arian Gothic aikklesjo (or from basilica).

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This is strange enough, but even more remarkable is that in Greek usage the word κυριακóν had a peak in usage around the year 300, especially under Constantine the Great (306–337), but then it disappears rapidly during the fourth century. Scholars agree that the word must have been taken up directly from Greek into a Germanic language, obviously in a region bordering, or in very close interaction with the Greek Church. Consequently, from Walafrid Strabo onwards, there is an overwhelming scholarly agreement that the word kyrica was adopted before the end, or even middle of, the fourth century among the Danubian Goths or the ‘Scythians’ as they were usually called in the fifth and sixth centuries. As κυριακóν disappeared from the Empire in the fourth century, and aikklesjo was chosen among the Arian Goths, kyrica spread quickly on the other side of the Danube, through all other Germanic languages, all the way to the British Isles. Early on it was also taken up from Gothic into Old Slavonic, црькъі (crı ̆ky), along with other Gothic loanwords. It was also adopted in Finnish, as kirkko, most probably via Swedish, where kyrka is only one of the words in central church terminology—cf. döpa, Goth. daupjan ‘to baptise’, fasta, Goth. fastan ‘fast, fasting’, and (probably) påsk, Goth. paska ‘Easter’—that derive from Gothic. Consequently, the word kyrica in itself bears witness of how important Gothic was beyond the Danube, in late Roman times and in the Early Middle Ages, as a kind of Christian lingua franca. From late Antiquity kyrica—not aikklesjo!—became the dominating designation for the ‘house of the Lord’ not only in Germania but also in Scythia. We still have to detect the historical processes that made this development possible. We have to explain why, as the need developed around AD 300 for a terminus technicus by which to denote the separate houses of Christian worship, the world north of the Roman Empire came to choose another word than the rest of Christianity. Why was that word—like the Germanic runes—so quickly established in languages from the Balkans to the British Isles— over the Germanic- and Slavonic-speaking settlements of the continent and further—at a date sufficiently early to make Walafrid Strabo fumbling for answers already in the 840s. There might be reasons to think that the development, and Christian culture, of which this word was a part was not of a completely incidental nature, and it may even be of some relevance for the question of how Scandinavia interacted with the Christian cultures of Europe in the first millennium AD, and for the Christianisations in Scandinavia. There is much yet to be discovered.

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Bibliography Bagge, Sverre, “The Kingdom of Norway”, Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–1200, ed. Nora Berend, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 121–166. Blomkvist, Nils, The discovery of the Baltic: The reception of a Catholic world-system in the European North (AD 1075–1225), Leiden: Brill, 2005. Blomkvist, Nils, Brink, Stefan, Lindkvist, Thomas, “The kingdom of Sweden”, Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–1200, ed. Nora Berend, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 167–213. Coumert, Magli, “Hraban Maur et les Germains”, Hraban Maur et son temps, ed. P. Depreux, S. Lebecq, M. J.-L. Perrin & O. Szerwiniack, Turnhout: Brepols, 2010, 137–153. Diddi, Cristiano, “‘Славянские книги’ и папское благословение: о чем рассказывают (и о чем умалчивают) Пространные Жития Константина-­ Кирилла и Мефодия”, Старобългарска литература, 57–58 (2018), 61–84. Fraesdorff, David, Der barbarische Norden: Vorstellungen und Fremdheitskategorien bei Rimbert, Thietmar von Merseburg, Adam von Bremen und Helmold von Bosau, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005. Garipzanov, Ildar, “Christianity and Paganism in Adam of Bremen’s Narrative”, Historical narratives and Christian identity on a European periphery: early history writing in Northern, East-Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), ed. Ildar Garipzanov, Turnhout: Brepols, 2011, 13–29. Golden, Peter, “The peoples of the south Russian steppes”, The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 256–284. Granberg, Antoaneta, “Gotiska och tidiga germanska lånord i fornkyrkoslaviska”, Gotisk workshop: Et uformelt formidlingstræf, 2, ed. Mette Bruus et al., Odense: Center for Middelalderstudier, Syddansk Universitet, 2010, 11–24. Hagland, Jan Ragnar, “The Christianization of Norway and possible influences from the Eastern Churches”, Palaeobulgarica, 3 (1996), 3–20. Haki Antonsson, “Traditions of Conversion in Medieval Scandinavia”, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, 34 (2010), 25–74. Janson, Henrik, “Nordens kristnande och Skytiens undergång”, Från Bysans till Norden: Östliga kyrkoinfluenser under vikingatid och tidig medeltid, ed. Henrik Janson, Skellefteå: Artos, 2005, 165–217. Janson, Henrik, “Pagani and Christiani. Cultural Identity and Exclusion Around the Baltic in the Early Middle Ages”, The Reception of Medieval Europe in the Baltic Sea Region, ed. Jörn Staecker [Acta Visbyensia XII], Visby: Gotland University Press, 2009, 171–191.

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Janson, Henrik. “Pictured by the Other: Classical and Early Medieval Perspectives on Religions in the North”, The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: Research and Reception, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross, Vol. I: From the Middle Ages to c. 1850, Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, 7–40. Janson, Henrik, “Scythian Christianity”, Early Christianity on the Way from the Varangians to the Greeks, ed. Ildar Garipzanov and Oleksiy Tolochko [Ruthenica: Supplementum, 4], Kiew: Instytut istoriï Ukraïny NAN Ukraïny, 2011, 33–57. Jezierski, Wojtek, “Fears, Sights and Slaughter: Expressions of Fright and Disgust in the Baltic Missionary Historiography (11th–13th centuries)”, Tears, Sighs and Laughter. Expressions of Emotions in the Middle Ages, ed. Per Förnegård, Erika Kihlman, Mia Åkestam and Gunnel Engwall, Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien, 2017, 109–137. Lenski, Noel, “The Gothic Civil War and the Date of the Gothic Conversion,” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies, 36 (1995), 51–87. Orri Vésteinsson, The Christianisation of Iceland: Priests, Power, and Social Change 1000–1300, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Scior, Volker, Das Eigene und das Fremde: Identität und Fremdheit in den Chroniken Adams von Bremen, Helmolds von Bosau und Arnolds von Lübeck, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002. Stanfill, J.  P., Embracing the Barbarian: John Chrysostom’s Pastoral Care of the Goths. Ph.D. Diss., Fordham University, 2015. The Christianization of Scandinavia, ed. Birgit Sawyer, Peter Sawyer and Ian Wood, Alingsås: Viktoria Bokförlag, 1987. The pre-Christian religions of the North: History and structures, Vol. 4: The Christianization process, ed. Jens Peter Schjødt, John Lindow and Anders Andrén, Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. Viking og Hvidekrist: Norden og Europa 800–1200, ed. Else Roesdahl, København: Nordisk Ministerråd, 1992. Weber, Gerd Wolfgang, “Intellegere historiam: Typological perspectives of Nordic prehistory (in Snorri, Saxo, Widukind and others)”, Tradition og historieskrivning: Kilderne till Nordens ældste historie, ed. Kirsten Hastrup and Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Århus: Århus Universitetsforlag, 1987, 95–141. Winroth, Anders, The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Wood, Ian N., The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400-1050, Harlow: Longman, 2001.

CHAPTER 4

Bruno of Querfurt and the Practice of Mission Ian Wood

The history of Latin missions to Eastern Europe in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries is dominated by two figures, Adalbert of Prague and Bruno of Querfurt.1 Anyone who has looked at the careers of these two saints is confronted with numerous insoluble problems.2 To begin, there

1  This article is based on a lecture that was delivered in Warsaw and Poznan in 2017, when I was a Stypendyst at the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies. I have benefitted a great deal from comments from Miłosz Sosnowski and from Przemysław Urbańczyk. I dedicate the result to the memory of Janos Bak, for his unwavering insistence on the importance of Central Europe. 2  Useful bibliographies will be found in Christian Gaşpar’s introduction to his edition and translation of the Passio sancti Adalberti, and Marina Miladinov, in her edition and translation of Bruno’s Vita Quinque Fratrum.

I. Wood (*) University of Leeds (ret.), Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_4

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are debates about the source material, most notably over the authorship of the Vita Prima sancti Adalberti. Christian Gaşpar, for instance, uses the edition of Jadwiga Karwasińska, S. Adalberti Pragensis episcopi et martyris, and his introduction includes a restatement of Karwasińska’s views of authorship. Then there is the chronology: how exactly is one to fit in Adalbert’s work among the Hungarians, and what did it entail? And for Bruno, the narrative of his failure to reach the community established by Benedict and John in the territory of Bolesław Chrobry before the murder of his friends and missionary colleagues is simply bizarre. The community is usually identified with Meserizi, following Reinhard Kade’s identification in his edition of Bruno’s Vita quinque fratrum Poloniae with the monastery mentioned by Thietmar’s Chronicon. There is no reason to accept this identification. It is not entirely certain that he ever visited the site of the Polish hermitage established by his friends Benedict and John, whose martyrdom he recorded with extraordinary vividness. In fact, the chronology of his life, after his departure from Italy, is difficult to establish.3 According to Vincent Múcska, the detail of his stay among the Hungarians, like that of Adalbert, is impossible to reconstruct with any certainty. Nor can we be sure of his movements between his departure from Kiev and his arrival in the realm of Nethimir (or Bosla), wherever that was. As for his martyrdom, the contemporary sources (of which there are several) are in conflict over several significant points of detail. Given these problems, I want to concentrate not on the facts of the work of evangelisation carried out by Adalbert and Bruno, nor indeed on their missionary ideology, with its blend of eremitical monasticism, evangelical fervour and martyrdom. Instead, I wish to concentrate on Bruno’s views about how mission should be practised and the extent to which he himself followed his own ideal. Here one needs to note that there was very little theorising of mission in the early Middle Ages, and indeed there was not even a specific term in use at the time to describe the activity of evangelisation. The word ‘missio’ in the Carolingian and Ottonian periods meant ‘delegation’, usually ‘secular delegation’, and not mission in our modern sense, which, in its religious context, is a Jesuit development of the sixteenth century. Indeed, it was Franciscan, Dominican and Jesuit work in the New World and the Far East that led to the full development of the theorising of missionary practice. In the early Middle Ages, the concept of mission was essentially a response to the Gospel command to 3

 The best chronology for Bruno is provided by Miłosz Sosnowski.

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preach to all nations, and as such the task was dangerous—missionaries appreciated the likelihood of being killed—and it very often had millenarian overtones, for there was an understanding that the Last Days would come once the Gospel had been preached to the Ends of the Earth. When we turn to views of how evangelisation should be practised, we usually find verbs such as ‘evangelizare’ and ‘praedicare’, which could be applied equally to the normal ecclesiastical activities of pastoral care. Less often the vocabulary of destruction (e.g. fana idolorum destruens in Thietmar, Chronicon, VII 72) is used, though this, of course, points to a very specific style of evangelisation. Occasionally we find a pope formulating a missionary strategy—most notably Gregory the Great in his letters relating to Anglo-Saxon England and Nicholas I in his letter to the Bulgars—and equally rarely we have evidence for debate about the practice of evangelisation, as for instance in Alcuin’s critique of the forcible Christianisation of the Saxons. Although there is no unbroken tradition of theorising about mission, it is worth noting that at various moments in the early Middle Ages one finds a cluster of texts concerned with missionary activity. Usually, these texts are works of hagiography, and sometimes it is clear that one responds to another. That is to say, that at various moments we can see that mission is a point of focus in a largely hagiographical discourse. One such moment of discourse is to be found in the Carolingian period and runs from the Vitae of Boniface, written in the 760s, down to that of Ansgar, written a century later. Thereafter there is something of a hiatus, although various texts respond to the missionary work of Methodius—but for the most part these are concerned primarily with the matter of jurisdiction. The next major cluster of texts is that concerned with Adalbert of Prague and Bruno of Querfurt, where once again there is a substantial discourse focused on mission. This discourse picks up on and develops ideas of the relationship of mission with, on the one hand, the eremitical life and, on the other, martyrdom. What is perhaps most distinctive in this particular discourse, at least in that part of it set down by Bruno, is its consideration of the practice of mission. Moreover, although all the crucial statements come from Bruno himself, one can infer from information contained in contemporary narrative texts that his views on the practice of mission were neither entirely consistent, nor were they universally agreed. This is the focus of my paper. Bruno’s most extensive discussions of an appropriate style of life for missionaries come in his two versions of the Life of Adalbert and in the

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Life of the Five Brothers. These apparently envisage very small-scale missions: Adalbert abandons the Polish escort that had been supplied by Bolesław Chrobry when he arrives in Prussia and goes on with only two companions, while the Life of the Five Brothers seems to imply a group of no more than seven men at most, and it may be that at least two of those were never intended to leave the hermitage of Benedict and John. Even in the mission field, these small groups continued to practice the monastic or eremitical lifestyle to which they were accustomed. Above all, we see this in the centrality of the liturgy, which was as important for missionaries when engaged in evangelisation as when they were living in a community, like that of Pereum, outside Ravenna, or the Polish hermitage, where we see the Five Brothers carrying out the divine office according to Bruno. Like the author of the so-called Roman Life that he had before him, Bruno describes Adalbert as celebrating mass before he was seized by the pagans and martyred. One might add that the visionary material in the text presents martyrdom itself through the symbolism of the Eucharist. In addition to this hagiographical evidence, we have Bruno’s own description of his mission to the Pechenegs, contained in his letter to the emperor Henry II. Although we do not hear of Bruno celebrating mass in the context of his mission, he does describe how, when he and his companions were waiting on the Serpent Walls (Змиевы валы) for Vladimir’s approval to continue their journey, they chanted chapter 21 verses 15–17 from St John’s Gospel, a text used on three Petrine feasts.4 Moreover, the account of the Pecheneg mission is described entirely in terms of liturgical time (dies dominica, ad nonam in ‘Epistola ad Henricum regem’). These missionaries continued to perform the divine office whether or not they were actually living in a monastic community. In the anonymous Vita et Passio Brunonis, which the editor, Heinrich Kauffmann, saw as deriving from a text dating to the period between 1016/25 and 1142, the saint converted some pagans, and came to blows with others, after celebrating mass. Subsequently, when he was summoned before dux Bosla and was condemned to be burnt, he sang Psalm 16 and survived, converting the ruler as a result. Subsequently, he was killed by Bosla’s brother, Zebedem, while celebrating mass. The same emphasis on liturgy is to be found in what is probably an earlier and more reliable account of the martyrdom of Bruno by Wipert. While undergoing an ordeal by fire, Bruno and his 4  Miłosz Sosnowski points out to me that in addition to the 22 Feb (the date noted by Meysztowicz), this text was also sung on 29 June and 1 August.

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capellani sang seven psalms. We may guess that these were the seven penitential psalms (Psalms 6, 31 (32), 37 (38), 50 (51), 101 (102), 129 (130), 142 (143)). These would have been appropriate for the context of an ordeal, and indeed they are prescribed in the formula for conducting the ordeal by boiling water in the Breviary of Eberhard of Bamberg.5 This emphasis on the pursuit of a monastic lifestyle, with full attention paid to the performance of the liturgical offices, is scarcely surprising, given the religious training that Adalbert, Bruno and their companions had undergone. We find a similar reference to liturgy also in Thietmar’s short account of the imprisonment of the missionary bishop Reinbern of Kołobrzeg at the hands of Vladimir of Kiev. Much more remarkable, especially in Bruno’s writings, is the concern with finding a lifestyle that would be most effective for the achievement of the goals of the missionaries. In his two versions of the Life of Adalbert, following the description of the hostile reception that the saint and his companions had received at the hands of the Prussians, Bruno puts into the saint’s mouth a lengthy speech addressed to his two companions, where he sketches out a new practice of mission, in which instead of head­on confrontation with the people to be evangelised (which is what they had been doing), the missionary group should grow their hair and adopt the local style of dress, and thus insinuate themselves into the pagan community over what was clearly envisaged as a quite considerable period of time. This, one should note, is a deliberate addition to the Roman Life which Bruno was using as his source. Thus, while the notion of a small-­ scale mission would seem to go back to Adalbert, if the idea of ‘going native’ originated with the bishop of Prague, it must have been transmitted orally to Bruno, perhaps by Radim-Gaudentius, the martyr’s companion and half-brother. An alternative possibility is that the idea was entirely Bruno’s own contribution—hagiographical writers unquestionably used the format of the saint’s Life to explore their own concerns and ideas. It is possible that the origins of this model for missionary practice lay in the discussions of Bruno, Benedict and John, while they were still in the Pereum, outside Ravenna. In the Life of the Five Brothers, Bruno puts a speech equivalent to that to be found in the Lives of Adalbert into the mouth of Benedict, who has already learnt to speak a Slavonic language, but who goes on to suggest to his companion John that they should cut 5  I am indebted to Henry Mayr-Harting for the suggestion that the reference is to the penitential psalms.

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their hair and dress like ordinary secular men in order to facilitate their missionary work. Interestingly, there is a clear distinction between the hairstyles to be adopted by Adalbert in Prussia and by Benedict and John in their Polish hermitage in Bruno’s accounts—suggesting that he either envisaged that the missions were to be addressed to different groups of pagans, or alternatively that he had received new information about the pagans in the period between the writing of the two Lives. Whatever one is to make of the precise differences to be found in the practices of mission sketched out in the Life of Adalbert and the Life of the Five Brothers, we can see from these two passages that Bruno had formulated a theory of missionary practice, based on the infiltration of pagan communities by small groups of ascetics (going native), by the end of 1004, the commonly accepted date for Bruno’s first Vita Adalberti: the Vita Quinque Fratrum is variously dated to 1005/6 and 1008/9. But this, of course, was not the full extent of Bruno’s missionary ideology, even as he formulated it in his earliest hagiographical writings. There was a view that missions to the pagans should have papal approval. In his Life of Adalbert, Bruno states that the saint privately gained permission from Pope Gregory V to preach to the pagans were he to be rejected a third time by the people of Prague, a point that is only implied but is not explicit in the Roman Life, although it is supported by Thietmar (Chronicon, IV 28).6 Romuald of Benevento, also, went out of his way to gain a licence from Sergius IV, when he determined to lead a mission in the aftermath of Bruno’s martyrdom. Securing a licence is a major theme of the Life of the Five Brothers: Bruno’s dilatory attempt to obtain papal authorisation to evangelise the pagans occupies him through much of the narrative, and his failure to secure approval with any speed proves to be the indirect cause of the martyrdom of his colleagues. The anonymous Passio Brunonis ignores the history of Benedict and John, but does provide an account of Pope Leo sending Bruno on a mission to the Hungarians, in opus predicationis. Although it is only in the account of Adalbert’s request to Gregory V and in the Life of the Five Brothers that we find an explicit concern with papal authorisation, we can probably see it in other of Bruno’s works, and it may underlie the comment in the Letter to Henry II that he was taking the Gospel of Christ from saint Peter to all nations. But the recurrent invocation of the Apostle throughout the letter may indicate a growing 6

 Miłosz Sosnowski has suggested that it may also be implied by Peter Damian.

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sense that he had a higher calling than the pope could confer. The pope was, of course, Peter’s representative, but Bruno implies that he himself now receives his orders directly from the Apostle. And this may be enhanced by the reference to the passages of St John’s Gospel used in the Petrine liturgy.7 In the letter to Henry, we may even perhaps note disillusionment with papal involvement in mission in Bruno’s reference to the activities of the unnamed papal legate, whom we can identify as Azo, from his presence at the foundation of the diocese of Pécs. Bruno was horrified at the blinding of recently converted Black Hungarians, though whether or not Azo himself was implicated is unclear. One should add that Bruno’s opposition to the action of Azo and the agents of king Stephen against the Black Hungarians are an indication of his commitment to non-violent mission. This suggests that the question of mission by force, which was a live issue for Alcuin and his contemporaries in the late eighth century, was also a matter of debate in the early eleventh century, as it would be again in the sixteenth century. Mission by force seems to have been advocated by Bruno’s exact contemporary Reinbern of Kołobrzeg, who oversaw the destruction of idols, according to Thietmar (Chronicon, VII 72). Bruno’s own commitment to non-violence is apparent in his portrayal of the resignation of Adalbert when seized by the pagans, which is entirely in keeping with what we know of the bishop of Prague’s own ideas. This resignation is echoed in Bruno’s account of his reaction to the treatment that he received at the hands of the Pechenegs. His views, however, are most clearly stated in the fates of the Five Brothers, where the body of Christinus the cook is very nearly denied the reverence shown to those of Benedict, John, Isaac and Matthew, for the simple reason that he had defended himself against the robbers who had killed his fellows. Despite this, it has been argued that Bruno advocated the forcible conversion of the Liutizi, in his letter to Henry. Indeed he does suggest that the emperor should be fighting the pagans over matters of religion, rather than fighting Christians over questions of hierarchy (Nonne melius pugnare cum paganis propter christianitatem, quam christianis vim inferre propter saecularem honorem?), although he does not explicitly present war as a means of conversion.8 Bruno, Benedict and John were undoubtedly committed to the version of the eremitical life they had learned from Romuald in Ravenna. For a 7 8

 See here n. 4.  Unlike Henrik Janson, I do not read Bruno’s letter as encouraging forced conversion.

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missionary, however, this was not easy to square with the necessity for dealing with rulers—which was, of course, also a problem for Romuald himself, as it was for Benedict and John. One may wonder whether they offended Bolesław in returning his silver, and what impact, indeed, that act may have had on the duke’s support for an eremitical style of mission. Other churchmen (for instance Aidan, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History) certainly caused offence by rejecting the norms of gift-giving and reciprocity. From early on in his career, Bruno was a habitué of royal courts— indeed, like Adalbert and Romuald, he was closely attached to that of Emperor Otto III. He was also active at the court of Stephen of Hungary, although he provides no detail either concerning his own work among the Hungarians or concerning that of Adalbert, whom he was imitating. One might wonder whether Bruno’s perfunctory comments on both Adalbert’s and his own missionary association with Stephen was due to his anger over the treatment of the Black Hungarians. In addition, the curious passage inserted into the revised version of his own Vita Adalberti, the Vita brevior, where Bruno describes the power of Géza’s wife, might reflect a growing dislike of Arpad rule. For the achievements of Adalbert and Bruno at the courts of Géza and Stephen we have to turn to the contemporary evidence of Thietmar, the late eleventh century Legenda maior sancti Stephani regis and the early twelfth century hagiography of Hartwig. We should, however, remember that, quite apart from Azo, there were others who were happy to work with Stephen, most notably Radla, otherwise known as Astrik of Pannonhalma—onetime companion of Adalbert and first archbishop of the Magyars. He presumably was implicated in the blinding of the Black Hungarians. Although Bruno was dependent on rulers and knew that he had to deal with them (which he occasionally did with some success), this was not part of the image of mission that he wished to convey in his hagiography. In the Lives of Adalbert and of the Five Brothers, Bruno describes what some would call ‘bottom-up’ rather than ‘top-down’ missionary practice—in other words, Christianisation at a community level rather than imposed from above. Yet, while this may have been his ideal, Bruno was only too well aware of the need to deal with established patterns of power. He is much clearer about his dealings with the Kievan prince (князь) Vladimir (d. 1015), whose support he needed in order to work among the Pechenegs, than about his dealings with Stephen, although even in the case of his dealings with the Rus’ prince he undoubtedly oversimplifies the

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picture. It is worth pausing on the visit to Kiev and the mission to the Pechenegs to consider not so much the events themselves as the implications of what happened. First, this is unlikely to have been a mission conforming to the eremitical model that we find in the Life of the Five Brothers, however much Bruno and his companions were living a simple ascetic life. In terms of scale alone, the Pecheneg mission would seem to have been different—although Bruno gives no figure, we may guess that the numbers involved were similar to those who joined his subsequent mission to the Prussians (or Rus’), when he seems to have had 19 companions, 18 of whom were martyred with him. Indeed, it is possible that the majority of these companions had already accompanied him in his journey to the Pechenegs. This may not have been the first sizeable mission with which Bruno was associated, despite the ideals set out in the Vita Adalberti and the Vita Quinque Fratrum. The anonymous Passio Brunonis says that after his mission to the Hungarians, the saint went to Prague with a good number of companions: non paulos socios secum habens itineris. The size of missionary groups around the year 1000 ranged from the very small numbers that we seem to see in Adalbert’s final mission, and that were envisaged by the eremitical community of Benedict and John, to two dozen or more clerics. At the upper end, there was the mission planned by Romuald in response to the murder of Bruno, which involved 2 specially consecrated archbishops and 24 monks. The Pecheneg mission was clearly not on that scale, but it was large enough for Bruno to be able to leave one of his fellow missionaries as bishop among the nomads—and that also has important implications, for it involved a consecration. Bruno had been consecrated missionary bishop at Henry’s request, at the hands of Tagino of Magdeburg and Henry of Merseburg in 1004—and this in itself may have caused a change in his approach to mission and its integration into the institutionalised Church. It may also have caused Bruno some difficulties in his relations with Bolesław, who was on markedly bad terms with Henry in the years after 1003: Bruno’s association with the Salian court may not have been welcome in Poland. It is notable that Bruno seems to have little contact with the Piast ecclesiastical hierarchy. He only mentions Radim-Gaudentius in the context of his association with his half-brother Adalbert, before his elevation to the new archdiocese of Gniezno. Of Bolesław’s other four bishops, Bruno talks solely of Unger of Poznań, whose visit to the hermitage of Benedict and John after their martyrdom

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receives favourable mention.9 In Kiev, however, Bruno, when consecrating a bishop for the Pechenegs, may well have worked with the local metropolitan—the patriarch, either Leontius or John. Certainly, we have to envisage cooperation between Bruno and the Kievan Church. Indeed, prior to the reign of Jaroslav Mudry, there was a good deal of interaction between the Latin and Orthodox churches in the Russian State—something which may have been championed by Jaroslav’s brother and rival, Svyatopolk. The mission to the Pechenegs went hand-in-hand with a diplomatic move on Vladimir’s part to cultivate peaceful relations with his eastern neighbours, as is shown by his sending his son (perhaps Svyatopolk) as hostage to the nomads. Whichever son Vladimir sent to the Pechenegs, Svyatopolk married a daughter of Bolesław Chrobry, possibly as early as 1009. This was a period in which the Rus’ prince seems, to judge from the narrative of Thietmar of Merseburg, to have been deeply concerned to cultivate relations with the West, or at least with Bolesław. The daughter of the Piast duke was accompanied to the lands of the Rus’ by bishop Reinbern. The marriage of Bolesław’s daughter to Svyatopolk, however, ended in tragedy, as a result of the prince’s revolt, which led to his and his wife’s incarceration, and that of Reinbern, who died in prison. According to Thietmar, Vladimir thought that Bolesław had encouraged the revolt, but good relations between Kiev and the Poles were restored for a short period when Svyatopolk seized power after his father’s death in 1015. For the next four years, both Svyatopolk and Bolesław benefited from Pecheneg military support—surely an unintentional result of Bruno’s mission. Mention of Reinbern should lead us to note that Bolesław supported more than one missionary, and that more than one strategy of Christianisation was employed during his period of rule. Indeed, Bolesław appointed Reinbern to the see of Kołobrzeg in or before 1000, when his diocese was subjected to the new foundation of Gniezno, before Benedict and John founded their eremitical community in Poland with the approval of the Piast ruler, and before Bruno ever embarked on his missionary activity. Thietmar seems to have been ambivalent about Reinbern’s 9  Of the bishops appointed by Bolesław at the time of the creation of Gniezno, he mentions Unger of Poznań favourably, in the context of the discovery of the bodies of the Five Brothers, Vita Quinque fratrum, 13, 21 (redactio II), and he mentions Gaudentius-Radim in Vita Adalberti longior, 24, 28, 29, Vita Adalberti brevior, 29, 30, but not as archbishop. He never mentions Poppo of Krakow, John of Wrocław or Reinbern of Kołobrzeg at all. Unger apart, he shows no interest in the Polish ecclesiastical hierarchy.

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activities as bishop, but ultimately he thought that he achieved a martyr’s death (Thietmar, VI 72 uses the strange phrase gradum episcopalem ascendit, ut spero, dignus. But he also envisages him as being in heaven). Exactly when his episcopate came to an end is unclear. Historians often claim that the diocese of Kołobrzeg was destroyed in a Pomeranian uprising in 1005, for which there is no explicit evidence.10 Rather than a Pomeranian uprising, we might simply stress the threat posed by the neighbouring Liutizi. All one can say is that Reinbern seems to have accompanied Bolesław to Prague in 1004—or at least one of his chaplains was with the Piast ruler at the time—which may indicate that the diocese of Kołobrzeg had been abandoned by then. Perhaps Bolesław intended to install Reinbern as bishop of Prague. Subsequently, Reinbern accompanied Bolesław’s daughter to Kiev, where she married Svyatopolk—though unfortunately the exact date is unknown. Thietmar describes Reinbern as destroying idols and purging the sea (or a lake: mare) from the cult of demons by throwing in stones blessed with holy water—although it is unclear whether he performed these actions in Kołobrzeg or Kiev. Reinbern’s mission is not alluded to in any of Bruno’s works, but it may have been in the back of his mind when he wrote his hagiography. It is possible that we should read Bruno’s formulation of ideal missionary practice, to be found in his first Vita Adalberti, of c. 1004, and in the Vita Quinque Fratrum, of c. 1005/6, alongside Thietmar’s account of the Pomeranian bishop. If Bolesław was expected to see the Life of the Five Brothers—and it is possible that the work was intended to secure support for the community founded by Benedict and John—Bruno must deliberately have been indicating that the best missionary practice was his own. He may even have been aware that Reinbern was heading for the Rus’ at the time that he wrote the letter to Henry in 1009, with its extended description of his own work among the Pechenegs: this is a statement that he had already been active in Kiev. Unfortunately, we can only date Reinbern’s presence in Kiev to some moment before 1013. Despite the lack of chronological precision, correlation with the career of Reinbern suggests that Bruno’s writings might usefully be placed in very precise chronological contexts. His first Life of Adalbert was exactly contemporary with Reinbern’s Pomeranian mission, while the Life of the Five Brothers may have followed directly the collapse of the diocese of Kołobrzeg: the

 I am indebted to Przemysław Urbańczyk for discussion of this issue.

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revised Life of Adalbert and the Letter to Henry may belong to the period of Reinbern’s journey to the Rus’. At the same time, we might wonder whether Reinbern had the model, even the failure, of Adalbert in mind, as he embarked on his missionary work among the Pomeranians, which in its destruction of temples and its exorcism of the Baltic (if we associate these actions with his episcopate rather than his time in Kiev) differed considerably in style from that of the bishop of Prague and of the intended missionary practice of Benedict and John. And Thietmar seems to have thought that it was effective: he talks of Reinbern’s missionary work as drawing new shoots out of a fruitless tree. The image presumably goes back to the Gospel of Luke, 13, 6–9. It is by no means clear how this can be squared with the collapse of the Kołobrzeg diocese, but it is interesting that Thietmar presented Reinbern’s work as bearing fruit. Perhaps he did not want to admit that the diocese of Kołobrzeg was destroyed by the Henry II’s pagan allies. By contrast with the supposed achievement of Reinbern, neither Adalbert nor Bruno had any success in their work among the Prussians. It would seem, therefore, that Reinbern and Bruno had very different views of the process of evangelisation, which may well have been in open conflict. At the start of the new millennium, we can be reasonably sure that it was Reinbern’s ideas that were in the ascendant at the court of Bolesław. We know that he was not only the bishop of Kołobrzeg from c. 1000, but also that he, or at least his chaplain, was in Prague with the Piast ruler in 1004. Moreover, the missionary community founded by Benedict and John does not seem to have been flourishing after their martyrdom, to judge by the fact that either in 1005/6 or in 1008/9 Bruno felt he had to promote it, in the Life of the Five Brothers, as a centre for the working of miracles. Even in 1009 it is unclear whether Bruno’s vision was dominant, despite his references to Bolesław’s approval in the Letter to Henry. In the letter, Bruno says that the Polish duke would like to help his missionary activity, but that he has neither the time nor the resources to do so, because of the war with Germany. It may not only have been the war that led Bolesław to neglect Bruno. The dominant missionary ideas in Poland may at this moment have been those of Reinbern,11 just as they were those of a group of Christians who advocated the blinding of Black Hungarians in the Arpad state.

 Vlasto goes way beyond the evidence in saying the Bolesław ‘wished to be rid of him’.

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Although Bruno’s account of the mission to the Pechenegs leaves a great deal unstated, he has more to say about it than about either his missionary work among the Hungarians or the mission that he sent to the Swedes. Even so, there is something that we can infer from his very brief allusion to the baptism of the Swedish king. It is clear that we are dealing with a mission of some scale—unlike that envisaged in the Life of the Five Brothers. Bruno has sent a bishop and a monk, whom he calls Robert. Since a bishop was involved, we must assume that there were additional clergy among the missionary party. We can begin by dispensing with a Swedish argument that Bruno did not direct an embassy to the Swedes: Vladimir Rybakov has pointed out that the spelling Suigia, which is used by Bruno in place of Suedia, is to be found occasionally in manuscripts of Adam of Bremen. Identifying the Swedish king is not so easy: chronologically it is very tempting to identify him with Olof Skötkonung, although a Swedish king list claims that Olof was baptised by a bishop called Sigfrid, who has been identified as a bishop from England mentioned by Adam. Henrik Janson, however, has made a plausible case for Olof being the Swedish king mentioned in Bruno’s letter, and has argued that the bishop in question was Turgot, who was subsequently appointed bishop of Skara. It is, of course, possible that there was more than one king of the Swedes in 1008/9. What is clear is that the mission sent by Bruno to Scandinavia must have been active at about the time that, according to Adam, Olof was issuing threats against the pagans of the Uppsala region. In some way or other, the two pieces of information must fit together—either Olof’s active promotion of Christianity was related to his own baptism, or else his intervention in Uppland provided backing for the mission sent by Bruno to the court of some otherwise unknown Swedish petty king. Although Bruno does not name the bishop that he sent to the Swedes, the fact that he calls him ‘our bishop’ suggests that he himself was responsible for the consecration. He does, however, name the monk Robert, who he describes as outstanding. He states that the monk was known to the German emperor, whereas he implies that the bishop was not. There are several Roberts to be found in the written sources of the period—but one who might be the same as the monk mentioned by Bruno is Robert oblacionarius, a papal agent, who appears in a placitum of Otto III from Ravenna in 996, and then subsequently, in the narrative of Thietmar of Merseburg, where he is recorded as being in the entourage of Otto III, and seems to have been present at the meeting of the emperor Otto III

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and Bolesław at Gniezno in 1000. Of course, the identification is impossible to substantiate, but it does give us an idea of the sort of person we should be thinking about: a monk of very high status, who was already known to the emperor and who had connections with Bruno. A cleric who had been a member of the household of Silvester II and who had been present at meetings held by Otto III, including his visit to Bolesław at Gniezno (which, of course, would associate him with the cult of Adalbert), would fit this description well. This identification can be no more than a hypothesis, but it illustrates the basic point with which I am concerned. Although Bruno, following Adalbert, had envisaged a very low-key strategy of mission, which might be carried out by a community like that of Benedict and John, once he had been consecrated as a missionary bishop in 1004, he himself embarked upon much more formal styles of evangelisation, which involved episcopal authority and which were addressed in the first place to rulers rather than the ordinary villagers who appear to be the object of the strategies formulated by Adalbert, Benedict and John, and which are so clearly laid out in Bruno’s Lives of Adalbert and of the Five Brothers. There is obviously a tension between the different styles of the missions envisaged and sent out by Bruno, which reflects a broader tension to be found within the missionary community in general: there is mission in depth, preferably carried out by small groups, going native and living within ordinary communities, and there is political mission which can be seen as a branch of diplomacy. And there were other tensions: there is the contrast between the peaceful spread of Christianity (epitomised by the ideas attributed to Adalbert and to the community of Benedict and John) and mission by force, which might either be directed against pagans within an officially Christian polity (as in the case of the Black Hungarians or of the Pomeranians challenged by Reinbern) or indeed against neighbouring pagan groups (which was arguably the situation at Uppsala in the days of Olof Skötkonung). Most of these issues are played out in our narratives of Bruno’s final mission, to the Prussians, or just possibly to a group of Rus’ outside the control of Vladimir, which culminated in the saint’s martyrdom. This is recorded in at least five eleventh century texts. The earliest may be the Hystoria de predicatione Brunonis, supposedly written by Wipert, who claims to have been present at the death of Bruno and to have been blinded in the course of events. Not much later are the accounts of Thietmar of Merseburg, himself a relative of Bruno, Ademar of Chabannes, the Annals

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of Quedlinburg (all of them supposedly written before 1030) and Peter Damian in his Vita Romualdi (written in 1042). The anonymous Passio Brunonis would seem to be a réécriture of a text slightly later in date. Bruno’s death had extraordinary reverberations, stretching from Poland, where we find Bolesław going out of his way to secure Bruno’s body, to Germany, Rome and the Limousin (where Ademar was writing). We can also see that the killing of Bruno prompted a reaction in Kiev, in that the Quedlinburg Annals claimed that the martyr’s body was ransomed by Vladimir, while Damian noted a continuing cult of Bruno among the Rus’. To find a more immediate response to the martyrdom of an ecclesiastic, stretching over a comparable area—with the exception of the death of Adalbert himself—one would have to look to the establishment of the cult of Thomas Becket in the 1170s. Despite this reaction, although his death is recorded in Damian’s Vita Romualdi and in several historical and chronicle texts, Bruno is not the prime subject of much hagiographical writing. There is the apparently contemporary account of the martyrdom by Wipert and the anonymous Vita et Passio, which supposedly derives from a work of the eleventh or early twelfth century. Neither text, however, specifies a place of burial. The Vita et Passio merely says that Bruno was buried where he was killed and that miracles occurred at the site. This silence, together with the confusion in the other Latin sources, suggests that there was no western cult site housing the martyr’s body. It would seem likely that the bodies of Bruno and his companions were retained by the Rus’, although Bolesław may well have built a mausoleum to receive their relics at Giecz. That he did not succeed in securing the relics is suggested by the absence of any firm written evidence for a cult, either in Poland or in Bohemia, where Břetislav I might have transferred the body, as he did that of Adalbert in 1039. Of course, Romuald tried to continue Bruno’s work (albeit in very different style), but he failed—and Damian seems not to have thought much of the attempt. Although Bruno seems to have intended to imitate Adalbert in his mission to the Prussians (or perhaps to a community of Rus’) in 1009, this was on a different scale to that of his model in 997. In Adalbert’s case, the missionaries are presented as a group of three, Adalbert himself, his half-­ brother Radim-Gaudentius and the priest Benedict. In the case of Bruno’s Prussian mission, Wipert names four capellani, Tiemic, Aic, Hezich and Apich, who were martyred alongside their leader. It is worth noting that the first three of these capellani, to judge by their names, were Saxons, and the last perhaps an Italian—suggesting that Bruno’s chief companions

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were drawn not from Poland or Hungary, but from the Empire, despite his hostility to Henry’s policies. They belong to the world of Bruno’s distant past, like the monk Robert, if we have correctly identified him. From this account, it is unclear whether there were more than six in the party. Thietmar, however, talks of many martyrs, and the Quedlinburg Annals state that Bruno had 18 men with him. This would have been a sizeable mission and was clearly intended to impress—it was not the low-key pattern of religious insinuation envisaged by Bruno in the Lives of Adalbert and the Five Brothers. According to Damian’s account of the martyrdom, Bruno appeared at the court of the Rus’ king in rags. This takes us closer to the missionary strategy envisaged in Bruno’s hagiography, although it adds to it the ideology of Christian poverty. The king, however, laughed at his appearance, mistaking the saint as a beggar. Bruno withdrew to put on his full vestments, but when he returned the king accused him of vanity in appearing so richly attired. Bruno then underwent an ordeal by fire, from which he emerged unharmed. As a result, he converted the king, but this prompted a reaction at court, which led to his martyrdom. We may suspect a certain amount of invention or embellishment on the part of Peter Damian: the somewhat ambivalent narrative is unquestionably deliberate in presenting the distinction between poverty and display. On the other hand, the clash between informality and formality that is present in the two appearances of Bruno before the king fits very closely with the tension that we see in Bruno’s own writings. His ideal was low-key spiritual infiltration, but political reality drove him further towards a style of mission that involved approaches to kings and all the panoply of diplomacy and ritual—although liturgical ritual, of course, was something of which he approved. In the Wipert account, the story is slightly different, and the similarities and differences are worth pausing over. Here Bruno and his companions are taken to the court of the Prussian king Nethimir on their arrival in his territory, where Bruno celebrates mass and preaches. This enrages the king, who summons the missionaries. Bruno then asks Nethimir to produce idols, which he throws on the fire: the king, in fury, orders Bruno to be consigned to the flames: the saint retires to put on his vestments, has his chair placed in the fire and sits on it, while his capellani sing seven psalms. This so amazes the king that he and 300 of his men accept the baptism of penitence. One dux, however, infuriated, beheads Bruno and hangs his capellani: Wipert, the survivor, was simply blinded.

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There are aspects of Wipert’s account that fit neatly with what we know about Bruno from his own writings. The martyrdom itself is what Bruno and his followers had half-expected in the territory of the Pechenegs. It is also in keeping with Bruno’s presentation of Adalbert’s passive acceptance of death, which itself reflects what else we know about the bishop of Prague’s own ideals. Although there is a good deal of debate as to which works, if any, we can ascribe to Adalbert himself, we do know of his attachment to the cult of certain Roman saints, notably to Alexius, who was revered above all for his patient suffering. Bruno’s own meekness in the face of death is further attested by Thietmar. One aspect of Wipert’s narrative, however, seems at odds with what we find in Bruno’s own writings: the deliberate confrontation involved in throwing the king’s idols into the fire has no parallels in Bruno’s account of the mission of Adalbert or of his own work among the Pechenegs. Rather, it is much closer to what Thietmar tells us of the missionary practices of Reinbern. The destruction of the idols must surely raise the question of whether Wipert’s account of the confrontation with Nethimir is an accurate narrative of events, or whether it has been written up for an audience that was more impressed by the drama of Reinbern’s actions than with the more insinuating strategies of evangelisation expressed by Bruno in his Lives of Adalbert and the Five Brothers. On one point, however, Damian and Wipert are in agreement, and that is that Bruno essentially underwent an ordeal by fire, which he survived, prompting the conversion of the king and of many at court. This may seem equally out of kilter with the image of mission expressed by Bruno in his own writings, and even less likely than the destruction of idols, and yet one should note that the experience of the missionary could be understood as an ordeal. It is not impossible to read Bruno’s account of his treatment at the hands of the Pechenegs as a series of ordeals, where his behaviour and that of his companions ultimately impress the local authorities. Moreover, an ordeal by hot metal undergone by Poppo is said by Widukind of Corvey, writing apparently within a decade of the event in question, to have been the reason for the success of his mission to Harold Bluetooth. Before dismissing the claims made in our sources that Poppo and Bruno underwent some type of ordeal, it is worth remembering that this was a recognised legal process that was in force in the Carolingian world. The accounts of the martyrdom of Bruno, or at least those by Wipert and Damian (since the others are less detailed), scarcely fit into the model of mission set out by the martyr himself in his descriptions of the last days

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of Adalbert and of the eremitical community founded by Benedict and John. That does not mean that they are both fantasy, although they may be—ultimately the accuracy of the two narratives is a question that we cannot solve. What we can say is that they were regarded as plausible accounts of events, written within less than three decades of Bruno’s death. Rather than asking questions about accuracy, we are better off asking questions about the discourses to which the two narratives belonged. As we have seen, comparison with Thietmar’s account of Reinbern’s activities provide us with clear evidence that there were those who thought that the destruction of pagan objects was the right way to proceed. Bruno may have come to think that by 1009, but even if he had not, Wipert chose to depict him as acting in that way, and he and Damian both thought that it was appropriate to present the saint as undergoing a form of ordeal, even if in so doing they were adding a layer of interpretation to the actual events— although they may not have been. Bruno’s ideal pattern of mission, carried out by small groups of monks going native, but still living eremitical lives, and insinuating the doctrine of the Gospel into the communities in which they were living, was ultimately unworkable—or at least it would have taken far too long to implement. Besides, it depended on a lack of opposition on the part of the authorities as well as local communities—and among the Prussians and the Pechenegs it was apparently the ordinary people, as opposed to any state authority, who opposed the missionaries. We can assume that this reality came to influence Bruno, especially after his consecration as bishop. Dealing with rulers is something he acknowledges in the Letter to Henry, whereas it is only a background issue in the missionary sections of the Lives of Adalbert and of the Five Brothers. Interestingly, there are few references to merchants in this missionary hagiography—although Bruno relates that one of Adalbert’s confrontations with the people of Prague takes place at the mercatus magnus, and he records Adalbert’s presence at a market shortly before his martyrdom. Markets surely provided places to broadcast the gospel, and missionaries may sometimes have made use of trade routes, but it was politics and diplomacy that weighed more on Adalbert, Bruno and Reinbern—sometimes for negative reasons: even though Adalbert left his military support, his association with Bolesław rendered him unwelcome on his final voyage because the brother of one of Adalbert’s killers had died at the hands of the Poles. Politics and diplomacy are also apparent in the scramble to secure the bodies, first of Adalbert and then of Bruno and his companions after their martyrdom.

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One might conclude that large-scale mission, backed by the full grandeur of the Church, was coming to be seen as the most viable missionary strategy at the close of the first decade of the eleventh century. Following Bruno’s death, his old master Romuald set out with papal authorisation, and with two archbishops and twenty-four other clergies, to continue his missionary work. This is scarcely the image of Romuald that we find in the Life of the Five Brothers, where he rules over his eremitical followers in the marshes of Ravenna with a rod of iron. As it so happened, however, Romuald was not strong enough to continue the mission, and those that did go on achieved little or nothing (as Damian notes dismissively—this does not seem to have been a mission of which he approved). A century later, however, an ideal of apostolic poverty was reasserted by the Spanish monk Bernard, when he tried to evangelise Pomerania in 1122 as recorded in Ebo’s Vita Ottonis (although one should note that he travelled with a chaplain, sacerdotes and an interpreter). This style of evangelisation once again proved to be a failure. It was followed two years later by the highly successful large-scale mission of Otto of Bamberg, which had diplomatic and military backing, as well as a papal licence. In other words, in the 1120s we see exactly the same debates about strategy that we find just over a century earlier. One might note that the same questions emerged in the debates between Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits in their rival evangelical work in the New World. I began by arguing that the conflicts within our sources are such as to leave us uncertain about many points of detail when we try to reconstruct a narrative of the missionary work of Adalbert and Bruno. I suggested instead that a study of the ideology and, more specifically, of the practice of mission was more likely to produce results. It should now be clear that there was no single model for missionary practice at the end of the first and the start of the second millennium. Bruno alone takes us into a world where the whole notion and nature of mission was a matter for debate. His are the most complex set of responses to have survived in the sources, and his views seem to have changed over the course of his final decade. On the other hand, we can see that his were not the only opinions current at the time. Among his contemporaries we can point to Reinbern, as well as the leaders of the Polish Church, and to the secular rulers, Bolesław, Stephen of Hungary, Vladimir and perhaps Olof Skötkonung, all of whom seem to have had views on the practice of evangelisation. We can also see that, just as Bruno himself used narrative to contribute to the debate about mission, so too did Wipert, Thietmar and Peter Damian.

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A recurrent question in all our sources is how does one evangelise an alien society? What is remarkable about Bruno is not his success (although he clearly had some success in Hungary, among the Pechenegs, and perhaps above all through the work of his agents in Sweden), nor the narrative of that success, which will never be fully established, but the variety of strategies he deployed to meet the problem at hand. No one else that we know about in the early Middle Ages, not even Gregory the Great, showed such flexibility of mind while embarking on the evangelisation of pagan peoples. Bruno sketched out the possibility of Christianisation from the bottom up, but he was aware of the need to work through the existing structures of authority. He advocated an entirely peaceable vision of missionary activity, but some of his contemporaries, including Reinbern and possibly Radla or Azo, envisaged much more aggressive patterns of evangelisation, some of which Bruno himself may ultimately have adopted— but even if he did not, they were attributed to him by Wipert, who was supposedly present on his final mission. Where Bruno’s own ideas end and where the ideas of those interpreting his life take over is unclear: just as it is unclear where Adalbert’s ideas end and Bruno’s own reading of him begins. But if we cannot be absolutely sure about what we should attribute to Bruno himself and what we should attribute to Adalbert, Wipert and Damian, one point is unquestionable: Adalbert and Bruno were at the heart of a debate about missionary strategy that would not be bettered until the sixteenth century.

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Bruno, “Epistola ad Henricum Regem”, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s. IV, 3, ed. Jadwiga Karwasińska, Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawn. Naukowe, 1973a, 97–106. Bruno, “S. Adalberti Vita Altera, Redactio Longior: id., S. Adalberti Vita Altera, Redactio Brevior”, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s. IV, 2, ed. Jadwiga Karwasińska, Warsaw, 1969. Bruno, “Vita Quinque Fratrum”, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s. IV, 3, ed. Jadwiga Karwasińska, Warsaw, 1973b. Cosmas, Cronica Boemorum, II, 3–5, Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas von Prag, ed. Berthold Bretholz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum 2, Berlin, 1923. Die Annales Quedlinburgenses, s.a. 1009, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum 72, ed. Martina Giese, Hannover, 2004. “Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani”, Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, IV/2, ed. Kurt Reindel, München, 1983. Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima I. Ab anno 1000 usque ad annum 1131, ed. G. Gyórffy, Budapest, 1992, 54–59. Ebo, Vita Ottonis, II, 1–2, ed. Lorenz Weinrich and Jerzy Strzelczyk, Heiligenleben zur deutsch-slawischen Geschichte, Stuttgart, 2005. Gaşpar, Christian, “Passio sancti Adalberti martiris Christi”, Vitae Sanctorum Aetatis Conversionis Europae Centralis (Saec. X–XI), Budapest, 2013. Gelting, Michael, “Poppo’s ordeal: courtier bishops and the success of Christianization at the turn of the first millennium”, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 6 (2010), 101–133. Hartwig, Legenda sancti Stephani regis, 4, ed. Emericus Szentpétery, Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum II, Budapest, 1938. “Iudicium per aquam ferventem”, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges, V, Formulae Merovingici et Karolini Aevi, ed. K.  Zeumer, Hannover, 1886, 650–651. Janson, Henrik, “Konfliktinger i tidig nordeuropeisk kyrkoorganisation”, Kristendom i Danmark før 1050, ed. Niels Lund, Roskilde, 2004, 215–234. Janson, Henrik, “Pagani and Christiani – cultural identity and exclusion around the Baltic in the early Middle Ages”, The Reception of Medieval Europe in the Baltic Sea Region, Papers of the XIIth Visby Symposium held at Gotland University Visby, Visby, 2009, 171–191. Kade, Reinhard, Vita quinque fratrum Poloniae, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores XV, 2, Hannover, 1888. Karwasińska, Jadwiga, S.  Adalberti Pragensis episcopi et martyris, Vita prior, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, n.s. IV, 1, Warsaw, 1962. Keefer, Sarah, “Donne se cirlisca man ordales weddiged: The Anglo-Saxon Lay ordeal”, Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Stephen Baxter, Catherine Karkov, Janet L.  Nelson and David Pelteret, Farnham, 2009, 353–368.

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Legenda maior sancti Stephani Regis, 4–5, ed. Emericus Szentpétery, Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum II, Budapest, 1938. Markus, R. A., “Gregory the Great and a papal missionary strategy”, Studies in Church History 6, The Mission of the Church and the Propagation of the Faith, ed. G. J. Cuming, Cambridge, 1960, 29–38. Miladinov, Marina, “Vita Quinque Fratrum”, Vitae Sanctorum Aetatis Conversionis Europae Centralis, Budapest, 2013. Miladinov, Marina, Margins of Solitude: Eremitism in Central Europe between East and West, Zagreb, 2008, 67–84. Muratori, Ludovico Antonio, Opere del Proposto III, Arezzo, 1757. Múcska, Vincent, ‘Bruno z Querfurtu a Uhorsko’, Historia Slavorum Occidentalis 1, 6 (2014), 62–73. Nicolas I, “Epistola 99”, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae VI, ed. E. Perels, Berlin, 1892. Petri Damiani Vita beati Romualdi, Fonti per la Storia d’Italia 94, ed. Giovanni Tabacco, Rome, 1957. Sosnowski, Miłosz, ”Kilka uwag o chronologii życia i twórczości Brunona z Kwerfurtu”, Roczniki Historyczne 82 (2016), 63–79. Thietmar, Chronicon, VI, 20, ed. Werner Trillmich, Thietmar von Merseburg, Chronik, Darmstadt, 1957. Tóth, Sándor László, “The White and Black Hungarians”, Chronica (Szeged), 9–10 (2009), 5–14. Urbańczyk, Przemysław, Rosik, Stanislaw, “The Kingdom of Poland”, Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c.900–1200, ed. Nora Berend, Cambridge, 2007, 263–318. Urbańczyk, Przemysław, “Tempo pocza ̨tków chrystianizacji ziem piastowskich”, Chrzest Mieszka I i chrystianizacja państwa Piastów, ed. J. Dobosz, M. Matla and J. Strzelczyk, Poznań, 2017a, 185–197. Urbańczyk, Przemysław, Bolesław Chrobry – lew rycza ̨cy, Torun, 2017b. “Vita et Passio S.  Brunonis episcopi et martyris Querfordensis”, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 30, 2, ed. Heinrich Kauffmann, Leipzig, 1934, 1350–1367. “Vita Tertia Adalberti”, 1, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XV 2, ed. G. Waitz, Hannover, 1888, 706–708. Vlasto, A. P., The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom, Cambridge, 1970. Widukind, Res gestae Saxonicae, III, 65, ed. A. Bauer and R. Rau, Quellen zur Geschichte der sächsischen Kaiserzeit, Darmstadt, 1971. Wipert, Hystoria de predicatione episcopi Brunonis cum suis capellanis in Pruscia et martirio eorum, ed. Miłosz Sosnowski, ‘Anonimowa Passio s. Adalperti martiris (BHL 40) oraz Wiperta Historie de predicatione episcopi Brunonis (BHL1471b)  – komentarz, edycja, przekład’, Rocznik Biblioteki Narodowej 43, (2012), 5–74.

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Wood, Ian, “‘The Ends of the Earth’. The Bible, Bibles and the Other in Early Medieval Europe”, The Calling of the Nations: Exegesis, Ethnography, and Empire in a Biblical-Historical Present, ed. M. Vessey, S. V. Betcher, R. A. Daum and H.O. Maier, Toronto, 2011, 200–216. Wood, Ian, “Ideas of mission in the Carolingian World”, Le monde carolingien: Bilan, perspectives, champs de recherches, ed. W.  Falkowski and Y.  Sassier, Turnhout, 2009, 183–198. Wood, Ian, “Martyrdom in early Christian Rus”, Historia Slavorum Occidentis 18 (2018), 11–26. Wood, Ian, “Mission auprès des païens et travail pastoral: le vocabulaire de la conversion (Europe du nord, 7–10 siècles)”, Pouvoir politique et conversion religieuse, 1, normes et mots, ed. Thomas Lienhard and Isabelle Poutrin, Rome, 2018, online edition 2017, pp. 27–39. Wood, Ian, “The gifts of Wearmouth and Jarrow”, The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages, ed. W. Davies and P. Fouracre, Cambridge, 2010, 89–115. Wood, Ian, “Western missionaries in Eastern Europe, 962-1009”, Ancient Rus and Medieval Europe: The Emergence of Early Medieval States, ed. Tatiana Jackson, Moscow, 2016a, 356–378. Wood, Ian, “What is a mission?”, The Introduction of Christianity into the Early Medieval Insular World, Converting the Isles, 1, ed. Roy Flechner and Máire Ni Mhaonaigh, Turnhout, 2016b, 135–156. Wood, Ian, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe 400–1050, Harlow, 2001. Рыбаков, Владимир В., Хроника Адама Бременского и первые христианские миссионеры в Скандинавии, Москва, 2008.

CHAPTER 5

Who Converted the Poles? Przemysław Urbańczyk

At first glance, such a question may seem to be rhetorical because the answer is probably obvious for the vast majority of Poles who unanimously accept the deeply rooted historiographic tradition, which offers a very clear answer: “This happened in 966 by the decision of Prince Mieszko I.” This millennium-long explanation has recently been harmoniously approved by the Polish parliament, the government and the Church. On February 22, 2019, the Parliament voted through the Act which appointed April 14 as the official “National Day of the Baptism of Poland.” This was done “In order to commemorate the baptism of Poland, dated to the 14th April 966, stressing the significance of the Mieszko’s I decision, acknowledged as the beginning of the Polish State.” This decision quite naturally followed a sumptuous celebration of this fact’s 1050th anniversary, which was organised in April 2016 as the state-ecclesiastical event. Thus, the political decision formally removed all doubts and closed the discussion still continued by scholars who point to numerous uncertainties stemming from unclear historical sources and archaeological evidence. The parliamentary vote not only “solved” the scholarly problem but also

P. Urbańczyk (*) Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University, Warsaw, Poland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_5

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imposed a precise date for which no credible sources exist. This historiographic voluntarism well illustrates the danger brought by jumbling together research and politics, which may result in producing false knowledge. The contents of medieval texts which refer to the rule of the first Polish historic ruler Mieszko I (before 963 to May 992) provoke a series of difficult questions regarding the chronology, course, extent and effects of his Christianisation efforts. Available written sources or material evidence does not provide us with information that is precise enough to unambiguously grasp the religious change which took place in the earliest Piast state. Also, the occasion of Mieszko’s baptism remains completely unknown and doubts may be raised even regarding the date of this event. For nine hundred years the Polish traditional vision has been referring to the Gallus Anonymus “Chronicle” (book I, 6), where it is clearly claimed that with Mieszko’s baptism, the “Polish nation was saved from death in paganism.” The prince’s conversion was to initiate a quick ideological breakthrough, which resulted in the effective and extensive Christianisation of the whole country. With time, that individual act of conversion became “the Baptism of Poland” and assumed the dimension of a national emblem. Thus, the baptism of Mieszko has been considered as the cornerstone of an eternal Poland understood as a demographic, geographical and political unity of sincere Christians. The long-cherished dogma of the swift conversion of the Piast subjects to Christianity after 966 is not supported by abundant historic sources. On the contrary, we have to face the lack of records written down in the crucial period of the religious transition. None of Mieszko’s contemporaries noticed his baptism, and the first account was written almost half a century later by the Saxon chronicler Thietmar, the Bishop of Merseburg. He openly admitted that he was uncertain about the date of the event: 966 or maybe 968 (Thietmar IV, 56)? A similar chronological discrepancy is visible in the oldest “Polish annals” compiled sometime in the mid-­ eleventh century. Most of them pointed to the year 966, but some say that the event took place in 967 or even in 960. Therefore, it seems that the “canonical” date of 966 has been chosen from several alternatives in order to create a logical sequence: (1) the marriage of Mieszko and the Bohemian princess Dobravka in 965, (2) Mieszko’s baptism in 966 and (3) the birth of their son Bolesłav in 967. This looks like an ex-post creation of an order imposed on the disturbingly unclear past of the Christian dynasty. This uncertainty should commend

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critical caution when attempting unambiguous chronological adjudications. Thietmar (book IV, 56) mentions “hard labour” performed by Bishop Jordan who in 968 arrived at Mieszko’s court and “indefatigable in his efforts, he [eventually] induced them, by word and deed, to cultivate the Lord’s vineyard.” The Bishop’s missionary enthusiasm made him optimistically declare that subsequently “all their [Mieszko’s and Dobravka’s] subjects entered into matrimony with Christ.” This is a typical example of medieval authors’ inclination to use distinct definitions of what was Christian and what was non-Christian. By contrasting the two “worlds” perceived as unambiguously separated, they attained chronological clarity. With this, the early medieval chroniclers purposefully “dichotomised” the past into clearly separate epochs: the dark period dominated by moral and religious chaos and the proper Christian era imposed by the divine plan of reordering the world. Such an assumption implied a simple periodisation that was accepted by later historians who have viewed paganism as an opposition to Christianity, perceived in turn as a monolithic entity. This has allowed them to create a heuristically convenient opposition and to avoid problematic disputes related to the complex situation of what was probably a long-term coexistence of the two worldviews. Use of such a generalised contrast spared them the efforts required to trace the historically diversified processes of religious transformation, when a long-lasting dialectical confrontation was probably composed of periods of accelerated and decelerated evangelisation, if not periodic decline, as in the fourth decade of the eleventh century, when the Christian Kingdom of Poland collapsed, which offered the shallow underlying pagan sentiments a good chance to resurface. Moreover, the (pre)assumed “revolutionary” change model allowed historians to assume religious homogeneity in the whole country and thus to eliminate the arduous task of taking local specificities into scholarly account. These historical doubts find strong support in archaeological finds, which offer no material evidence that would testify to Mieszko’s pursuit of extensive Christianisation. Apart from his “capital” seat in Poznań and another central stronghold on the Ostrów Lednicki island, no other so early investments in ecclesiastic infrastructure have been discovered. This denies the claim of the fourteenth century “Traska’s annals” (book 2) that Mieszko founded and furbished a number of monasteries and churches. The small number of consecrated temples contradicts the traditional vision

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of an ostensibly Christian country, because for a quarter of a century there were only two churches to celebrate the liturgy. In addition, there are no finds of items related to the liturgy or signifying individual devotion (e.g. small crosses) that could be dated to the time of Mieszko’s reign. The prince did not  even issue coins marked with crosses, which typically were minted by Christian rulers. And the eschatological sphere does not show archaeologically observable effects of the conversion, which should have manifested itself in the radical change of the burial rite—namely, from cremation to burying whole dead bodies, in line with the Christian funerary principle. There are simply no reliably dated inhumation graves identified even in the very heart of Mieszko’s state. Thus, surprisingly, during circa three decades following the symbolic date of 966, no material traces whatsoever of Christianity’s expansion are presently known. This meaningful lack of relevant material evidence leads to the critical conclusion that Mieszko I did not invest in the material infrastructure of Christianity and he did not attain archaeologically observable successes in the evangelisation of his subjects. Perhaps the reason for the very slow progress of Christianisation in his state resulted from the lack of external missionary assistance. The “fraternal” Bohemian Church was understaffed and too weak to support its northern neighbour with appropriately prepared missionaries, while the German Church had no political interest in supporting the Polish diocese which it could not control institutionally. Or, maybe, Mieszko I faced too strong opposition among his people, who either passively but efficiently “boycotted” the radical religious change or actively resisted evangelisation. What if he forcefully converted his subjects, but they—without being regularly evangelised— reverted to the faith of their ancestors? 1 Or, maybe, he was not really engaged in the promotion of the new faith and tolerated religious dualism? Such a position might be understood as the “splendid isolation” manifested by the Christian elite who felt civilisational superiority over their pagan subjects. Mieszko I was not the only early medieval monarch who had to seek a compromise between what the Church expected and his subjects’ 1  This is the sort of trouble that Polish Duke Boleslaus III the Wrymouth (Bolesław III Krzywousty, 1107–1138) faced in Pomerania. Once conquered militarily, the Pomeranians would frequently “seek salvage in baptism, but once having recovered their strength again, recanted the Christian faith” (Gall Anonim, Book I, Introduction).

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attachment to their traditional customs and habits. We know such situations from other late Christianised countries (e.g. Sweden, Hungary and the petty state of the Polabian Obodrites), which faced prolonged periods of dual faith. And everywhere, even long after the formal Christianisation, various pagan traditions were observed not only by simple peasants but also by members of the political elites. This has often provoked social tensions or even open conflicts with the Church. An extreme situation of this kind took place in Bohemia, where the zealot Bishop of Prague Voytech-­ Adalbert twice fled his diocese (in 988 and 994) in protest against breaking the basic requirements of the Church (Vita I, 13 and 19; Vita II, 11–12 and 16). The Polish case is further complicated by some archaeological discoveries. The most thought-provoking is a palace-and-church complex made of stone uncovered on Ostrów Tumski—the river island in Poznań. According to Hanna Kóčka-Krenz (2010), and the dendrochronology in particular, this palatium was built sometime after 940. Such a dating provokes a serious question about the commonly accepted date of Mieszko I’s baptism and undermines the prevailing conviction that “it was the celebration of baptism that marked for the Polish ruler the first event that enabled his contact with the symbolic sphere of Western culture,” in the words of Leszek Wetesko (2013). The construction of a church/chapel forming an integral wing of this ducal palace leaves no doubt with regard to the Christian connotation of the annex building. The direction of the architectural inspiration for the small Poznań temple, according to Hanna Kóčka-Krenz (2015), is indicated by the eighth- to tenth-century architectural parallels found in Molzbichl (Carinthia), Uznach (Saint Gallen Canton, Switzerland) and Eldagsen (near Hildesheim in Saxony). The most interesting parallel is offered by a small church built in Prague by Princess Dobravka’s great-­ uncle, Spytihněv I (c. 895–915). Both Zbigniew Pianowski (2004) and the author of this article (2012) have stressed that the two churches, in Prague and Poznań, were erected in political centres and were both dedicated to Our Lady. If the current chronology of the Poznań structure remains unchanged, we should approve the functioning in the centre of the small state in Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) of an early enclave of Christians well before the “canonical” date of 966. Such a suspicion has found further support in the chronology of another palatium, which stood on the Ostrów Lednicki Island (see: https://pl.pinterest.com/pin/350717889713104492/).

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Following T.  Goslar, E.  Pawlak and A.M.  Wyrwa (2020), their recently reconsidered 14C dating indicated that this complex had been finished in 963/964, i.e. also before 966. These discoveries imply serious questions about the religious situation in the early Piast state before the traditional date of Christianisation. Two chapels/churches attached to stone palaces in Poznań and Ostrów Lednicki must be looked at as material demonstrations, not only of the presence of Christ’s followers at the ducal court, but as a strong indicator that Mieszko’s forefathers who ordered building of those temples were themselves Christians. The explanation of this surprising deduction needs a reinterpretation of the earliest history of the Piast state and reconsideration of the origins of the dynasty. Elsewhere, I presented (see esp. Urbańczyk 2012, 129–166) a complex hypothesis which, using available historical, onomastic and archaeological information, suggested a Great Moravian descent of Mieszko I’s ancestors. Here it is sufficient to recall that the Moravian ruling house of Moimirids was fundamentally Christian. Mieszko would thus have belonged to the second or third generation of Christians who escaped northwards after the collapse of the first West Slavonic state in 906 and twenty years later they started organisation of a new petty state in central Poland. If Mieszko’s ancestors were indeed descendants from the Moimirid dynasty itself, or from the Great Moravian elite, then, after immigrating to central Poland, those Christians had to face the effects of their long-lasting isolation from regular contacts with the institutional Church or from a total detachment from the ecclesial network. The basic spiritual ministry could have been provided by visiting priests, but there is no source that tells us about such visits prior to the official date of Mieszko’s baptism. Especially problematic would have been the lack of (albeit intermittent) contact with a bishop. For, only a bishop could ensure the ordainment of priests, consecration of altars, blessing of the holy oils, administration of the sacrament of Confirmation, sacral assignment of burial grounds and commencement of the construction of a church. Even if the problem of having no consecrated ecclesial altars could have been solved by the interim use of portable altars, which were a popular way of coping with the unavailability of a network of permanent churches in early medieval Europe (Budde 1998), the long-lasting relative isolation from the centres of institutionalised Christianity would have caused a degeneration of the religion professed in the early Piast state. However, the fact that somebody had churches built in Poland before 966 certainly

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attests that he considered himself a Christian, even if he was not regarded from outside as a “true” Christian. The assumed origin of the Piast dynasty from Great Moravia explains very well not only the early presence of churches/chapels but also other aspects of the earliest history of the Polish state: (1) The traditional vision of the state having been gradually built by the locals born in the middle of the mid-Polish forests is hard to sustain, because they would have had no necessary knowledge. Immigrants from the trans-Carpathian south would have had the necessary experience in the governance of a territorial state. Such know-how was essential to organise a new political and administrative system in the area where no previous complex organisations had existed. (2) The Moravians also had valuable knowledge on how to finance a state. It is well known that the Great Moravian economy was substantially supported by profits made on the trade in slaves. This specific “merchandise” was constantly sought in the vast Muslim areas stretching from the Middle East, through North Africa and to the Andalusian Caliphate. According to Michael McCormick (2001), the main Central European market for Slavic slaves was located in Moravian Bratislava/Pressburg, from which they were transported to the Adriatic ports. After the expansion of the Magyars in the 890s and the subsequent collapse of Great Moravia in 906, this old system was replaced with a new one, where slaves were transported along the transcontinental trade route leading from Andalusia via Bohemia and south-eastern Poland to the Black and Caspian Seas. In the second quarter of the tenth century, the main slave market was located in Prague. Numerous finds of Arabic dirhams dated to this same time, concentrate exactly in the area where the early Piast state was being built. This coincidence allows us to guess that Mieszko’s ancestors joined the lucrative trade in slaves, skilfully applying the knowledge inherited from the Moravians. The earliest Piasts could have built their economic foundations on selling slaves captured around their own territory to both Bohemia and to Scandinavian merchants who were active along the Baltic coast. (3) A southern origin is visible in the names of the two early Piast centres of Poznań and Sandomierz, which, according to the linguists, may be derived from Moravian family names—Poznan and Sudomir, respec-

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tively. Another onomastic connection stems from the name of ­Svatopluk given by  Mieszko I to his second son. It was surely not without good reason that he thus referred to the dynastic name of the Moravian ruling house of Moimirids. (4) Finally, one may see similarities in the geopolitical strategy of Mieszko I and Svatopluk I who both dedicated their states to the Holy See (to Pope John VIII in 884 and Pope John XIII in 991), in order to counterpose the growing power of the East Frankish state and the Ottonian Empire, respectively. More than a century dividing those two acts may seem too long to suspect a continuous tradition, but the similarity of these decisions is really striking. In the light of the current knowledge, the extent of Christianity for most of the rule of Mieszko I was limited to his inner circle, i.e. the stately elite, because there is no historical source or archaeological evidence that would indicate any efficient missionary effort beyond his close collaborators. As to the common inhabitants of his state, no historical sources or archaeological testimonies exist that would be indicative of any extensive missionary campaign that he might have launched. We do not know whether this scarcity of relevant evidence results from his low efficiency, from his lack of missionary determination, or perhaps from the opposition of his subjects who were stubbornly attached to their traditional religious beliefs. But it might also have been that Mieszko “was not strongly concerned about Christianity” and, driven by political pragmatism, imposed upon his subjected community “only as much as his people could bear,” to cite Stanisław Zakrzewski (1921). The difficulties in eradicating pagan habits are well illustrated by the situation in neighbouring Bohemia, where several dozen years after the local dynasty’s official conversion, the first Bishop of Prague, Thietmar/ Dětmar (973–982), still had to baptise pagan people (“populum gentilem baptizans”—see Cosmas, book I, 24). A quarter of a century later, the Bohemian Duke Boleslaus III the Red (999–1003) was seriously worried that the Bohemians were still attached to “pagan practices” (Thietmar, book V, 29). It was Stefan Albrecht (2010) who rightfully suspected that the neophytes “for the most part did not understand the sacramental character of baptism.” Hence, in the words of Elena Melnikova (2011), “Both the missionaries and the Church authorities were fully aware of the ignorance

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of their new flock in Christian matters and of that flock’s inability to appreciate Christian teaching in its complexity as well as its particulars.” Mieszko’s passive strategy might have changed in the last period of his rule, when he openly allied himself with the Ottonian Empire. This may be indicated by the commencement of the construction of a monumental cathedral church at Ostrów Tumski in Poznań. The situation of the Piast Church in the ninth decade of the tenth century allows us to guess the mainly political reason for this very ambitious investment project. For, it might have been an argument in pressing the Empire to “release” from Saxony the newly appointed bishop Unger, who, after his investiture in 982–983, apparently delayed his arrival in Poland. Aneta Bukowska (2009; 2013) proved that Mieszko had decided to build a church that was architecturally equal to Emperor Otto’s II foundation in Memleben, where bishop Unger served as an abbot. The construction of a monumental cathedral without a bishop exercising his office on site was a political manifestation of the determination of the Christian ruler and a form of symbolic pressure on the imperial court of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Church and the Pope. Bearing in mind that the Carolingian Canon Law had already banned the commencement of constructing any church without consent from the bishop, it has to be assumed that either the first bishop Jordan had granted such consent before his death in 980–982, and the progress of the work was hindered due to various circumstances, or perhaps his successor did in fact briefly stay in Poland and allowed the project to get underway. It was Mieszko’s son Bolesław Chrobry (992–1025) who really launched the process of extensive and intensive evangelisation. Even the openly “anti-Piast” bishop of Merseburg Thietmar considered Bolesław’s state to be a truly Christian one. He emphasised the orthodoxy of the prince himself, who applied extremely cruel methods to impose on his subjects the behaviour following the moral expectations of the Church (Thietmar, book VIII, 2), and he consulted the guidelines of the Canon Law (Thietmar, book VI, 92). Thietmar (book VII, 60) also appreciated the determination of the Christian defenders of Niemcza, who in the year 1017 desperately resisted the attacks of the invading army of emperor Henry II (1002–1024) allied with pagan Luticians. During the rule of Bolesław Chrobry, Poland experienced a visible acceleration of the Christianisation process. From the beginning of his rule, he promoted imitatio imperii to the rank of the state strategy, which included strong support for the Church. Thus, he made extensive

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investments in ecclesial architecture (in Giecz, Gniezno, Kałdus, Kraków, Łekno, Ostrów Lednicki, Poznań, Przemyśl and probably Wrocław), he “imported” the evangelisation staff from Bohemia, Saxony and even Italy, and he compelled observance of the basic requirements of Christianity. His active propagation of Christianity is confirmed by rich archaeological evidence. This includes: ecclesiastic stone architecture with its impressive scale and size; coinage which strongly emphasised Christian symbolism; the funeral rite progressively changing from cremation to inhumation; and artefacts related to the new religion, such as personal crosses, fragments of ornamented reliquaries and book bindings. Thus, the recent State and Church celebration of the 1050th anniversary of Mieszko’s baptism does not change the fact that our knowledge on what actually happened in 966 is far from obvious. Whatever the case, archaeology today undermines not only the traditional vision of Mieszko I as the successful Christianiser, but also the very fact of his baptism in 966.

Bibliography Albrecht, Stefan, “Der Mauerbau von Stará Boleslav”, Medieval and Early Modern Studies for Central and Eastern Europe, Vol. 2, Iaşi, 2010. Budde, Michael, Altare portatile. Kompendium der Tragaltare des Mittelalters 600–1600, vols. I–III, Münster, 1998. Bukowska, Aneta, “Forma i geneza pierwszej katedry w Poznaniu”, Architektura romańska w Polsce. Nowe odkrycia i interpretacje, ed. T.  Janiak, Gniezno, 2009, 175–208. Bukowska, Aneta, Najstarsza katedra w Poznaniu. Problem formy i jej genezy w kontekscie ́ architektury około roku 1000, Kraków, 2013. Cosmae Pragensi Chronica Boemorum, ed. E. Bretholz, Berlin, 1923. Galli Anonymi Chronicon, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, vol. I, 390–484. Goslar, Tomasz, E.  Pawlak, and A.  M. Wyrwa, “Datowanie zabytków Ostrowa Lednickiego na podstawie analizy bayesowskiej dat radiowęglowych”, Ostrów Lednicki  – palatium Mieszka I i Bolesława Chrobrego. Chronologia i kontekst, Lednica, 2020, 323–350. Kóčka-Krenz, Hanna, Poznań in the 10th Century, Poznań, 2011. Kóčka-Krenz, Hanna, Na wyspie Ostrów, przy której dzis ́jest Poznań, Poznań, 2012. Kóčka-Krenz, Hanna, “Poznań w czasach panowania pierwszych Piastów”, Ziemia, człowiek, sztuka. Interdyscyplinarne studia nad ziemia ̨. Archeologia–historia–kultura–sztuka, ed. U. Mazurczak, Lublin, 2015, 71–98. McCormick, Michael, Origins of the European Economy, Cambridge, 2001.

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Melnikova, Elena, “How Christian were Viking Christians?”, Early Christianity on the Way from the Varangians to the Greeks, eds. I. Garipzanov and O. Tolochko, Kiev, 2011. Pianowski, Zbigniew, “Który Bolesław? – Problem pocza ̨tku architektury monumentalnej w Małopolsce”, Pocza ̨tki architektury monumentalnej w Polsce, Gniezno, 2004. S. Adalberti Pragensis Episcopi et martyris Vita prior [Vita I], Monumenta Poloniae Historica – sn, ed. J. Karwasińska, vol. 4, part 1, Warszawa, 1962. S. Adalberti Pragensis Episcopi et martyris Vita altera auctore Brunone Querfurtensi [Vita II], Monumenta Poloniae Historica – sn, ed. J. Karwasińska, vol. 4, part 2, Warszawa, 1969. Thietmar, Kronika Thietmara, ed. M. Z. Jedlicki, Poznań, 1953. Urbańczyk, Przemysław, Mieszko Pierwszy tajemniczy, Torun, 2012. Wetesko, Leszek, Piastowie i ich państwo w łacińskiej Europie. Studia z dziejów kultury politycznej X i XII wieku, Poznań, 2013. Zakrzewski, Stanisław, Mieszko I jako budowniczy państwa polskiego, Warszawa, 1921.

CHAPTER 6

Great Moravia: The Uneasy Beginnings of Slavic Christendom Alexandar Nikolov

The Great Migrations and the Slavic Diaspora: Pannonia After the Huns (from the Middle of the Fifth to the Beginning of the Ninth Centuries) The transition between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages was marked by several massive changes in the life of the Europeans and the peoples around the Mediterranean. It was the “decline and fall” of the Roman Empire, replaced in the West by the Germanic “Barbarian” Kingdoms and by the Eastern Roman Empire in the East, known also by a terminus technicus as Byzantium, the medieval continuation of the Roman tradition. From a persecuted sect, Christians became the dominant religion in the former Roman territories. Byzantium, since the time of Justinian the Great (527–565), had emerged as the stronghold of the Nicaean Orthodoxy, while the Papacy held the religious and cultural unity

A. Nikolov (*) St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_6

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of the former Roman West, slowly absorbing the Germanic Arians and the remnants of the Pagans in its sway. Constantinople and Rome, in spite of their controversies on dogmatic or administrative issues, continued the spread of Christianity not only in the former Roman provinces but also in the moving “Barbarian” periphery. After the rapid disappearance of the Hunnic Empire, following the death of Attila in 453, Eastern and Central Europe met a new wave of migrants, the Slavs. These numerous tribes, speaking closely related dialects and very vaguely known to the authors of Antiquity until the end of the fifth century, became an important element of the demographic structure of East-Central, South-eastern and Eastern Europe. Perhaps Jordanes was the first historian to also describe their three main branches: “Sclaveni” in the former provinces of Pannonia and Dacia, “Veneti” in the territories of modern Poland, Bohemia, Slovakia and Eastern Germany, and “Antae” in the future territories of Kievan Rus’. The Sclaveni, living on the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire, were in general hostile to the Empire. In the first half of the sixth century, their attacks provoked Justinian the Great to undertake a massive construction of fortifications in the Balkans in order to defend these territories from the “Barbarians”. The situation, however, did not improve with the arrival of the Avars, in the middle of the sixth century, and the foundation of the mighty Avar Qaganate in Pannonia. The Avars conquered part of the local Slavs and began intensive wars with Byzantium. During the first decades of the seventh century, the Byzantines had to mobilize all their strength to survive in a multilateral conflict, fighting Persians, Avars, Slavs and Bulgars. The peak of these events was the siege of Constantinople in 626, when the city almost miraculously survived a fierce combined attack of almost all its enemies. However, the Slavs, being Avar allies or enemies, penetrated deep into the Byzantine territories of Southeast Europe. Thus, they became an important part of the population of this part of the continent and slowly started to integrate into various local social, religious and political structures. Some of the new settlers kept their autonomy as Imperial foederatae (like the Serbs) or as semi-independent Sclaviniae. Others were conquered or became allies of the newly founded Danubian Bulgaria after 681. The defeat of the Avars at the walls of Constantinople in 626 provoked new conflicts in Pannonia. Bulgar clans, being loyal to the Avar Qagan up to this moment, started to aspire to hegemony in the Qaganate. They were defeated and had to flee to Bavaria and Carinthia around 631. As early as 623, according to the Frankish Chronicle of Fredegarius, the

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“Vinedi-Slavs” also rebelled against the Avar rule. They were led by a certain Samo, a Frankish merchant, who was widely popular among the Slavs. After 626 the positions of the rebels strengthened and Samo founded a vast “quasi-state”, which included the territories of Northern Pannonia, Moravia and Bohemia. He even succeeded in defeating the Frankish army of King Dagobert (629–639) in 631 at Vogatisburg, in the “Vinedian lands”. However, after the death of Samo in 658, his “realm” quickly disintegrated. The Avars succeeded in restoring at least partially their dominance over East-Central Europe. In the second half of the eighth century, they had stronger neighbours in the face of the emerging Carolingian dynasty, to the West, and Danubian Bulgaria that had successfully overcome a heavy political and military crisis by the end of the eighth century, to the East. The Frankish-Avar wars from the 790s and the total defeat of the Avars around 803 led to the fall of the Avar Qaganate. Its western parts were annexed by the Franks and became the core of the so-called Pannonian or Eastern mark of the Carolingian Empire, settled by Bavarian colonists. In the tenth century it would become “Ostarichi”, the cradle of modern Austria. The remnants of the Avars were baptized and soon disappeared as a separate ethnic group. Furthermore, the ecclesiastical administration, subdued for the archbishop of Salzburg (since 798), emerged in the border region of the Carolingian Empire. The role of the newly established Archbishopric in the process of the conversion of Central Europe would grow constantly throughout the following decades. Some of the easternmost Avar territories were annexed by Bulgaria. The Bulgars (still pagans at that time) extended their control to Southern Transylvania and Lower Pannonia, thus becoming neighbours and adversaries of the Carolingian Empire in East-Central Europe. The central territories of the former Avar Qaganate, inhabited by various Slavic communities, became a borderland between the Carolingians and the Bulgars. This was a complicated position, but also a possibility for independent development.

The Emergence of Great Moravia The vacuum left by the collapse of the Avar Qaganate created opportunities for various combinations of tribal unions and new emerging polities of the local Slavs. Some of these polities existed in the time of Samo’s “realm” and could retain a certain level of autonomy even under the Avars. Now,

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they had to deal with the Carolingians and the Bulgars, who tried to establish stricter control over Pannonia. From the end of the eighth century, a Salzburg mission was actively penetrating into the Carantanian March, stretching to the confluence of the Drava and the Danube. Later “provintia Carantanorum” also extended over the Transdanubia and Lower Pannonia. Other parts of the newly acquired territories to the south (the “Savian Principality”) were under the auspices of the Patriarch of Aquileia, while Upper Pannonia was under the administration of the bishop of Passau. Among the earliest Frankish vassals in the broader region of Pannonia, since 797 was Vojnomir, prince of the Savian Principality with its centre in Siscia (modern Sisak in Croatia), who was dependent on the margrave of Friuli. Some turbulent events took place in Pannonia between 805 and 811 known as infestationes Slavorum. Some of the last Avar strongholds there were destroyed, attacked by the surrounding Slavs. Only in 811 did a Frankish military campaign in the restless areas succeeded in restoring relative peace. The last mentions of a separate Avar delegation from Upper Pannonia to the Frankish court are from 822. After this date, the local Slavic princes could be regarded as completely independent rulers in their principalities on the Frankish borders. The year 814 marked a new stage in the development of Pannonia and the surrounding territories. It was the deaths of Charlemagne and the Bulgar Khan Krum, the two rulers who had defeated and subjugated the Avars. The successor of Krum, Omurtag (814–831), quickly concluded a peace treaty with Byzantium and made serious attempts to strengthen his positions to the northwest. His first actions were against the tribes of the Timociani and Abodritae (Praedenecenti), two Slavic allies of Bulgaria that did not, however, accept the elimination of their autonomy by the supreme Bulgar ruler. The efforts for the centralization of Bulgaria forced them to seek help from Charlemagne’s successor, Louis the Pious. In 818 envoys of the Abodritae, the Timociani, the Croatian Prince Borna and the Savian Prince Ljudevit (Louis) arrived in Herstal, at the court of the Emperor, seeking protection from the Bulgars. Then, in 824 and 827, the Bulgars attacked the disputed territories on Tisza and the Middle Danube and plundered the areas, inhabited by the Slavs. The peace with the Franks was restored only in 832, with the death of Omurtag and the accession of Malamir (831–836) in Bulgaria. In the meantime, part of the bordering Slavic population was converted by the Salzburg missionaries. These were the “Carantanians”, a broader concept of different Slavic communities,

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which were not only the Chorutans/Slovenes, but also other Slavic groups in Transdanubia. Almost at the same time, the dux Guduscanorum, Borna, one of the leading princes among the Croats, accepted Christianity, too. His capital Nin (Nona) later became the seat of a Latin bishop. Between 819 and 822, the Franks had to enter into an alliance with Borna against the rebellious Savian Prince Ljudevit, who wanted to establish full control over a vast territory around the Sava River. Finally, after his death in 823, the Savian principality declined. Latin Christianity, however, started to penetrate deep into Lower Pannonia, among the Croats and the “Chorutans” of today’s Slovenia. Their neighbours, the Serbs, were under strong Byzantine influence and had to fight with the Bulgars, who sought to expand into their territories, from the time of Khan Persian (836–852). Emissaries from Constantinople were successfully working among the Serbs. In Upper Pannonia, to the north, the Frankish influence was less prominent, while the Byzantines and the Bulgars were far away. Other centres of power started to develop among the local Slavs here. Since the beginning of the rule of Louis the Pious, one could identify “the Moravians” as a separate entity, dependent on the Franks. In 817, in a special charter, they were mentioned as subjects of Louis the German, among many other “Eastern Slavs”. Their first centre “Morava Castle”, or Veligrad/Velehrad of later sources, is more often identified with modern Mikulčice in Southern Moravia, on the Morava/March River (close to the borders of modern Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria). Their first well-known leader was Prince Mojmir (ca. 818–846) who founded the dynasty of the Mojmirids, which ruled Great Moravia during its relatively short period of independent history. Neighbours of the Moravians were the Nitravians, with their centre at Nitra in modern Southern Slovakia, on the Nitria River. Their first documented ruler, Pribina, played an important role in the penetration of Latin Christianity among these Slavic communities. The first contacts of Pribina with the Franks were in the context of the Bulgar expansion in the basins of the rivers Drava and Sava between 827 and 829. The Bulgars succeeded in establishing control over the local Savian Principality, ruled by Prince Ratmir, a former Frankish vassal. The Frankish domination over Pannonia was a real challenge, and the Franks organized a large campaign to drive away the Bulgars. In 828, at the Council of Aachen, Louis the Pious discussed the plans for the defence of Pannonia, which was plundered by the Bulgars without any resistance. His envoy, Archbishop Adalram of Salzburg, arrived in Nitra in order to attract

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Pribina for an anti-Bulgar coalition, aiming to expel them at least from Transdanubia. Obviously, the mission was successful, as well as the actions of Louis the German (King of Bavaria at the time) against the Bulgars. However, in 829, Pannonia suffered from another Bulgar attack. In the meantime, Adalram consecrated a church at Nitra, dedicated to St. Emmeram, although at that time Pribina was still pagan. Clearly, Christianity was slowly spreading among the Nitravians, despite the fact that the majority of the elite still remained pagan. As was usually the case throughout the early Middle Ages, Christianity penetrated the court of Pribina through his wife, an unknown Bavarian aristocrat, belonging to the family of the Count of Traungau, Wilhelm I. The strong link with Bavaria is corroborated by the fact that their son, Kocel, had a Bavarian name and was more popularly known as Gozil. Thus, the nucleus of the Christian community in Nitra started to develop around Pribina’s wife. Perhaps Kocel was baptized immediately after his birth, although his father, Pribina, remained pagan for the time being. Meanwhile, the Bishop of Passau, Reginhar, succeeded in confirming the rights of his diocese over Upper Pannonia and restricted the influence of the Salzburg Archbishopric to a great extent, limiting his power to Lower Pannonia. The Records of the Passau Bishopric state that in 831 he baptized “all the Moravians”. This probably concerned only the subjects of Mojmir, thus, Moravians and Nitravians became linked to the missionaries of both respective ecclesiastical centres—Passau and Salzburg. In 833, after the end of the war with the Bulgars to the South, there was a conflict between Louis the Pious and his sons, which ended with the defeat of the Emperor near Kolmar in Alsace and his temporary captivity. Then the already baptized Mojmir attacked the principality of Pribina and annexed the Nitrian Principality. His expansion is often regarded as the beginning of the Great Moravian State. The Franks did not react because the separate Nitrian Principality was no longer needed for their political goals and Mojmir was already a Christian and a loyal Frankish vassal. They were focused on the internal conflicts within the Carolingian Empire, which reached their peak after the death of Louis the Pious and the civil war from 841 to 843, ending with the Verdun Treaty and the formation of the Eastern Frankish Kingdom of Louis the German within the limits of the dissolving Empire. Pribina was captured and expelled by the victorious Mojmir and sought refuge with the Margrave Radbod (Ratbot), head of the Frankish Eastern and Carantanian marches. Soon after his arrival he was introduced to King

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Louis the German and was baptized at the church of St. Martin in Traismauer (Treisma) in the diocese of Salzburg. The Franks relied on Pribina as a potential counterbalance against Mojmir and around 840 he regained his position, receiving a fief around Blatengrad/Blatnohrad (Mosapurc/Mosaburg, Urbs Paludarum, today Zalavár at the Balaton Lake in Hungary), the core area of the so-called Pannonian Principality, including the former eastern part of the Carantanian March and several adjacent smaller Slavic counties. After Pribina’s death in 860, he was succeeded by his son Kocel, who remained loyal to his Eastern Frankish suzerain. After Kocel’s death in 876, the Pannonian (or Blatnenian) Principality survived for several decades under Margrave Arnulf of Carantania (up to 887) and the Savian Prince Braslav (896–900), who was defeated by the Hungarians in 900. At the same time, the victorious Prince Mojmir I promoted the Christianization of the newly acquired territory of the Nitrian Principality, backed by the Bishopric of Passau. Bishop Reginhar appointed archpresbyters, priests and missionaries in the newly founded Great Moravian State. They introduced the Latin rite of the Western Church and the Latin liturgical language, which was totally incomprehensible to the local people. Besides St. Emmeram Church in Nitra, two more big churches had been constructed for the needs of the Bavarian missionaries and the newly baptized population: the churches in Devín and at the Bratislava Castle Hill (Bratislavský Hrad), dedicated to the Most Holy Saviour. The latter, being connected to the Abbey of the same name in Kremsmünster, was founded at the end of the eighth century by Duke Tassilo of Bavaria. Prince Mojmir’s good relations with the Eastern Franks did not last for long. In fact, his nephew, Rastislav (Rostislav, Rastica), was sent as a hostage to the court of Louis the German, but as often happened throughout the Middle Ages, he seemed to be a better candidate for the Moravian throne, at least as far as Louis the German was concerned. In 846, Mojmir I was deposed because of his attempt to reject the vassalage to the Eastern Frankish Kingdom, and Rastislav became the ruler of Great Moravia. The other possible candidate for the throne, Pribina, received an augmentation of his domain and seemed to be satisfied. This was the beginning of the reign of Rastislav (846–871), a ruler, who made serious diplomatic and military efforts to strengthen Great Moravia and to gain full independence from the Eastern Franks. He entered a complicated game with Louis the German, the Papacy and Byzantium in order to achieve his goals. He installed his nephew, Svatopluk, in Nitra, and the

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latter gradually increased his power, becoming some kind of co-ruler with Rastislav and certainly enjoying a high degree of independence in Nitrania. During that time, the Eastern Frankish borders suffered another attack by the Bulgar ruler Boris I (852–889) and his Slavic allies in 853/4. This attack was provoked by certain internal enemies of Louis the German, who bribed the Bulgars with rich gifts. The Bulgar raid was unsuccessful. Rastislav did not interfere. However, he offered asylum to some enemies of the Eastern Frankish King and supported the rebellion of the mighty Margrave Ratbot. The retaliation of Louis the German was almost immediate. He first attacked the Bohemians, allied with Rastislav, and in 855 laid siege to Rastislav’s capital in Mikulčice. The campaign, however, was largely unsuccessful and Rastislav confirmed the independence of Great Moravia. He also managed to extend his domain to the East at the expense of the Bulgars, who were engaged in unsuccessful campaigns against the Croats and the Serbs to the southwest. It was only in about 860 that the hostilities between Bulgaria, the Eastern Franks and their Croat allies ended and a peace treaty was concluded. However, the wars of the Moravians and Bohemians against the Eastern Franks continued. In contrast, Pribina remained loyal to Louis the German up to his own death in 861.

The Alliance with Byzantium: The Moravian Mission In 861, after the suppression of the rebellion of Margrave Ernest of Bavarian Nordgau, Louis the German faced another, more dangerous, issue. His own son Carloman, the son-in-law of Ernest and Margrave of Carantania and the Eastern March, started an open uprising against his father and formed an alliance with Rastislav. Their first victim was Pribina, who was defeated and died in the battle. The rebels and the Moravians also attacked Bavaria and occupied all the lands to the Inn River. In 862, however, Louis the German reached a compromise with Carloman, who received a large portion of Bavaria. Rastislav kept Northeastern Transdanubia, a former part of the Pannonian Principality, now ruled by Kocel. The peace between Carloman and his father did not last long. In 863, Carloman led another mutiny, assisted by the Moravians. Louis the German, in his turn, asked Boris of Bulgaria for help. This stimulated Rastislav to send envoys to the Byzantine Emperor Michael III (according to other views even as early as 862). He asked for help against the Bulgars

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and for missionaries, who would preach among the Moravians in the Slavic language. Obviously, he wanted to eliminate not only the political but also the spiritual dependence of his realm on the Eastern Frankish Kingdom. Michael III used this opportunity to extend his influence deep into Central Europe. He organized a mighty campaign against Bulgaria. Boris I was forced to seek peace and to promise to be baptized together with his people. And indeed, the Bulgarian baptism followed in 864 (according to other theories in 865 and even 866), Boris accepted the Christian name Michael, becoming a spiritual son of the Byzantine Emperor, abandoned his intention to go to war in Pannonia and concentrated on suppressing the pagan opposition in his own country. Boris-Michael started a complicated diplomatic and ecclesiastical game with Rome and Constantinople, and at the end of the process, in 870, he secured autonomy for the newly established Bulgarian Archbishopric, albeit closely related to the Eastern Church. Furthermore, Bulgaria stopped being a menace to Great Moravia and the relations between the two neighbouring countries remained peaceful. They kept good relations with the Eastern Franks in the next decades, as well. Another event, however, had a much deeper impact on life in Great Moravia, especially in connection with the ongoing Christianization. In 863, a group of Byzantine missionaries, led by Constantine the Philosopher, and his brother Methodius, arrived in Velehrad. The Salonica brothers were already prominent Byzantine missionaries and diplomats, if we would rely on the information from their Slavic Vitae. Earlier they had completed a diplomatic and evangelical mission at the Khazar Qaganate (860/1). Furthermore, supported by their disciples, they invented the so-called Glagolitic alphabet, a new script adapted for the “Slavic” language. In fact, their first translations and texts were created in a Slavonic dialect spoken by the Slavic inhabitants around Salonica. The liturgical and literary language that developed further is known mostly as Old Church Slavonic and belongs to the “Bulgarian” (or “Bulgaro-Macedonian” to some researchers) south-eastern subgroup of the Slavic languages. The Salonica brothers and some of their disciples were most probably Slavic-speaking Byzantines, although later sources ascribed to them a Greek or Bulgarian origin. Their translations and preaching were perfectly intelligible for the Moravians, despite certain phonetic and lexical differences among the Slavic dialects. Another set of circumstances helped the initial success of the Moravian mission. It coincided with the conflict between Pope Nicholas I and Patriarch Photius, concentrated on the statute of the ancient diocese of

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Illyricum. Both Rome and Constantinople were pretenders to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of this territory, covering vast areas in the Western Balkans and Pannonia (hence the conflicts on the jurisdiction over newly baptized Bulgaria in the following decades). So, the Moravian Mission was another argument for the rights of the Eastern Church over Illyricum and an additional tool in Rastislav’s struggle for full independence from the Carolingians. The fiercest opponents of this idea were the clergymen from Bavaria, who regarded Great Moravia as their legal domain, and in this respect, they had full support from the Eastern Frankish Kingdom. In the meantime, after an unsuccessful campaign of Louis the German against Devín, the new military and administrative residence of Rastislav, a peace treaty was concluded (the Devín Peace from 864). Rastislav promised loyalty to King Louis the German, but practically remained fully independent, and the territory of Great Moravia was spared from military invasions for a certain time. The peaceful conditions and the acquired independence created a favourable situation for the activity of the newly founded evangelical and literary centre at Velehrad, led by Constantine the Philosopher and Methodius. This Moravian centre produced some of the oldest preserved pieces of the Old Slavonic Glagolitic texts. Their language, although keeping the original south-eastern features, also includes some “moravisms”— loanwords from the Moravian Western Slavic dialects. In 867, Constantine the Philosopher and Methodius travelled to Blatengrad. The local ruler, Kocel, showed interest in the introduction of the Glagolitic script and the Slavic liturgy in his realm. It would be of great support to the ongoing evangelization of the population of the Pannonian principality. In fact, the dominions of Kocel were under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Salzburg, Adalwin, who was very active in these areas. In 864–865 he consecrated numerous churches and there were many priests, and much preaching and teaching; however, this was Latin and probably only German dialects. The importance of knowledge of the local language was well-known and acknowledged by the ecclesiastical powers. A good example was the missionary activity of St. Winfrid-Bonifatius, Praeceptor Germaniae, among the Frisians and the Saxons in the eighth century. Being Anglo-Saxon by origin, he and his fellow missionaries had huge success in preaching the Gospel among these continental Germanic tribes. Preaching in Slavonic seemed to be very successful in Great Moravia; therefore, Kocel, albeit basically hostile to his mighty neighbour Rastislav, also demonstrated goodwill to the Byzantine missionaries and even helped

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with the creation of another literary centre in Blatengrad. Constantine and Methodius, however, had to travel back to Constantinople. There were significant changes in the political and ecclesiastical life of the Byzantine Empire: Michael III was murdered in 867 and the new Emperor Basil I, the Macedonian (867–886), replaced Photius with his old enemy, Ignatius, on the patriarchal throne. Ignatius seemed to be friendlier towards the Papacy. He wanted to achieve a solution to the Bulgarian Church problem and the dispute over Illyricum between the Roman and the Constantinopolitan Churches. In this new context, the extension of the dispute to Central Europe was probably a bad idea, and Ignatius, unlike his predecessor Photius, seemed not to be enthusiastic in supporting the Moravian Mission. However, Constantine won an important debate in Venice against representatives of the Western clergy, who supported the idea that God’s word could only be preached in the three “sacred” languages: Hebrew, Greek and Latin, being the languages of the inscription on the Holy Cross. If we rely on the information in the Slavic Vita Constantini, Constantine made a huge impression on the newly elected Pope Hadrian II. Not only did he accept the Byzantine missionaries in Rome in December 867, but he also consecrated the Slavic letters and liturgy, and offered his hospitality to the great theologians and scholars, who brought to Rome the holy relics of Pope Clement of Rome from distant Crimea. Solemn liturgies were held at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Perhaps, the Byzantine missionaries met a Bulgarian delegation led by Kaukhan Peter, a prominent diplomat who was entitled to negotiate with the Pope for the candidacy of the future Bulgarian Archbishop. The Pope obviously realized the usefulness of the Slavic liturgy and script for increasing the Papal influence not only in Central Europe but also in Southeast Europe, among the Croats, Serbs and Bulgarians. At the beginning of 869, Constantine the Philosopher got ill, accepted the second monastic vows and the name Cyril, and died in Rome on 14.02.869. He was buried in the Church of St. Clement of Rome and his grave remained one of the holiest places for the Slavs until modern times. The fate of the Slavic alphabet and liturgy was now in the hands of his elder brother, Methodius, who had full support from the Papal institution. After the special request from the Princes Rastislav, Svatopluk and Kocel, Methodius was appointed as Papal Legate in Illyricum and Archbishop of Sirmium, the Holy See of St. Andronicus. His diocese was vast and included a large part of modern Central Europe and the North-western

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Balkans, at least theoretically. His first residence was not, however, Sirmium/Srem, which was perhaps in Bulgarian hands, but Blatengrad, the capital of Kocel. It was the beginning of the Sancta Ecclesia Marabensis, the Church of Great Moravia, with its first Archbishop, Methodius. The motives of Kocel to offer his capital for a residence of the newly established Church were probably related to his attempt to consolidate his power, being positioned between two mighty neighbours, the Eastern Franks and Rastislav. The presence of Methodius, a Papal representative in his capital, was an additional source of legitimacy, besides all the other advantages connected to the process of evangelization of the local Slavs. The position of Methodius as Archbishop of Sirmium was met with open hostility from the Bavarian clergy. It was a challenge to the claims of the Bishops of Passau and Salzburg for control over Pannonia and even threatened their independence because the See of Sirmium was an ancient one, and the Bavarian ecclesiastical province had emerged only at the end of the eighth century, thus it could be regarded as suffragan to Methodius. An additional challenge was the introduction of the Slavic alphabet and a liturgy following the Byzantine rite. In the meantime, the political situation in Great Moravia worsened. A new conflict, involving the Eastern Franks, Rastislav and his nephew Svatopluk, residing at Nitra, rapidly started to develop. In 869, a mighty Eastern Frankish army plundered the territory of Great Moravia, attacking not only the dominions of Rastislav but also the Nitrian Principality of Svatopluk. Svatopluk secretly plotted with Prince Carloman against his uncle. After an attempt of Rastislav to murder his treacherous nephew, a successful plot of Svatopluk followed, as a result of which he captured and sent Rastislav to Carloman. The Moravian ruler ended his life blinded and in captivity in Regensburg. Initially, Svatopluk did not have the opportunity to use the fruits of his treason. He was also expelled from Nitra, and the Eastern Franks established full control over Great Moravia for a certain time. Moravia proper was directly annexed under the German margraves. While Svatopluk was in Bavarian captivity, in Nitra the power was transferred to his relative, Slavomir, who was ready to continue the fight against the invaders. Meanwhile, Methodius also faced strong pressure from the Bavarian clergy. This was perhaps connected with the outcome of the 8th Oecumenical Council in Constantinople and the foundation of the Bulgarian Archbishoprics, which were autonomous but closely related to

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the Eastern Church. The disappointment of the Papacy with this solution affected its support to Methodius and his missionaries, who were regarded as promoters of the Byzantine spiritual influence. Methodius was perhaps summoned to an ecclesiastical court in Regensburg and sent into exile in the monastery of Elwangen, Swabia. He spent three years in exile and was released only in 873 after the intervention of the newly elected Pope John VIII. The latter had the ambition to revive the issue about the jurisdiction of Illyricum and the Bulgarian Church problem. The bulk of the population of the disputed territories were Slavic-speaking; hence Methodius and his disciples could still be of use. A special Papal envoy, Paul of Ancona, confirmed the Archbishopric position of Methodius and the plenitude of his prerogatives over the Moravian diocese.

Svatopluk’s “Empire” (871–894) and the End of the Moravian Mission The turbulent events in the years 869–871 led to many changes in Great Moravia. As already mentioned, Rastislav was captured and sentenced to death by Louis the German, but later the East Frankish ruler changed his mind and spared the life of his prisoner, who soon died in captivity, blinded and deprived of all his power. Slavomir, who received control over Nitra, rebelled against the Franks. They now had to rely on Svatopluk, initially captured by them, in order to defeat Slavomir’s forces. Svatopluk pledged obedience to the Franks. Despite this, he later took Moravia and, allied with Slavomir, managed to restore the unity of Great Moravia in 871 after defeating a strong Franco-Bavarian army and re-conquering all occupied territories. Svatopluk undertook a series of actions to secure his position after his decisive military success against the Carolingian forces. He married the Bohemian princess Svatožižna, sister of the young Duke Bor ̌ivoj, related to the Pr ̌emyslids, who were controlling the rich area around Prague. Thus, he secured the Moravian influence in these distant areas and offered help to the Czechs against the Eastern Frankish menace. In 872, a Carolingian army plundered Bohemia, but the alliance with Svatopluk helped Bor ̌ivoj to withstand the attack, since the Moravians defeated the main Eastern Frankish forces, led again by Carloman. At the same time, Kocel, the ruler of Blatengrad, made his last attempt to gain at least ecclesiastical autonomy for the Pannonian Principality. He asked the newly elected Pope John VIII for help against the dominance of

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the Archbishop of Salzburg. The Pope also wanted to secure his control over the Pannonian diocese, hence choosing Methodius seemed a possible solution. The Pope even sent a letter to “Mutimir, prince of Ras” asking him to join the jurisdiction of the Pannonian diocese. Unfortunately, we do not have further information about the development of this offer, but the Serbs later became part of the Byzantine sphere of influence, relying also on a political alliance with Constantinople in order to successfully combat the Bulgarian expansion over the Western Balkans. On the other hand, Kocel did not succeed in eliminating the influence of Salzburg. His principality remained firmly under the influence of Salzburg in terms of spiritual matters and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He died soon after 873 and his dominions became part of the realm of Arnulf of Bavaria, the son of Carloman. In 874, Rastislav and his ally Bor ̌ivoj concluded the Peace Treaty of Forchheim with Louis the German. They had to pay tribute to the Eastern Franks, but it secured peace for Svatopluk and an opportunity to consolidate his power and to expand Great Moravia over the surrounding Slavic territories. Methodius was not only released from his exile but also restored as an Archbishop of Great Moravia with his See at Velehrad. At that time, Svatopluk supported the evangelical and literary activity of the Moravian School. Perhaps it was then that Methodius succeeded in baptizing the Bohemian Prince Bor ̌ivoj (a vassal of Svatopluk), according to some later legends of Bohemian origin. This was in accordance with Svatopluk’s policy towards the centralization of his realm and strengthening it through ecclesiastical independence. Svatopluk then waged wars against his unbaptized Northern Slavic neighbours. Firstly, he conquered the Vistulians, centred on Krakow. Methodius baptized the mighty “Prince of Vistula”, the local ruler in the area of Krakow, if we accept the information from the Slavic Vita Methodii. The latter became a Moravian vassal and perhaps the first Polish Christian leader. The Moravians also devastated Silesia in several raids against the Northern Croats, a loose confederation of different Slavic pagan tribes. The Lusatian Sorbs were also forced to pay tribute to the mighty Moravian ruler. Another area of Moravian expansion was the Tisza region, inhabited by different Slavic tribes and still dependent on Bulgaria. The clashes with the Bulgarians and their Slavic allies continued up to 882 and were probably successful for the Moravians. They extended their control even to the border between the Middle and Lower Danube, close to the Iron Gates. After

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these clashes, Bulgaria only succeeded in keeping firm control over Southern Transylvania. Svatopluk, however, kept good relations with the Eastern Frankish Kingdom and tried to compromise with the Bavarian Church. Meanwhile, Pope John VIII made a new attempt to achieve a concordance with Patriarch Photius and to attract Boris-Michael I of Bulgaria to a new dialogue with the Roman Church. He sent to Pliska, the capital of Bulgaria, his representative Presbyter John, who was also close to Svatopluk and agreed to participate in a new council in Constantinople. The outcome was not great for the Papacy. The Bulgarian Church increased its level of autonomy, now being equal in status to the ancient Church of Cyprus, but kept its close ties with Constantinople. Bulgaria also remained firmly in peaceful relations with Byzantium—a cornerstone of its policy after 863. The formal consent from Photius to recognize some rights of the Roman Church in Illyricum and therefore in Bulgaria did not have any consequences. In this context, in 879, Methodius had to face another process at the ecclesiastical court and had to abandon the Byzantine rite, preserving, however, the Slavic liturgy and the Moravian evangelical and literary centre. Furthermore, he was nominated by the Pope as archiepiscopus Sancte Ecclesie Marabensis. The number of disciples increased significantly, including many local Slavs. Perhaps the Slavic Vita Constantini, dedicated to the memory of St. Cyril (Constantine the Philosopher), was also written here. Thus, Methodius could rely on the support of Pope John VIII (872–882) and of Patriarch Photius during his second term as Patriarch of Constantinople (877–886), when he made some efforts to reconcile with the Western Church. On the other hand, in 880, a new Bishop called Wiching arrived in Nitra. Bavarian by origin, he was a fierce opponent of Methodius and the Moravian mission. Very quickly he was able to extend his influence over Svatopluk and to increase the pressure on Methodius and his followers. Wiching also enjoyed the full support of Svatopluk and the Pope. Nitra had to be elevated to a second Moravian metropolis, despite the fact that it would be suffragan of the Archbishop of Moravia. A special task of Wiching was the evangelization of the so-called unbaptized Moravia—the newly acquired lands of the Tisza River to the southeast. The spiritual centre was the cathedral church of Pribina, the old patrocinium of St. Emmeram. Zobor Abbey, close to Nitra, became another important centre of Benedictine monasticism, also founded by the

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new bishop. The Bishopric of Nitra was not fully recognized by the Bavarian clergy, and its diocese was later regarded as subdued to Passau. Despite that, it became the centre of the pro-Western Latin clergy, and Wiching led the opposition against Methodius and the Slavic liturgy and literacy, centred in Velehrad. After the death of Methodius (06.04.885), the situation for the Moravian School changed dramatically. Methodius was solemnly buried at Mikulčice and his disciple, the Moravian Gorazd, was elected as his successor. Only a year later, however, Gorazd was replaced and perhaps murdered. The Moravian School was destroyed and its members were expelled, captured and murdered, and some were sold into slavery. The new Pope, Stephen V, prohibited the Slavic liturgy, and the Bavarian clergy did its best to eradicate all traces of the Moravian Mission. Three disciples of Cyril and Methodius, Clement, Nahum and Angelarius, managed to escape the persecutions. They reached Belgrade, then the Bulgarian border fortress, and found shelter in Bulgaria. They were welcomed with great joy by Prince Boris-Michael I.  He provided them with extensive support, gathered some other survivors from the Moravian persecutions and officially introduced the Slavic alphabet and liturgy in Bulgaria. Later, the second Slavic script, Cyrillic, was invented here. It enjoyed greater popularity than the original Glagolitic one and became emblematic for the so-called Slavia Orthodoxa, not only in Bulgaria but also in Kievan Rus’ and Serbia, and in later times in Wallachia and Moldavia. Remnants of the Moravian Slavic tradition survived in Central Europe. There were some places in Croatia and Dalmatia, where the Glagolitic script survived among the Benedictine monks and its authorship was later attributed to St. Jerome. With the help of these Benedictines, Emperor Charles IV of Luxemburg attempted to revive this tradition in Bohemia (The Emaus Monastery (Na Slovanech) in Prague) in the mid-fourteenth century. Another place of survival was the monastery of Sazava, founded by St. Prokop in Bohemia in the eleventh century. The local monks kept the Slavic liturgy and script up to the end of the eleventh century, but later the Benedictine monks replaced it with the Latin liturgy and language and put an end to the Slavic tradition. As a matter of fact, despite the dominance of the Latin liturgy and alphabet among the Western and part of the Southern Slavs (Croats and Slovenians), the memory of SS. Cyril and Methodius and their Moravian mission remained alive in their lands and

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became part of their Slavic identity in the later Middle Ages and in the modern times. Svatopluk’s aggression against the Moravian School was related to changes in the political orientation of Great Moravia. From 876, the death of Louis the German, his relations with the dissolving Carolingian Empire began to transform. His direct neighbour was his old partner and ally— Prince Carloman, now King of Bavaria, who was also controlling all the border regions in Carantania and Pannonia through his son Arnulf and the Margrave Aribo. In 882, however, the Eastern March was occupied by the so-called Wilhelm brothers (sons of Wilhelm and Engelschalk—former rulers of the Eastern March). They claimed that this region was their inheritance. Svatopluk confronted them and succeeded in ousting them from the Eastern March. They became vassals of Arnulf only to escape the revenge of Svatopluk. It led to an open war between the Moravians and Arnulf, supported also by the Bulgarians. After campaigning for two years, Svatopluk succeeded in extending the Moravian border to the Drava River and the Vienna Woods, defeating all Eastern Frankish forces in Pannonia. This victory was also a heavy blow against the descendants of Pribina and Kocel and their claims to restore their power in Blatengrad with Frankish support. The hostilities ended in 884 with the meeting between Emperor Charles III the Fat and Svatopluk near Tulln (the Comagenan Mount) and the formal vassalage of Svatopluk, who, however, kept all of his newly conquered territories. In 885, Arnulf also had to conclude a peace treaty with the Moravians; as a result, his realm was restricted solely to Carantania and he totally lost control over Pannonia. On the wings of victory, Svatopluk organized a massive campaign against the Czechs. In 883 almost all Bohemian princes accepted his suzerainty. It was also the moment of the baptism of Bořivoj, his wife Liudmila (a Sorbian princess by origin) and his retinue by Archbishop Methodius himself. Bořivoj, a descendant of the mythical Přemysl, became the right hand of Svatopluk in the still predominantly pagan Bohemia. Later the Sorbs, living further northwest, in Lusatia, had to accept Svatopluk’s sovereignty and to pay tribute to him. After the death of Bořivoj in 888 the regency over his young sons Spytihnĕv and Vratislav was taken by Svatopluk himself. That consolidated his control in Bohemia to the greatest possible extent. Great Moravian influence in these lands facilitated the Christianization as well; however, the pagans remained numerous and hostile to the new religion.

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In 890, at Omundesberg, Arnulf and Svatopluk agreed on the conditions of a peace agreement. According to this agreement, Bohemia and Upper Pannonia remained under Svatopluk’s rule. The former Pannonian Principality was, however, restored and remained under Arnulf’s control. Svatopluk confirmed his vassal statute to the Carolingian Empire and continued to pay tribute in livestock to Arnulf. The latter, however, was not content with these conditions. He renewed the war against Svatopluk, supported also by Magyar troops. In 892 his embassy also reached Bulgaria. The Bulgarian ruler Vladimir (Rasate) (889–893) was ready to conclude an anti-Moravian alliance with Arnulf and to block “the salt road”, a commercial route that led from Southern Transylvania to Great Moravia, which was of vital importance for Svatopluk’s realm. The war, which was totally unsuccessful for Arnulf, lasted until the death of Svatopluk in 894. The disputed Pannonian Principality was plundered by the Magyars and Vladimir of Bulgaria was deposed by his father Boris-­ Michael. The new ruler of Bulgaria, Simeon (893–927), entered a complicated commercial conflict and war with Byzantium that got support from the belligerent Magyars. The heir of Svatopluk, Mojmir II, was quick to restore the peace with the Frankish Emperor. He confirmed the conditions of the Omundesberg Peace from 890. Another threat from the east was emerging—the Magyars.

The Fall of Great Moravia and Its Consequences The death of Svatopluk in 894 opened the door for a series of disastrous events. He divided his dominions between his sons Mojmir II (son of Svatožižna, the Pr ̌emyslid princess) and his much younger brother, Svatopluk II (son of Arnulf’s sister Gisela, second wife of Svatopluk), who resided in Nitra. The hostility between them arose and turned to full-scale civil war in 898–899, which ended with a victory for Mojmir II, despite the Frankish support for his brother. Meanwhile, the Bohemians, dominated by Spytihněv, seceded from the Moravian State and so did the Sorbs. They offered their loyalty to the last Carolingian Emperor Arnulf and to the neighbouring Kingdom of Bavaria. Nevertheless, the importance of Great Moravia as an outpost of the Christian Mission among the Slavs was confirmed in 899. Pope John IX sent emissaries to the Moravians and they consecrated a new Archbishop and three Bishops of the Moravian Church.

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However, the days of Great Moravia were numbered. The main disaster appeared under the mask of allies. These were the Hungarians, or the Magyars: A Finno-Ugric ethnic community that since the beginning of the ninth century had inhabited the western territories of the Khazar Qaganate in modern Southwestern Ukraine and Moldavia (the so-called Etelköz). The Hungarians migrated from the area of the Uralic Mountains, mingled with some Turkic and Oguric-speaking groups living to the north of Black Sea, but remained pagans, despite the influences from the Judaic Khazar elite, the Bulgars and other Eurasian steppe inhabitants. In the 890s, being Byzantine allies, they waged a war on Bulgaria of Simeon. After some initial success against the Bulgarian prince, they were pushed out of their settlements in Moldavia by the Bulgarians and their Pecheneg allies. The Hungarians entered Transylvania and started to penetrate into Pannonia. Mojmir II accepted part of them in the eastern border regions of Great Moravia and used them as foederati in the following wars with the Bavarians and their Bohemian allies. Their first target was the Pannonian Principality, ruled by Prince Braslav (who also ruled the Savian Principality), a loyal vassal of Emperor Arnulf. In the summer of 900 with Moravian help, they plundered the Pannonian Principality and occupied it. The same happened to Transdanubia, and ever-increasing numbers of Hungarian settlers were pouring into Pannonia from Transylvania. By the autumn of 900, the Great Moravian eastern territories were heavily plundered and the Moravians allied with the Bavarians in order to confront the growing forces of the Magyars. In 901, Mojmir II concluded a peace treaty with the last Carolingian King in Eastern Francia, Louis the Child, and tried to mobilize all his resources to combat the Hungarians. The Moravian-Bavarian alliance also included the Bohemians, who at that time had been loyal Bavarian vassals for several years. In 902 the Moravians succeeded in defeating the Magyars, but the Bavarian forces were destroyed by the invaders. The final blow happened perhaps in 906, when the Hungarians plundered and destroyed the very heart of the Moravian State, burning down Mikulčice and the all-important defensive lines and castles. Moravia was destroyed, and the dynasty of the Mojmirids ceased to exist. This attack coincided with a devastating plague that decimated the population of Moravia. Central Europe entered a turbulent time of endless wars and the Hungarian raids continued throughout the first half of the tenth century, reaching places like Naples, Paris and Rouen to the south and west. Other

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Hungarian bands ravaged Southeast Europe, especially Bulgaria and Byzantium and threatened even Constantinople. Only the victory of the Teutonic King Otto I, supported by the Czechs, in 955 at Lechfeld in Southern Germany, marked the beginning of the end of the Hungarian raids. They started to settle down and mingle with the local Slavs from the middle of the tenth century, and in the year 1000 the mighty Hungarian Kingdom was founded. Its ruler Stephen I accepted Christianity from Rome, receiving his crown directly from Pope Sylvester II. Paganism in Hungary, however, existed at least to the middle of the eleventh century, and in 1046 a powerful pagan rebellion of Vata could have reversed at least for a while the course of Christianization. Epilogue, or What Happened to the Remnants of Great Moravia? The Pannonian Slavs, who also inhabited the Nitrian Principality, were subdued by the Hungarians. Some of them were assimilated by the Hungarians, but others preserved their Slavic culture and identity and became the core of the emerging Slovak nation in modern times. Nitria was spared by the Hungarians, who concentrated their efforts against the Saxons and Bavarians. The Bavarian army, however, suffered a disastrous defeat on 4 July 907 close to “Preslava Castle/Brezalauspurc”, i.e. modern Bratislava. Many Bavarian military leaders died in the battle. Among them was Archbishop Thietmar of Salzburg and four other Bishops. This negatively affected the ecclesiastical administration of the Bavarian church province. The Hungarians took firm control over the Nitrian Principality only in about 920, when all the traces of local Moravian/Slavic autonomy had disappeared. The northern parts of the region, however, mostly remained Slavic. Moravia proper, the initial dominions of the Mojmirids, although heavily plundered by the Magyars, did not become part of their realm. It was under the vague control of the Přemyslid princes Spytihněv and Vratislav I. The latter even died in a battle against the Magyars, who ravaged Moravia in 921, destroying those castles that had been spared in 906. The Hungarians, however, could not impose their rule over these territories, or maybe they were not interested in conquering the deserted areas. This region later became the Moravian March of the Bohemian Kingdom and the Holy Roman Empire. The local people kept the name Moravians and although today they are part of the modern Czech nation, they have a very strong regional identity, related also to the memory of the Great Moravian State.

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In Bohemia (the Czech lands proper), the fall of Great Moravia renewed the conflict between the Přemyslids in Prague and the Slavnikids ruling at Libice. Paganism was still wide-spread and the Christianization, which had started in the time of Bor ̌ivoj, suffered heavy setbacks. Neither Spytihněv (895–915) nor Vratislaus/Vratislav I (915–921), despite being converted, was able to impose Christianity over Bohemia. In 921, the rule of Bohemia fell into the hands of Vratislav’s widow, Drahomira-Polabian, a Slavic princess from the tribe of Stodorani, who kept her pagan faith and wanted to release Bohemia from the control of Bavaria and its clergy. Liudmila, Bor ̌ivoj’s widow, a devoted Christian, baptized by St. Methodius, and a supporter of the alliance with Bavaria, was murdered on the orders of Drahomira. Thus, Liudmila became the first saint and martyr of the Bohemian Church. Drahomira became a regent of young Wenceslaus/Vaclav I, who was also a devoted Christian. Her second son, Boleslaus/Boleslav, although baptized, was under her influence, unlike Vaclav, who followed the advice of Liudmila in his childhood. After his accession to the throne, Vaclav promoted the Christian faith with great zeal and even received support from the newly settled Jewish community in Prague, who felt greater sympathy for the Monotheistic Christians than for their pagan opponents. Vaclav also relied on the alliance with Henry the Fowler, the founder of the Saxon dynasty in the Teutonic Kingdom. During his reign, the famous St. Vit Cathedral in Prague was founded, and it became a symbol of the Bohemian Christianity. Drahomira was anti-Saxon, since her relatives in Polabia suffered from German attacks. She also mobilized the pagan opposition and heavily influenced Vaclav’s brother Boleslav. Towards the end of 935 or in 936, Vaclav was assassinated by his own brother and became a saint, martyr and patron of the Christian Bohemian Kingdom. However, after his brother’s death, Boleslav I (935/6–972) changed his policy. He repented for the murder and started to promote Christianity with the same zeal as his late brother. After a prolonged war with King Otto I, he accepted formal vassalage, but in fact acquired a mighty ally against the Hungarians. In 955, Germans and Czechs defeated the Hungarians by Lechfeld, and later Boleslav I succeeded in liberating Moravia from the Hungarians to place it under the Czech Crown. He extended his rule over Upper Silesia and Lesser Poland with Krakow. In 966, the marriage of his daughter Doubravka to the pagan Polish Prince Mieszko/Mieczyslaw from the Piast dynasty in Greater Poland paved the

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way of the new religion among the Polish tribes. The prince and his retinue were soon baptized, and by the year 1000 Poland was a Christian Kingdom, although there were still some pagan supporters at least until 1034, when their rebellion was suppressed. The successor of Boleslav I, Boleslav II the Pious (972–999), promoted the Christian faith in Bohemia. He was educated in religious matters and achieved the establishment of the Prague diocese. The main figure here became Archbishop Adalbert (Vojteh), who was the successor of the first Bishop, the Saxon Thietmar. Adalbert was a member of the rival dynasty of the Slavnikids and his role in the consolidation and unification of Bohemia around the throne of the Pr ̌emyslids was of crucial significance. He ended his life in a mission further north in the lands of the Prussians, becoming one of the most venerated saints of Bohemia and Poland, his relics being divided between Prague and Gniezno, the first capital of the Piast dynasty. Thus, Latin Christianity, supported by the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, conquered Central Europe, eliminating not only paganism but also the efforts of Byzantium to extend its influence in these areas. By the middle of the eleventh century, Latin Christianity had triumphed in Bohemia, Poland and Hungary, creating the new frontier of the Latin West against the pagans and the Orthodox Slavs influenced by Byzantium. The beginning of the process was nevertheless connected to Great Moravia and the Moravian mission of SS. Cyril and Methodius, which greatly affected the cultural and political identity of the Catholic Western Slavs, just like the Southern and Eastern Slavs were influenced by Constantinople and the continuation of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission in the First Bulgarian Empire.

Bibliography Berend, Nora, Przemysław Urbańczyk, Przemysław Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c. 900–c. 1300, Cambridge University Press, 2013. Betti, Maddalena, The Making of Christian Moravia (858–882): Papal Power and Political Reality, Leiden: Brill, 2013. Boba, Imre, Nomads, Northmen and Slavs: Eastern Europe in the Ninth Century, The Hague-Wiesbaden: Mouton and Otto Harrassowitz, 1967. Boba, Imre, Moravia’s History Reconsidered: A Reinterpretation of Medieval Sources, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971.

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Bowlus, Charles R., Franks, Moravians, and Magyars: The Struggle for the Middle Danube, 788–907, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Dvornik, Francis, The Slavs: Their Early History and Civilization, Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1956. Dvornik, Francis, Byzantine Missions among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1970. Dvornik, Francis, The Photian Schism: History and Legend, Cambridge University Press, 2008. Dvornik, Francis, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy, Fordham University Press, 1979. Farrugia, Edward G., Robert F. Taft, and Gino K. Piovesana (eds.), Christianity among the Slavs: The Heritage of SS Cyril and Methodius, Roma: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1988. Galuška, Luděk, Pavel Kour ̌il, and Zdeněk Měrí̌ nský, Velká Morava mezi východem a západem. [Great Moravia between the East and the West], Brno: Archeologický ústav AV Č R, 2001. Graus, Frantisek, Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen im Mittelalter, Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1980. Kalhous, David, Anatomy of a Duchy: The Political and Ecclesiastical Structures of Early Přemyslid Bohemia, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2012. Kláptště, Jan, The Czech Lands in Medieval Transformation, Leiden: Brill, 2011. Kouřil, Pavel, Great Moravia and the Beginnings of Christianity, Brno, 2014. Kouřil, Pavel et al., The Cyril and Methodius Mission and Europe: 1150 Years Since the Arrival of the Thessaloniki Brothers in Great Moravia, Brno: The Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2014. Steinhübel, Ján, The Nitrian Principality: The Beginnings of Medieval Slovakia, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2021. Teich, Mikuláš, Dušan Kováč, and Martin D.  Brown, Slovakia in History, Cambridge University Press, 2011. Санчук, Г.Э., Поулик Й. (отв. ред.), Великая Моравия, ее историческое и культурное значение, Москва: Наука, 1985. [Sanchuk, G. E. and J. Poulik, (eds.), Great Moravia and Its Historical and Cultural Importance, Moscow, 1985]. Флоря, Б.Н. (отв. ред.), Христианство в странах Восточной, Юго-Восточной и Центральной Европы, Москва, 2002. [Floria, B.  N. (ed.), Christianity in Eastern, Southeastern and Central Europe, Moscow, 2002].

CHAPTER 7

The Christianisation of the Kingdom of Hungary Nora Berend

Religious change impacting on whole societies has been analysed by many scholars, using different terminology. Some favour the term “conversion” for the entire process of social transformation linked to religious change, while others differentiate between conversion as an individual, personal experience on the one hand, accepting baptism and espousing a set of beliefs and practices in order to become a Christian, and social processes on the other hand. The latter can be designated by a number of different terms, one of which is “Christianisation.” These social processes entailed many transformations, not merely a change of religious beliefs and practices, but the creation of a new infrastructure of buildings and territorial subdivisions, changes in key areas such as literacy or rulership, and a reshaping of everyday existence and even intimate spheres of life, such as the foods one could eat and marriage. For medieval Hungary, as in many other premodern cases, we know almost nothing about individual

N. Berend (*) University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_7

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conversions, the motives, experiences and self-fashioning of converts, whereas we are able to analyse the process of Christianisation. After a military alliance conventionally called “the Hungarians” conquered a part of the Carpathian Basin towards the end of the ninth century, it took several generations and the pressure of external circumstances to transform their lifestyle: relinquish raiding and settle fully from the late tenth century. The Christianisation of the entire area that came to be included in the newly forming Kingdom of Hungary was linked to that transformation, although conversions started already from the middle of the tenth century. This was due to local leaders who became interested in the advantages offered to those who converted, initially in the orbit of the Byzantine Empire. Thus some territorial lords, who were hired by the Byzantine emperor to fight against enemies of the empire (a strategy routinely practised by the Byzantine court), were baptised in Byzantium in the middle of the tenth century. The influence of local, already Christianised populations perhaps also contributed to conversion. Christianity existed among the local population prior to the Hungarian conquest, but whether there was a continuity of cult or only a later reuse of some of the buildings is disputed. The strong imprint of Slavic terminology on Hungarian Christianity, including the words for “priest” and “Christian,” has been explained by either the influence of the local population or of Slavic missionaries and interpreters. Some have hypothesised the conversion of Hungarians prior to the conquest, but there is no proof to support such an idea. Military defeats in the Ottonian and Byzantine empires (the most significant ones were in 933, 955 and 970) provided a key impetus in the transformation of the Hungarians. The head of the military alliance, Géza, already called “king” in some sources, sought to associate himself and his family to the Ottonians. His envoys were at the imperial court assembled at Quedlinburg for Easter 973. They seem to have transmitted a request for missionaries. Such an alliance brought tangible benefits: acceptance, prestige and potential military assistance. Géza secured an imperial bride, Gisela, sister of the future Henry II, for his son Stephen (István). What became the ruling dynasty of the kingdom opted for Roman Christianity. There might have been an element of rivalry in this choice, turning to the Ottonians, rather than the Byzantines who already counted some other warlords of the Hungarians among their protégés. Such a choice was possible, as Hungary was in the geographical zone influenced by both eastern,

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Orthodox and western, Catholic Christianity, which, around the time of conversion, were not yet divided by Schism. While the main lines of the kingdom’s Christianisation can be reconstructed with some certainty—after the ruler Géza converted with his son, Stephen, the establishment of institutional frameworks and an integration into the Christian world started—many of the details are dependent on narrative sources that cannot be accepted at face value. A perennial problem for historians trying to analyse the process of Christianisation in Hungary is that the narrative sources we have, which offer the richest material on religiosity, are often later and thus very problematic as evidence for the period of Christianisation. This does not merely lead to a concern over details, but can even raise questions over whether or not certain events happened at all. In many cases, it is impossible to separate myths from reality. Therefore, many aspects are debated, and some cannot be ascertained, despite the fact that national history narratives claim much greater certainty. One illustrative key example is that of the supposed confrontation between Stephen I and his pagan (or according to some, superficially Byzantine Christian) uncle Koppány (in the medieval sources, Cupan). Allegedly, Koppány tried to take the throne based on a traditional system, seniority, where the eldest male in the lineage, rather than the first-born son, was the legitimate heir; he also wanted to marry Stephen’s widowed mother, Sarolt, to buttress his claim, but he was defeated in battle and quartered. His body parts were then sent to four different forts in the kingdom to be displayed on the gate. The story, however, as told in national narratives is a composite one, based on diverse sources that may not all refer to the same event; the constructed story is then complemented by the additions of modern historians. Moreover, Cupan does not appear in the sources before the thirteenth century. All three of Stephen’s hagiographical lives narrate a pagan revolt at the beginning of Stephen’s reign, but not in the same way; none describe it as being led by one leader, and none refer to Cupan. The fourteenth-century chronicles, which provide the main narrative concerning Cupan’s story, describe a power-struggle for the throne, rather than a pagan uprising. None of the medieval sources refer to Cupan as Stephen’s relative; that is a modern interpretation of Cupan’s alleged desire for an incestuous marriage with Stephen’s mother. Incest in the Middle Ages, however, was a broad category which even included spiritual kinship and need not mean a relative on the paternal side, even if the story is trustworthy, which is doubtful. Quartering, the

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punishment supposedly meted out to Cupan, was a late thirteenth-­century invention. The confrontation of Stephen and Koppány has become a mainstay of Hungarian history writing. It is seen as a crucial moment in national history, a turning point between paganism and Christianity, that decided the country’s fate for the next centuries. In fact, the story comes from later medieval sources in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and is at least a significantly reworked version of a potentially historical kernel, which, however, cannot be reconstructed; possibly it is entirely a literary invention. What the original belief system of the population was prior to conversion can be inferred to some extent from archaeology, contemporary texts by Christian, and to a lesser extent Muslim, authors and legislation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries prohibiting certain practices. Linguistics and folklore have also been used to reconstruct pre-Christian practices, but these are particularly problematic both because the evidence cannot be dated and because of the presumption that pagan belief systems were unchanging. Thus beliefs are assumed to linger for thousands of years. For example, modern evidence that people believed in supernatural phenomena that resembles shamanism is taken to mean that it must have been the Hungarian belief system prior to Christianisation, even if there is no real proof of that. Narrative sources sometimes provide details. Yet most of these sources are not straightforward, with authorial bias and lack of knowledge or misunderstandings of an alien belief system and a reliance on literary models of what it meant to be pagan potentially distorting the accounts. Therefore, the beliefs and practices attributed to the “pagan Hungarians” are not necessarily reliable accounts of real beliefs and practices. Some form of nature and ancestor worship is attested, as are oaths taken on dogs that were cut in half; the fate of the dog was a reminder of what would happen to those who broke the oath. Muslim sources referred to Hungarians as star- and fire-worshippers, but this is no more reliable than practices attributed to pagans by Christian sources; it merely reflects different ideas about what “paganism” meant. Traditionally seen as a cornerstone of pagan Hungarian beliefs, the existence of shamanism is now disputed. Bone stick handles carved in the shape of owls, for example, used to be interpreted as connected to shamanism, but there is no corroborating evidence. A large number of contemporary burials yielded rich material evidence: weapons, tools, containers with food and drink point to beliefs in life after death. Probably a fear of returning ghosts inspired

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practices of binding and mutilating some corpses: in tenth- and eleventh-­ century cemeteries, there are cases of corpses that had been tied up, others where the head was separated or the limbs cut off. The meaning of other pieces of evidence, however, is controversial: for example, the conclusions one can draw about beliefs in the soul from small silver plates covering the eyes and mouth of the deceased have been construed in different ways, and without written sources, no interpretation is conclusive. Some have argued for the existence of a chief deity or even monotheism among the Hungarians, but these are no more than hypotheses without proof. After the conversion of some chieftains in Constantinople, a Byzantine “bishop of Tourkia” was appointed and sent to the Hungarians around 951; the metropolitanate of Tourkia was still included in a list of metropolitanates under the patriarch of Constantinople in the second half of the twelfth century, even though it seems no bishop of Tourkia was active by then. According to a later narrative, another local lord in eastern Hungary converted to Byzantine Christianity in the early eleventh century. Byzantine pectoral reliquary crosses dating from the tenth to the twelfth centuries and other objects of Byzantine origin have been found in Hungary, attesting to links beyond a few individual converts. While a part of the population thus converted to Christianity, not much is known about their practice of the new religion. For example, whether the use of a reliquary cross indicates Christian piety or whether some were used as amulets, often cannot be determined. At least one local leader was accused by a Byzantine chronicler of insincere conversion. Christianisation from above was promoted by the ruler Géza (d. 997), and then his son Stephen, who ruled from 997, was crowned king in 1000/1001 and died in 1038. It was this that led to irrevocable change, the destruction of pre-Christian forms of belief and practice and the establishment of a Christian kingdom, or “social conversion,” that is, the Christianisation of society. This form of Christianisation was no longer contingent on individual, voluntary conversion, but aimed to convert the entire population and eradicate earlier practices. Whether or not individual converts believed in the new religious tenets, it became impossible within a few generations to adhere to pre-Christian beliefs; if sites of pre-­Christian cult had existed, these were destroyed, those identified as “magicians” and “witches” were targeted, and those who were unwilling were forced to conform to Christian requirements. This does not exclude the voluntary conversion of parts of the population, but it ensured Christianisation was not contingent on individual beliefs.

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Christianisation was intertwined with the formation of the kingdom in the Hungarian case, just as it was in several other realms Christianised around the same time. Not merely recognition by Christian powers, but also German military help and the influx of clerical and lay elites, bringing with them know-how for administrative organisation, written instruments, minting and so on helped buttress the power of a warlord-turned-king and shape the new kingdom. Thus the presence of German knights strengthened royal power. Literacy was introduced. There was a very limited use of runes prior to Christianisation, and many aspects of reading the short inscriptions on a few objects have been controversial. Administrative literacy, the use of written instruments and the production of various texts were linked to the introduction of Latin. It was probably a former scribe of the Ottonian chancery who penned the first Hungarian charters. The minting of coins started during the reign of Stephen, and the first coinage copied Bavarian models. The interconnection between Christianisation and the building of royal power can clearly be demonstrated on these examples. Thus, not only did ecclesiastics contribute to the beginnings of the use of writing for administrative purposes with the production of charters of donation, but these charters were also issued initially about donations to ecclesiastical institutions. The coins featured Christian imagery, such as the king’s lance, a copy of the Holy Lance of the German emperors, and crosses. Coronation is sometimes seen as the most important ecclesiastical contribution to new royal power, and in the Hungarian case Stephen was indeed crowned. However, in many newly Christianised lands, coronation was far from being among the earliest elements of Christian kingship to appear. Even in Stephen’s case, the crown and coronation were not the only signs of kingship. The king himself seems to have viewed the lance, a donation from the emperor, similarly to the imperial donation to the Polish ruler, as a very significant piece of his regalia: this was on the first coin, and the king also holds it on the portrait on the chasuble commissioned in 1031. We do not know what Stephen’s crown looked like; the extant crown, later attributed to him, was certainly not Stephen’s. The legend of a papal coronation was invented by Hartvic c. 1100. Stephen’s role in Christianisation and state-formation was important, but was subsequently exaggerated in both medieval and modern narratives. As one historian, László Veszprémy argued, an “invented” eleventh century replaced the memory of historical processes, because the narratives that were written from the late eleventh century on about Stephen

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are the main sources we have. They were not composed to mirror reality, but rather, they were constructs premised on the legitimising functions of the first king, now turned into a saint. The local canonisation of Stephen, along with his son Emeric, martyred bishop Gerard and two hermits in 1083, was part of a strategy of legitimation for the ruler Ladislas I who gained the throne through civil war. Stephen was praised as the “apostle” of the Hungarians, he was now presented as the sole founder of the church in Hungary and of the kingdom. The significance of Stephen was only undermined by some sources from German areas, that attributed mass conversion in Hungary to the activities of Stephen’s wife, Gisela. His official Life by Hartvic, written around 1100, is the main purveyor of myths that proved to be extremely tenacious. Among these invented stories is the one about a crown sent to Stephen by the pope, and the papal recognition of Stephen as an apostle. Hartvic also incorporated and transmitted stories from the earlier Lives, notably the story that Stephen offered his kingdom to the Virgin Mary. Stephen’s role was distorted even more in modern national history narratives, where anachronistically he became a father figure whose wisdom enabled him to save the Hungarians from extinction through conversion to Christianity. In reality, he was one among the warrior chiefs of the period who took the opportunity to expand their power through Christianisation and kingship. The king was also represented in a sense as the first model Christian, embodying Christian virtues. He is virtuous and carries out God’s commands; he is wise so that people from many countries flock to him. He is alerted by divine vision to an attack against his realm, and he ensures the conversion of the population. However, Stephen’s figure is not uniform in hagiography, but instead the three different Lives provide even radically different visions of the first Christian king. According to the Major Legend, written for the canonisation, not only was Stephen active in the foundation of bishoprics, churches and monasteries, but he also personally examined the lives of monks and admonished those who were found wanting. He went out at night, disguised, to distribute alms to the poor and even had to undergo tribulations as the poor started to fight over the handouts and pulled out his beard. He sent food to those who were ill, which miraculously cured them. At his prayer, the Virgin herself, to whom he had dedicated the realm, protected his kingdom from the emperor’s conquering army. He is tried by illness and the death of his sons. Thus Stephen is presented as a pious Christian, which is not surprising, given that the Life was written to justify his sanctity. The Minor Legend, written some years

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later, omits the stories about Stephen’s extraordinary piety and instead includes episodes when Stephen metes out justice: those who attacked Pechenegs, nomads who had previously attacked the kingdom, now coming peacefully with gifts to listen to the wise king, are hanged. The hands of those who conspired to kill the king are cut off. Hartvic combined the two previous texts and made up some stories of his own, which are more clearly aligned with the political issues of his times. Rather futile debates have focused on which Life represents “the real Stephen.” Soon, Emeric, Stephen’s son and heir, who, however, predeceased the king, became yet another model for the Christian life, this time, one that conformed much more to a monastic ideal rather than that of an ideal ruler. A Life written in the late eleventh or early twelfth century represented him as a virgin saint who lived a near-monastic life in the world. He kept a vigil every night, singing psalms to God. By divine inspiration, he knew how long each member of a monastic community had practised chastity when he visited the monastery with his father, and he bestowed fewer or more numerous kisses on the monks according to their merit. He regularly fasted and prayed. When the king arranged for him to be married, the couple kept their virginity. When he died, a holy man in Caesarea saw his soul being lifted up to heaven, accompanied by the song of angels. It was not enough for the ruling family to be baptised; the population had to be converted as well. Diverse sources mention missionaries sent by different people and institutions, including Otto I, German monasteries and the pope. The widespread idea that St. Adalbert of Prague had a key role in Hungary’s Christianisation, however, is based on later legend, that was fostered both by Adalbert’s disciples who were active in Hungary and more broadly in the region, and by the desire to erase the traces of German missions, now associated to potential political dependence. By the beginning of the eleventh century, the memory of tenth-century missionaries faded: none apart from Adalbert were mentioned in the sources. The outcome of late tenth-century missions are difficult to assess, as the sources reported widely divergent results: some claimed that conversions were insincere, while others, such as Piligrim, bishop of Passau, boasted of great successes. None of the accounts can be separated from the agendas of their authors: Piligrim, for example, was keen to prove his bishopric’s rights over Pannonia, the name of the former Roman province in what became western Hungary. Therefore, any claims are not necessarily reliable records of the progress of Christianisation. How many people converted by the end of the tenth century is unknown. Bruno of Querfurt related that at

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the beginning of the eleventh century, a part of the population was forced to accept baptism after an army was sent to the area (its location has been disputed by historians), blinding many people. Conversion alone was insufficient to create a Christian society. Institutional structures that underpin a Christian realm were perhaps started to be put in place during the reign of Géza I, although the progress made under his son Stephen I is much better documented. Géza had at least one missionary bishop at his court and may have started  to found ecclesiastical structures: perhaps the bishopric of Veszprém and the monastery of Pannonhalma. There is firmer evidence for the activities of his son Stephen, who established several bishoprics and an archbishopric; by the end of his reign, six or seven bishoprics and one or two archbishoprics. These were the dioceses of Veszprém, Győr, Esztergom, Transylvania, Pécs, Kalocsa, Eger and Csanád. They were all in areas that were firmly under the rule of Stephen or conquered by him. Older research erroneously maintained that Stephen consciously followed Pseudo-Isidore in founding ten dioceses in order to qualify the realm as a kingdom. Better evidence on the process of foundations, however, revealed this assumption to be incorrect. Stephen’s heirs continued to found additional bishoprics and monasteries. The history of the archbishopric of Bács-Kalocsa, the second archbishopric, has elicited much debate among historians. A later invented story attributed the creation of this archbishopric to a historical accident. According to Hartvic’s Life of St Stephen (c. 1100), Sebastian, archbishop of Esztergom, went blind, and therefore another ecclesiastic, Astrik, was elevated to the archbishopric. After some time, Sebastian regained his sight and was therefore reinstated as archbishop; Astrik had to be provided with a substitute for his lost archdiocese, and thus a second archbishopric was created. This is clearly a fictional explanation for the early existence of two archbishoprics. When exactly and why Kalocsa became an archbishopric and why it eventually came to have two seats, as the archbishopric of Bács-Kalocsa, has been the subject of several hypotheses. According to one, it was founded as a bishopric and was later elevated to the rank of archbishopric. According to another, two separate dioceses were merged. Yet another scholar suggested that Kalocsa was originally the head of the Byzantine metropolitanate. An infrastructure of cathedrals and baptismal churches was constructed, first in western Hungary which was most securely under the rule of the king. Although already Stephen’s legislation prescribed that every ten

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village build a church, it is impossible to know how rapidly the infrastructure of village churches became that densely built up. Early churches were built in the centres of royal power, where royal officials had their fortified seat. Wattle-and-daub or wooden churches were constructed in many places before a stone church was built. Lay patrons founded private churches which played a significant role for several centuries. The owner retained rights over the church and appointed the priest. A royal chapel which was the site of the burial of Stephen and his son who predeceased him, and later served as the site where the regalia were kept, was built at Fehérvár. Stephen founded several Benedictine monasteries, and at least one Greek Orthodox one. Although some historians argued that the Greek Orthodox convent of the nuns of Veszprémvölgy was founded by Géza, it is more likely that the foundation was made by Stephen. The foundation charter survives in a Greek and Latin bilingual transcript from 1109. Thus both western and Byzantine monasticism was established in Hungary. Stephen’s successors made new foundations of both Benedictine and Orthodox monastic houses. In the twelfth century, Cistercian and Praemonstratensian monasticism was also introduced. Greek monasteries continued until the thirteenth century, when they fell into disuse and were turned over to western monastic orders. The king and bishops were to provide the necessary liturgical manuscripts, vestments and other equipment for the new churches. One example, the chasuble made on the order of the royal couple, Stephen and Gisela, still exists, as it was later turned into the coronation mantle of Hungarian kings. Its embroidered inscription tells us that it was made in 1031 for the royal church dedicated to the Virgin Mary at Fehérvár. It is made of silk fabric and richly decorated with embroidery of golden and silk thread. Angels, prophets, apostles and the royal couple are depicted on it; the entire pictorial decoration and inscriptions represent the Te Deum hymn. The financing of new ecclesiastical institutions had to be solved as well. The king donated estates, and bishops and monasteries were granted the tithe. The bishop’s tithe may have been introduced by Stephen, or perhaps his heirs; it certainly existed by the second half of the eleventh century. Parishes were the last to develop fully among the ecclesiastical structures, probably mainly between the end of the twelfth and middle of the thirteenth century, but parish development continued throughout the later Middle Ages. Initially, immigrant clergy filled ecclesiastical positions; we know of several named individuals. They include bishops such as Bonipert of Pécs (1009–1036), who was Frankish or Lombard, and

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Leodvin from Lotharingia in the middle of the eleventh century; and hermits such as Gunther from Altaich, and Zoerard and Benedict from Poland or Istria. There is evidence of at least one native cleric who rose to a bishopric by the middle of the eleventh century. Immigrant clerics also brought manuscripts, and some of these still survive, with the earliest extant ones from the eleventh century. Monastic libraries contained such imported works before manuscripts started to be produced in Hungary. Liturgy was first imported from abroad. Early liturgical manuscripts show the influence of the Rhineland, and southern German, northern Italian, northern French and Lotharingian areas. Written sources also refer to the spread of liturgy from Regensburg and Passau to Hungary. Some scholars see Byzantine influences in certain saints’ cults and late eleventh-­ century rules of fasting, although the evidence is inconclusive. Liturgy was already composed in the kingdom during the late eleventh century, for local saints. An early twelfth-century manuscript, the Codex Albensis, shows that the common elements of liturgical usage in the kingdom already existed then. Arguments about art have also been used to trace influences in the Christianisation of Hungary, but many of the identifications have been controversial. For example, whether some buildings and decorations show Byzantine or Italian influence has been debated. Monastic ground plans, basilicas and stone carvings have been connected to Italian precedents and south German areas. The cult of saints, including the evidence of church dedications, also provides some indications concerning areas and institutions that had an impact on Hungary’s Christianisation. While some cults were universal, such as that of the Virgin Mary, others can be linked to very specific places, for example, Giles, whose cult arrived from the monastery of Saint-Gilles in France. Stephen protomartyr, whose name was chosen as the Christian name of the first king of Hungary (and according to one source, also as the baptismal name of his father Géza), was the patron saint of Passau, attesting to the early role of the bishopric of Passau in missions to the Hungarians. The provenance of other cults is debated, for example, either Byzantium or the Ottonian court may have inspired the cult of St George or Cosmas and Damian. The cult of local saints took off with the canonisations of 1083, and subsequently more royal saints (Ladislas I and princesses, notably Elisabeth) were added. Kings of Hungary also collected relics, both while on military campaigns and through their contacts with monasteries. There is evidence of the production of local relics, including the well-attested

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“Holy Dexter.” Allegedly the right hand of King Stephen I, there is persuasive evidence that this relic was “invented” at the very end of the eleventh century, when St Stephen started to be used in a major way not just for the internal legitimation of the ruler, but in political arguments with the papacy and the emperor. An intact relic, therefore, became important, and Hartvic’s Life c. 1100 is the first text that provides a clearly invented account of the miraculous “finding” of the relic. Hungary is among the few countries where early and extensive legislation relating to Christianisation survives, although interpolated to some extent. The legislation was issued by kings and by local synods. Eleventh-­ century legislation survived in twelfth-century and later manuscripts, and therefore there is no exactly contemporary testimony of the earliest version. Legislation was clearly issued over time and then collected, resulting in some contradictory rules included in the manuscripts we have in some instances. These regulations emphasise the need to obey basic injunctions and follow prescribed behaviour. Those who disobeyed were to be punished. Religion was not a separate component of life, and so Christian regulations extended to many social customs; both prohibitions and prescriptions targeted the population. Rituals classified as pagan were prohibited, although retribution changed over time. The Synod of Szabolcs (1092) decreed that those who made sacrifices next to wells or made offerings to trees, springs or stones according to pagan custom must hand over an ox. The Synod of Esztergom (probably from the early twelfth century) punished those in a higher social status for the observance of pagan rites by a forty-day penance, while the penance of commoners was only seven days, but they also received a flogging. It is remarkable that social status even influenced spiritual penalty; it seems that penance alone, without corporal punishment, was seen as not enough of a deterrent for commoners. Those branded as practitioners of magic and witchcraft were also to be punished. According to the law of Stephen I, those condemned as strigae (usually thought to refer to witches) had to fast and undergo instruction by a priest in the Christian faith. However, if they were caught a second time, after fasting they were to be branded on the chest, forehead and between the shoulders in the shape of a cross; for a third offence, the witch was to be handed over to a secular judge. In 1092, the Synod of Szabolcs left the punishment of strigae to the judgment of the bishop. Malefici, practitioners of black magic, were to be handed over to the person they harmed or to his family and left at their mercy. This was justified by the claim that

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sorcery was used to harm, even kill, people. The lesser crime of divination was punishable by whipping. King Coloman’s legislation conformed to canon law in stating that strigae did not exist. According to this law, malefici were to be judged jointly by royal and ecclesiastical officers. The synod of Esztergom prescribed penance for those found guilty of practising black magic; however, it also stipulated that anyone making an accusation of sorcery without being able to offer proof was to be condemned to do penance. It was not enough to relinquish pagan customs; the new Christian regulation of going to mass also featured prominently. Non-attendance at church on Sundays and disturbing the divine service by murmuring entailed the shaving off of one’s hair and other punishments. Prescriptions included that ten villages construct a church, the payment of the tithe, observance of feast days and fasts, deathbed confession and church attendance on Sundays. There was some recognition of practical constraints, such as the exemption from going to church for those guarding the fire, and the permission for villages that were located too far away to send just one representative to the church. Yet this was not to be an excuse to miss Sunday attendance: villages were to be compelled to return if they relocated too far away from their church. Starting in the late eleventh century, legislation insisted on burial in churchyards. By the early twelfth century, relatives and village elders were to be punished if someone did not make a deathbed confession before they died. Moreover, Christian burial was denied to those who died excommunicated. Clergy and ecclesiastical property were placed under the protection of the king. Marriage and sexual mores were also regulated. The abduction and rape of women, fornication, adultery and repudiating one’s wife were all to be punished. Stricter observance of ecclesiastical regulations on marriage was introduced gradually; thus, for example, the killing of adulterous wives and the husband’s remarriage were accepted in some early laws. Marriage ceremonies were supposed to take place in the presence of a priest and witnesses and with the consent of both parties. The gradual introduction of some regulations fits in with the tradition of leniency in the early phases of Christianisation; yet the rules that were imposed were meant to be enforced through a variety of sanctions. The observance of Sundays, for example, was safeguarded by confiscating the tools and animals of those working on Sunday, the dogs and horses of those who went hunting, and the horses of those visiting markets. Further, it was not enough to attend church, but behaviour there also mattered: those high-ranking people who disturbed the divine service were to be

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expelled; but if they were commoners, their punishment consisted of a flogging in the narthex of the church, and the shearing off of their hair. Eating meat during fasts led to a week-long imprisonment. By the end of the eleventh century, the non-observance of Sundays, feast days or fasts was punishable by fasting at the pillory. In the first instance, it was the bishop who judged those who neglected Christian observance, but if that was insufficient, the king was the final guarantor of observance. While legislation demanded conformity to regulations concerning behaviour, there was much less attention paid to what the new converts should believe. The Synod of Esztergom, probably in the early twelfth century (but according to some scholars before 1092),  issued the first explicit prescription in that regard: people were to hear explanations on Sundays of the Gospel, Epistle and Creed, but in lesser churches only about the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer; confession and communion at Easter, Pentecost and Christmas were compulsory. Extensive legislation also aimed at regulating the institutional church and ecclesiastics. As in many countries Christianised in the eleventh century, the demands of the Gregorian reform that aimed to eliminate lay and especially royal rights over ecclesiastical matters did not make much headway. Eleventh-century laws were concerned with royal protection of the church and its possessions; the bishops’ rights in governing ecclesiastical goods and role in inspecting monastic life; clerical celibacy; the regulation of the life of monks, including abbots, and of regular canons. By the late eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century, the clearer separation of abbots’ and priests’ activities was set out: abbots were not to wear episcopal insignia, nor baptise, hear penance or preach to the laity. At the same time, the education of priests and their behaviour came under closer scrutiny. In particular, drunkenness was a major concern: priests were admonished to reproach those making others drunk at religious festivities and impose a penance on them; priests who themselves participated and caused someone to become drunk, or became drunk themselves, were to be deposed. How fast was the kingdom Christianised? If pre-Christian cult sites existed, such as trees or springs, they did not leave any archaeological traces, and therefore it is impossible to know when their use was discontinued. Archaeological evidence from cemeteries is abundant, but difficult to interpret. Very large cemeteries of even over a thousand burials in graves arranged in rows used between the early tenth and late eleventh centuries have been excavated, that coincide exactly with the period in which the

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kingdom was formed and Christianised. However, the transition from pagan to Christian burial practices is intensely debated. Whether the row cemeteries were pagan or Christian, or were initially pagan graveyards which were then converted to Christian cemeteries, has split scholarly opinion. Many of the graves contain no grave goods, while others include jewellery, ornaments that were used on clothing and weapons. Whether the lack of objects that could be definitely associated to pre-Christian beliefs is due to Christianisation or to the low social status of the deceased has been disputed. By the end of the eleventh century, weapons ceased to be included in the graves. Cemeteries around churches—that were indisputably Christian—appeared during the eleventh century. Narrative sources also describe resistance to Christianisation, including pagan rebellions. The hagiographical lives of Stephen describe a revolt early in his reign, and both Hungarian and western European sources relate an uprising after his death, when many ecclesiastics were killed and Peter, Stephen’s successor on the throne, was blinded. According to the fourteenth-century chronicle, people returned to “the custom of the pagans” such as idolatry, consulting fortune-tellers and magicians and eating horsemeat. Another rebellion is described that supposedly took place in 1060–1061. Some of the information provided in these accounts is questionable and may simply reflect ecclesiastical ideas about “paganism.” But diverse independent sources attest to even violent resistance. Any revolts were short-lived and Christianisation continued. Synodal legislation in 1092 required parishioners to restore churches that had been ruined or burnt because of sedition. Eleventh- and early twelfth-century synodal legislation prohibited a whole range of practices. The Synod of Szabolcs (1092) prohibited sacrifices next to wells and offerings to trees, springs or stones according to pagan custom. The Synod of Esztergom decreed that nothing be observed “of pagan rites” and prescribed punishments for black magic. Whether these injunctions occurred because of a still widespread existence of pre-­ Christian practices is impossible to know; while the synod was prohibiting pagan practices, the prologue to a contemporary synodal legislation, discussed below, boasted of the conformity of the kingdom’s inhabitants to Christian regulation. Thus exactly contemporary texts gave radically different versions of the state of Christianity. Those in contact with the supernatural in the pre-Christian belief system (strigae, malefici) were also to be punished. The extent to which textual descriptions reflect real practices is impossible to determine, because there are no trial records or other sources

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that would verify or contradict the legal sources. Ecclesiastical prejudices and texts from Carolingian legislation could influence views about what was described as “pagan practice.” Apart from prohibitions and punishments for pre-Christian practices, there is some evidence of Christian piety. In 1135, a Hungarian noblewoman, Petronella, bought two houses in Jerusalem in order to turn them into a pilgrim hostel and hospital for Hungarian pilgrims. That suggests the regular presence of pilgrims from Hungary in Jerusalem. Whether there are so few such traces from the earliest period of Christianisation because the phenomenon of Christian piety was rare, or because of the nature of our sources, cannot be resolved. Certainly, very few texts survive from this period, and even those that do (such as legislation) are not the types of sources that would provide evidence for individual religiosity in the period. Archaeological evidence, legislation and narrative sources taken together thus offer diverse and difficult-to-interpret indicators on the speed of Hungary’s Christianisation. Clearly, by the middle of the twelfth century at the latest, there are no major questions raised about the Christian comportment of the population. How rapid, and internalised, the conversion process was in the eleventh century cannot be definitively ascertained. At least some people did not accept Christian regulations and even rebelled. Comparison to other countries such as Norway that were Christianised during the same period also suggests that there may well have been regional differences, and religious change may have proceeded at different speeds in different parts of the territory. Probably not all the inhabitants of the entire kingdom followed the same path at the same pace. Another issue that is often raised in studies on conversion is the question of violence. Many scholars have tried to argue against the use of compulsion and violence in conversion by claiming that according to Christian theology, baptism had to be voluntary in order to be valid. However, numerous studies have demonstrated that compulsion was not necessarily understood in the same way in the past as it is now, and that coercion was indeed used in many societies during the process of Christianisation, and even explicitly justified by ecclesiastics. In the Hungarian case, there are certainly many texts that point to the use of compulsion and even violence, even if we cannot always determine the relationship between such texts and reality. Early legislation mainly construed the process of converting people as one of compulsion and punishment, including physical

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chastisement. Bruno of Querfurt wrote about the royal army blinding people in order to force them to accept baptism. While some scholars have tried to reconstruct the quick or slow, sincere or insincere nature of Christianisation based on medieval narrative accounts, we have to be careful in how we understand such texts. They do not mirror reality, but instead provide constructed narratives. This becomes striking when we compare more or less contemporary texts to each other and also compare texts written in different periods that describe the same historical events. In the case of the Christianisation of the kingdom of Hungary, such comparisons demonstrate that medieval texts attest to the different interpretations of Christianisation already in the Middle Ages. Such changing evaluations of Christianisation were connected to political and other agendas of the authors’ own times, as well as to the genre of the text. Eleventh- and early twelfth-century laws represented Christian identity as imposed on the population, with a great emphasis on punishments. Yet at the same time, a king’s mirror, designed to teach the virtues of rulership to the heir to the throne, provided a different view. The Admonitions of St Stephen, composed during the reign of Stephen I, probably by an immigrant cleric (and certainly not by the king himself), puts the emphasis on belief and the leading role of the king: firm belief in and confession without doubts of the Father, omnipotent God who created the whole of Creation; similar belief in his only son Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary via the Angel’s greeting, who suffered on the cross for the salvation of the world; and belief in the Holy Spirit that spoke through the prophets, apostles and Evangelists; belief that God is one, perfect, cannot be divided, and is pure without blemish. This recapitulates the Athanasian Creed. The Admonitions also declared that any of the king’s subjects who deny the unity of the Trinity are heretics. Finally, the king’s duty to protect the Church was emphasised as especially important in the realm, where the faith was still new. The Admonitions therefore depicted a recent and still fragile Christianity, but instead of punishment and coercion, promoted teaching by example and protection. The late fourteenth-century hagiographical Life of Bishop Gerard (Gellért), who was martyred in the pagan rebellion of 1046, may contain earlier material or may be the composition of a late medieval author. It gives an account of the Christianisation of Hungary which may have nothing to do with historical processes, but was certainly an acceptable narration of events at the time of its writing. The text links Gerard’s appointment

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to military victory: King Stephen, after defeating a local lord who is represented as a convert to Byzantine Christianity, but as someone who did not respect the norms of Christianity, created a bishopric in the vanquished area. Gerard was to evangelise the population, convert the infidel and strengthen the converted in the faith. He preached through interpreters, with several monks serving him in that capacity. Nobles and commoners flocked to him to be baptised, and formed queues as they waited for baptism. They brought food along to eat while waiting. Yet there were people who did not go voluntarily to be baptised: they were taken there forcibly by royal officials. The bishop preached to those baptised. The text insists on the very rapid interiorisation of the new faith. The newly converted already sent their sons to be educated as priests. They also gave such lavish donations to the bishop and the Church that Gerard tried to dissuade them from giving up their worldly goods, but they insisted, saying that the bishop taught them that such donations wash away sins. Despite the quick progress of Christianisation, Gerard prophesied a pagan rebellion, linked to the illegitimate kingship of Stephen’s heir, his nephew Peter Orseolo. This indeed came to pass, and the rebels killed countless Christians, including the bishop himself. Eventually Andrew I gained the throne and decreed under pain of death that people give up pagan customs, convert to the Christian faith and live according to the laws that had been issued by King Stephen. Thus Gerard’s Life weaves together a story that can accommodate rapid, mostly voluntary conversion, then rejection of the Christian faith, followed by imposed adherence to the new religion. Christianisation is presented in yet another manner in the prologue of the law of King Coloman (Kálmán), who ruled between 1095 and 1116. Its author was Alberich, who was perhaps a monk. He compiled the text of the legislation passed at the council of Tarcal, in the early years of the king’s reign, at the very end of the eleventh or very beginning of the twelfth century. The prologue is addressed to the archbishop of Esztergom, Seraphin (c. 1095–1104), who commanded the production of the text. Alberich included a lengthy justification for the new legislation, which amounts to a history of Christianisation in Hungary. He is countering those who may suggest that “the Council of Tarcal was superfluous, asserting… that it is preferable to hold to the ancient propositions of those who lived in an earlier day.” To demonstrate that this stance is unjustified, he contrasts the period of Stephen I’s reign, the context for that earlier legislation, with contemporary times. Stephen used “the rod of discipline” prominently, because Christianity at the time was not firmly rooted in

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Hungary: “the whole kingdom was a slave to barbaric ignorance. The rough man, forcibly made a Christian, still kicked against the admonitory prod of the holy faith, still bit back at the penitential lashes of the switch of correction. It was therefore worth the labour to create the coercion of holy discipline, for the conversion of the faithful, and among the converted for the justice of penitence for sins.” Alberich therefore maintains that Stephen had to use legislation to coerce the population to convert; they did not wish to do so, and resisted both baptism and subsequent efforts to make them adhere to Christian rules. By the time of Alberich’s contemporary reality, however, he maintains that everything changed: “mature faith had acquired the firmness of perfect piety, and he [King Coloman] thought of prudently releasing the chains of legal fetters, since he deemed it shameful that the fear of legal punishment should torment the now willing soldier of the faith, when even death would not deter him from confessing the truth he has now recognized.” Stephen, the founder, extirpated infidels and coerced the population to keep Christian laws when transgression was the norm; he “clothed the people in the cuirass of faith”; he terrified “the souls with the sword of the word of God.” Coloman, the continuator, however, watered the tender trees so they would grow in righteousness. He strengthened “upright believers in righteousness,” “surrounded the superabundance of worldly ambition with the girdle of justice,” and adorned the people “with the helmet of salvation.” In their different ways, each conforming to the necessity of their times, both kings ultimately acted against “the sons of perdition” and in the interests of “the sons of predestination.” While we can no more accept this narrative than the others as a true mirror of reality, it provides a crucial insight into ecclesiastical construals of the process of Christianisation at the end of the eleventh century. It is remarkable for giving the key role in this to the kings of Hungary, a representation that gained favour with the canonisation of Stephen (1083). The narrative also breaks down the process of converting the inhabitants into distinct phases. The first phase consists of the extirpation of wrong practice and coercion to accept Christianity. The second phase still involved coercion, but now in order to achieve a higher Christian standard. Only the third phase entails fostering the new shoots and strengthening existing Christianity. The entire process in this narrative takes about a hundred years, from the first introduction of the new religion to a secure Christian identity. It is worth recalling that while Alberich was writing about the strong Christian identity of the population, the contemporary synod of

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Esztergom still decreed punishments for pagan rites. This is a clear signal that we should not confuse textual constructs with historical processes. The conflicting depictions of the process of Christianisation can be seen within one text as well. Hartvic’s Life of St Stephen was the third and officially commissioned Life of the first king, written around 1100, based on two previous Lives that had been written between the canonisation in 1083 and 1100, with novel additions by Hartvic. For Hartvic, the introduction of Christianity was a decisive turning point: through their conversion, the Hungarians were no longer the scourge of Christians and the destroyers of the Church, but became true believers. The reason for the radical change was divine will, which appointed the time of the Hungarians’ conversion during the reign of Géza. He converted with his household and ordered the population to listen to the preaching of St Adalbert, who converted them. Yet, as part of the cosmic battle between God and the devil, the latter stirred up many of the converts who revolted after Stephen, Géza’s son, inherited the throne. The rebels did not want to abandon their pagan beliefs. Even after their military defeat, they continued to resist evangelisation; many missionaries were martyred. Stephen put the “yoke and law of discipline” onto the necks of the people, both through teaching and coercion achieving adherence to Christian regulations. On his deathbed, the king instructed the bishops and elites to “guard the young implantation of Christianity.” Hartvic’s text therefore combined divinely ordained, and therefore very fast, voluntary conversion, with a fragile Christianity threatened by the temptations of the devil. While for Hartvic, conversion to Christianity is a decisive turning point in the history of the Hungarians, this is by no means the case for all authors. Several chroniclers turned Christianisation into a non-event. The anonymous author’s Gesta Hungarorum in the early thirteenth century takes as its exclusive subject-matter the pre-Christian past. This focus on a fictitious, invented pagan past suggests a Hungarian identity predicated on the period before Christianisation. In the work of a late thirteenth-century chronicler, the court cleric Simon of Kéza, the history of the Huns is incorporated as the prehistory of the Hungarians, an elaboration of the anonymous author’s contention that Attila the Hun and the Hungarians were related through common ancestry. It is debated whether Simon wrote or merely reworked the Hun part of the chronicle, but his text survived, whereas possible earlier versions can only be hypothetically reconstructed. Simon drew a clear distinction between pagan and Christian times in so far as faith and behaviour went, while emphasising continuities

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in terms of power and rights to territories. Thus rights to land and military valour continued unbroken between pagan and Christian times. According to this story, the Huns occupied Pannonia (the Roman name of what then became western Hungary), but after Attila’s death their remnants were forced to leave. Huns and Hungarians descended from the same ancestor, so the subsequent Hungarian conquest was a retaking of the land that rightfully belonged to them. Simon, however, condemned non-Christian excesses of cruelty and blasphemy and depicted the introduction of Christianity as the beginning of a moral state of being nonexistent before. Thus he incorporated a largely invented pagan past for political purposes alone, while firmly rejecting paganism itself. In the fourteenth-century chronicles (several compositions exist, divided by scholars into two groups), conversion becomes a surprising non-event. The scholarly convention is to suppose an earlier chronicle, now lost, but its dating and composition are so disputed that if such an original Gesta of the Hungarians existed, nobody knows what it consisted of. Traditional scholarly consensus holds that the extant fourteenth-­ century chronicles incorporate, in a rewritten form, the early chronicle, but generations of historians have debated which of the existing parts the early chronicle had contained. We can only be certain about the extant text, which, in this form, was composed in the fourteenth century. Structurally, the story of Christianisation would have a place in two different parts of the chronicle composition: in the section that is devoted to immigrant noble families who arrived during that period, and in the main narrative about Hungarian history. Conversion and the necessity to use force during the reign of Géza to convert people is mentioned in the discussion of individual immigrants. But in the main part, the chronological account of the history of the Hungarians, no radical break is introduced with Christianisation. The narrative discusses Hungarian raids against western Europe and Constantinople, exaggerating Hungarian successes and minimising defeats, such as the one near Augsburg in 955. Although the pagan Hungarians are depicted as raging against the Church of God, pillaging church treasuries and killing Christians, they are also part of the divine plan. When the German emperor in the mid-tenth century asks the captured Hungarian leaders why they attack Christians so savagely, they respond: “We are the vengeance of God on high, he sent us to you as a scourge.” The text then goes on directly to describe the rule of St Stephen, naming him the first king of Hungary, but omitting to mention that the

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Hungarians were converted to Christianity during his and his father Géza’s reign. There is thus no sense of transition between the description of raids by pagan Hungarians and the establishment of a Christian kingdom. This is not because the chronicler tried to diminish Stephen. The chronicler called Stephen a saint and also emphasised the sanctity of his son Emeric. He mentioned Stephen’s wars and the forced conversion of one of his relatives, as well as his activity in founding some churches and monasteries. Yet all this is not linked to an overall process of Christianisation; there is no explicit acknowledgement of any significant change. Thus the author relegated references to the passage from paganism to Christianity through conversion into his description of immigrant noble families. It seems that the author eliminated the account of the conversion from the chronological narrative, that can be found in many earlier texts. Simon of Kéza made a clearer distinction between the pagan and Christian periods, and the hagiographical Lives of Stephen elaborated on the conversion of the Hungarians. In contrast, the fourteenth-century compositions left only one brief mention in the main narrative: Stephen was concerned about finding a successor who would keep the realm in the faith of Christ, because the Hungarians were readier to follow pagan custom than Christianity. Whereas Christianisation is often a turning point, a radical break in narratives, it becomes a strangely occulted process in this text. This seems to be due to a desire to obscure the pre-Christian nature of the Hungarians’ past and present their deeds as always ordained by God. The Hungarians, implicitly, are a people directed by God from the beginning; hence conversion to Christianity is not an important milestone. The narrative of the fourteenth-century chronicles thus contrasts with that of Simon of Kéza’s, the only other earlier extant chronicle written in Hungary that narrates the entire history of the Hungarians. Simon highlighted the guilt of the pagan raiders and did not try to turn defeat into success. Textual changes between the two narrations demonstrate the conscious rewriting of the past. Simon of Kéza, maybe working from a version of a now lost chronicle available to him in the late thirteenth century, wrote: “Thus it can be seen that the community of Hungarians with its captains or leaders … plundered and threatened this world up to the time of Duke Géza.” The fourteenth-century chronicle substituted: “According to tradition, the community of Hungarians with its captains or leaders did such things until the times of the ruler Taksony.” Taksony ruled before Géza, thus this places the period of raids into a more distant past. Additionally, although it is obvious from the previous narrative that what

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he meant by “such things” was plundering churches and killing Christians, the author avoided giving details, therefore deemphasising the negative aspects of the Hungarians’ activities. Simon mentioned: “this was the last raid the Hungarians undertook while living as pagans,” a sentence omitted from the fourteenth-century chronicle. Simon: “Stephen’s greatest [grief] was that none of his family was … capable of keeping the people so new in the Catholic faith [in that faith] after his death.” Fourteenth-­ century chronicles: “he was grieved because from his relatives none seemed able to keep the realm in the faith of Christ after his death. For the Hungarians were more ready to observe paganism than the Christian faith.” Although the nuances may seem insignificant, there is a clear trend: the later text eliminated or softened those parts that would suggest a sense of rupture or significant difference between pagan and Christian times. In the fourteenth century, the emphasis therefore shifts to the continuity of Hungarian history from the legendary beginnings to the chronicler’s own times. In stark contrast to their (non-)representation of Christianisation under Stephen, the fourteenth-century chronicles include a lengthy description of the pagan rebellion during the reign of King Peter, Stephen’s successor. Peter had been deposed once already, but returned with the help of the German ruler Henry III, so a second rebellion by the nobles broke out. These nobles invited the sons of an exiled member of the dynasty to the Hungarian throne, but, according to the chronicle, the revolt against Peter turned into a pagan uprising. A multitude of Hungarians, goaded by the devil, demanded the right to live according to the pagan religion, to kill bishops and priests, destroy churches, renounce the Christian faith and venerate idols. The author described the rejection of Christianity as dedicating oneself to the devil, shaving the top of the head and braiding the rest of the hair in three braids, turning to magicians and soothsayers, eating raw horsemeat, killing priests and destroying churches, and committing various unspecified crimes. This characterisation is a negative mirror of Christian norms; what Christians abhor and reject is what those who turn away from Christianity embrace. The list may be a mixture of Christian stereotypes about paganism and actual practices. For example, there is no evidence that pagan Hungarians venerated idols; pagan idolatry however is a common stereotype used by Christian authors. The eating of raw horsemeat may be a common misapprehension of the nomadic practice of putting meat under the saddle to protect the horse, or a garbled rendition of funerary practices

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that entailed horse sacrifice. While the text mentions that people were returning to “the errors of [their] forefathers,” that this represents recently abandoned customs is not made explicit at all. A pictorial representation of the revolt deemphasises the issue of a Christian versus pagan conflict even more radically. One version of the fourteenth-century chronicles, the Illuminated Chronicle (just after 1358), includes images as well as text. Here, the illuminator chose not to represent the rebellion as a rejection of Christianity, but rather to focus only on its political implications. The events are depicted in two scenes. In the first, a soldier blinds Peter, while a bishop offers the crown to Andrew (one of the princes recalled from exile); in the second, we see the coronation of Andrew. The Christianisation of Hungary did not mean the eradication of populations who adhered to Judaism or Islam, although attempts were made to convert the latter forcibly. Jews already lived in third-century Roman Pannonia, but there is no evidence of their continuous presence. They were, however, certainly present already in the late tenth century. Their activities in long-distance trade and royal service are attested in the early Christian kingdom. Legislation started to target Jews from the second half of the eleventh century, with the aim of erecting barriers between Christian and Jewish inhabitants of the realm. This followed ecclesiastical norms developed in western Europe. Ladislas I (1077–1095) and Coloman (1095–1116) prohibited Jews from holding Christian slaves. Ladislas also prohibited marriage between Jews and Christian women. Coloman restricted Jewish settlement to episcopal centres, a regulation that was not kept in practice, and allowed only the use of pagan slaves to work lands owned by Jews, in line with earlier imperial legislation. Commercial transactions between Jews and Christians were to be put in writing in sealed charters, and loans were minutely regulated. More restrictive legislation only started in later centuries. Instead of evangelisation, therefore, when it came to the Jewish inhabitants of the kingdom, the aim was to set them apart from Christians, as was customary according to canon law by that time. Muslims, however, were caught up in the drive to Christianise the realm. Hungary was one of the few places in medieval Christian Europe where a Muslim minority lived; they immigrated, some perhaps already prior to Christianisation, but others in the eleventh century. Their places of origin are debated. Toponymic and written evidence suggests that Muslims lived in many different villages and towns in the realm; they formed a very small minority. At the end of the eleventh and beginning of

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the twelfth centuries, Hungary’s Muslims became the target of conversionary efforts through legislation. The Synod of Szabolcs (1092) decreed that “those merchants who are called Ishmaelites” who had been baptised but “return to their own law through circumcision” were to be removed to other villages. What the text’s author meant exactly, whether this was the circumcision of the converts’ own children or whether the author imagined a new circumcision accompanying a former apostate’s return to Islam, is unclear. The legislation further stipulated that those who claimed to be innocent had to prove this, probably through ordeal (the carrying of hot iron). At the very end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century, new legislation targeted already converted Muslims. They were to be hindered from observing the tenets and practices of their old religion in secret. Neighbours were incentivised to report backsliders by a promise of part of the denounced person’s property. Three practices were singled out as signs of continued adhesion to Islam: fasting (obviously during Ramaḍān, although the name is not used, but fasting in itself was also part of Christianity), abstention from eating pork, and ablutions (a necessary preparation for prayer). In order to make it nigh on impossible to continue Islamic practices in private, the legislation stipulated that if any Ishmaelite had a guest for a meal, both the guest and the host were to eat only pork for meat. Further, Muslim communities were to be seriously disrupted: each Ishmaelite village was ordered to build and endow a church, and then half the population was to move to a different area and live together with Christians. Moreover, Muslim women were to be married to Christians. Why such intrusive, enforced Christianisation of Muslims and search for crypto-Muslims was initiated in Hungary can only be guessed at, as no justification was offered beyond a general religious one of including the converts in the Christian Church and thereby creating social harmony. It seems that the attempt to convert the Muslims in Hungary was linked to Christianisation, and then ideas that fuelled the first crusade provided added incentives, since adherents of Islam were seen as enemies of Christians. There was as yet no established tradition that equated subject Muslims to Jews who were allowed to remain unconverted; this parallel and the resulting treatment of subject Muslims only developed from the middle of the twelfth century. In the end, not all of Hungary’s Muslims converted, and the effort to Christianise them was abandoned. The traveller Abū Ḥ āmid al-Ġ arnāt ̣i who spent some years in Hungary in the middle

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of the twelfth century related that while there were crypto-Muslims in the realm, there were also those who practised Islam openly, and the king even charged him with recruiting Muslim warriors for the royal army. The adoption of a new religion by an entire society entailed significant long-term cultural transformations and could lead to the emergence of a new framework not only for beliefs and religious practices, but also for everything from economic life to rulership. Such profound transformations have been analysed for many modern, early modern and medieval societies. How Christianisation unfolded in detail is difficult or impossible to know for the earlier periods, where source material is scarce and unreliable. The gradual nature of Christianisation is often highlighted in both medieval texts and modern scholarship. Medieval authors deplore insincere or incomplete conversion. Modern ones, depending on the author’s sympathies, either lament the long continuity of “pagan remnants” or analyse processes of adaptation and syncretism, and changes in Christianity itself. Peter Brown has pointed out that medieval references to the slow pace of conversion do not necessarily provide a more accurate analysis of events on the ground; rather, the topos of quick, instantaneous, God-given conversion coexisted with that of slow, gradual transformations and the long life of pagan superstitions from the earliest times. The other bugbear of premodern conversion studies is the question whether individual converts were sincere in their adherence to the new religion, or showed only outward conformity in order to gain benefits, and were Machiavellians before the invention of that term. A. Nock and others after him even drew up models that operate with different phases of the adoption of a new religion, using terms such as “adhesion” to differentiate acceptance of new religious forms without full transformation into sincere believers from “true” conversion that entails a full inner reorientation and sincere belief. Such categories come from missionaries, and yet have been espoused by many historians. Thus the study of the conversion of whole societies to Christianity was initially (although mostly implicitly rather than explicitly) influenced by frameworks of thought that had been developed in the missionary field. As a result, endless, and fruitless, debates centred on attempts to determine when a given society has become “fully Christian.” Scholars have already pointed out that this is to misunderstand early medieval Christianity, which did not operate with categories of modern piety; outward conformity, public cult, was the sign of sincere conversion and was what mattered at the time. Moreover, for premodern cases in general, J. Bentley has persuasively pointed out that first of all, we do not

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possess the kind of evidence required to determine whether the first converts were sincere or not; and that, regardless of this issue, such conversions triggered what he called “social conversion,” that is, the Christianisation (Islamisation, and so on) of a whole society. Whether the first converts were sincere or not (something we shall never know), the Christianisation (in other cases, Islamisation or conversion to Buddhism) that followed produced a Christian (Muslim, Buddhist) society. That the full effects of such conversions built up over a longer time period was dictated by structural issues: institutions had to be implanted, which then socialised new generations in the novel ways. Scholarship has been moving towards a framework of analysis that is based on trying to assess what Christianity meant to people at the time. Rather than imposing an external, and often anachronistically modern, view of what Christianity means, scholars are now increasingly investigating how medieval texts present Christianity, and are more and more aware of literary constructs as well as multiple meanings and chronological change. Christianity changed historically, and it is more appropriate to speak of “Christianities” in the plural. The Hungarian case provides rich evidence for the textual construction of the Christianisation process and the meanings of Christianity for diverse authors. It also allows scholars to analyse material and textual evidence to try to piece together at least the broad outlines of a process that fundamentally changed society.

Bibliography Bagi, Dániel, “Die Christianisierung Ungarns im 10. bis 11. Jahrhundert: Der Versuch einer Zusammenfassung”, Credo–Christianisierung Europas im Mittelalter, ed. Christoph Stiegemann, Martin Kroker, and Wolfgang Walter, 1, Petersberg: Imhof, 2013, 370–379. Bak, János M., György Bónis, and James Ross Sweeney (ed. and trans.), The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, 1000–1301, The Laws of Hungary, Series I/volume 1, Bakersfield, CA.: Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1989. Bak, János M., “Signs of Conversion in Central European Laws”, Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed. Guyda Armstrong and Ian N. Wood, Turnhout: Brepols, 2000, 115–124. Berend, Nora, József Laszlovszky, Béla Zsolt Szakács, “The Kingdom of Hungary”, Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c. 900–1200, ed. Nora Berend, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 319–368.

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Berend, Nora, “‘The villainous deeds of Ishmaelites’: Muslim rites in Christian Hungary”, Ritus infidelium. Miradas interconfesionales sobre las prácticas religiosas en la Edad Media, ed. John Tolan and José Martínez Gázquez, Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2013, 247–259. Berend, Nora, “Writing Christianization in Medieval Hungary”, Historical and Intellectual Culture in the Long Twelfth Century: The Scandinavian Connection, ed. Mia Münster-Swendsen, Thomas K.  Heebøll-Holm, and Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn, Durham: Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2016, 31–50. Klaniczay, Gábor, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, tr. Éva Pálmai, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Rady, Martyn and László Veszprémy (ed. and trans.), Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum. Anonymus, Notary of King Béla, The Deeds of the Hungarians, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010. Veszprémy, László and Frank Schaer (ed. and trans.), Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum. Simon of Kéza, The Deeds of the Hungarians, Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999. Veszprémy, László, “Conversion in Chronicles: The Hungarian Case”, Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed. Guyda Armstrong and Ian N. Wood, Turnhout: Brepols, 2000, 133–145. Veszprémy, László, “‘More paganismo’: Reflections on the Pagan and Christian Past in the Gesta Hungarorum of the Hungarian Anonymous Notary”, Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East-Central and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), ed. Ildar H. Garipzanov, Turnhout: Brepols, 2011, 183–201. Veszprémy, László, “The Invented 11th Century of Hungary”, The Neighbours of Poland in the 11th Century, ed. Przemysław Urbańczyk, Warsaw: DiG, 2002, 137–154.

CHAPTER 8

The Choice of Faith in Early Medieval Eastern Europe: Individual and Mass Conversion Vladimir Petrukhin

The choice of faith is an indispensable stage in the formation of statehood in Eurasia. Naturally, this stage is reflected by written testimonies. The most famous of these are the Jewish-Khazar correspondence from the mid-tenth century (the letter of the Khazar king Joseph about the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism), the “Risale” by Ahmed ibn Fadlan on the conversion of the Volga Bulgars to Islam in the 920s, and the “Russian Primary chronicle” (RPC), known as “The Tale of Bygone Years”—about the Russian choice of Byzantine Christianity in the 980s. The initiators of the choice of faith were the rulers of the emerging states, namely Bulan in Khazaria, Almiš in Volga Bulgaria and Vladimir in Kievan Rus’. These initiators had to rely on the support of the elite, as evidenced by

V. Petrukhin (*) Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_8

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information on the embassies sent by Almiš to Baghdad1 before 921 and by Vladimir to Volga Bulgaria and other countries, respectively; last but not least, Bulan had to co-ordinate his decision on the conversion with the “great prince” of the Khazars who was in charge of war and administration. It is clear from the sources how interconnected were the processes of conversion of the peoples of Eastern Europe. Much of this evidence naturally perceived the ruler’s conversion as being equal to the conversion of both the state and “all the people” there. However, lists of the rulers’ subjects as separate ethnoi/“languages” (языки in the “Russian Chronicle” as well as “peoples”/goyim in the so-called Jewish-Khazar correspondence), along with different data of archaeology, are clear signs of the preservation of archaic tribal/ethnic (“pagan”) traditions in the age of conversion. The “external” geopolitical underpinnings of the choice of faith are obvious: the “Great Powers” of the Middle Ages sought to use “federats” from “barbarian” Europe in international conflicts. The imperial policy of Byzantium can be considered as the most consistent against the Khazars, Bulgars (from alongside both the Volga and Danube Rivers) and Rus’. The Byzantines used them both against their own strategic opponents in the Mediterranean, first Sassanian Iran and then the Caliphate, and against each other. At the same time, Byzantium was not quite active in missionary work, although Christian (and Jewish) communities have long communicated with “barbarians” in the Northern Black Sea area. 2 In the Bosphorus, already in the pre-Khazarian time, Byzantium began relations with the Huns. According to Theophanes the Confessor’s “Chronograph,” under Justinian I (in 527/528) one of the “kings of the Huns,” Gord, came to the emperor, became a Christian and received many gifts. Returning to the Huns, he ordered them to destroy their idols. This action caused an uprising of the pagans among the Huns and the murder of Gord. It is not clear how radical Gord was during the religious reform, or whether the chronicler followed the biblical model of overthrowing idols (as well as the Rus’ chronicler, who described the idols 1  Significantly, for the issue of choosing a faith, the ambassador was a man named Abdallah, the son of Bashtu, with the nisba al-Khazarı ̄ “the Khazar” indicating his origin. His name was Muslim, although the Khazars, according to him, were Jews, and Abdallah asked the Caliph to build against them, the enslavers of the Bulgars, a fortress. 2  The Vitae of the first Kherson bishops testify to the conflicts emerging in the Byzantine Khersones, a Christian community with the “Hellenes” (=pagans) as well as Jews.

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overthrown by Prince Vladimir after the baptism of the Kievan Rus’). Sources demonstrate an obvious syncretism in the culture of the nomads living close to the Black Sea. On the foreheads of some Turks who were held captive by the Byzantines in 588/589, “the image of the cross was poked out in black,” according to Theophylaktos Simocattae; these Turks explained to the Greeks that Christians advised marking children with this sign, so they would avoid the plague. Early evidence of the steppes’ Christianization is associated with a rhetoric reflecting eschatology in the middle of the first millennium AD. The Huns and other peoples around the Black Sea and the Danube River, often and traditionally referred to as Scythians by the Byzantines, had to perceive the Christian creed. It is unclear, however, how massive this conversion may have been. Historical events related to the invasion of the Avars in the Danube area in the late sixth century, the Khazars in the Black Sea region in the seventh century and the division of the hordes of Kubrat’s “Old Great Bulgaria” (the migrations of one horde led by Asparukh to the Danube River in the 670s and another one later to the rivers Volga and Kama) further complicated the geopolitical situation. Some people saw opportunities to resolve these conflicts in the eastern parts of Europe by the traditional means for the relations between “barbarians” and empires: reaching an agreement either by the baptism of the former or by the two sides entering into a dynastic marriage. The Byzantine historian Nicephorus, in his “Breviarium,” reports on the arrival in Constantinople (619) of a certain “ruler of the Hun tribe” (most probably the Black Sea Bulgars). He asked Emperor Heraclius (610–641) to baptize him, his archontes and their wives. So, all the members of the elite were baptized together with the leader; they were also honoured with imperial gifts, and their ruler was given the rank of patrician. Nicephorus tells the story of the embassy of Kubrat, who fought with the Avars, to Constantinople ca. 634–635: Heraclius made peace with him, sent him gifts and also proclaimed him a patrician. It was Byzantium that needed an alliance with the Bulgars to block the Avars in the north-west. The turn of the Khazars comes during the wars of the Byzantine Empire, firstly with the Sassanids, then with the Arab Caliphate—the Khazars also became a natural ally of Byzantium, fighting its enemies in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region. Heraclius sent gifts to the ruler of the “Turk” (Khazar?) in 622, at the meeting proclaimed him his child and

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handed out the feasting utensils (archontes received royal earrings). In order to strengthen the union, he even offered his daughter in marriage to the Turkic chief. The aspirations for marriage were mutual, and by 704/705 the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes reports on the marriage of the deposed and exiled (to Khersones) Emperor Justinian II (685–695; 705–711) and the sister of the Khazar qagan, Theodora. Her name may indicate that she was a Christian. In 705, Justinian II himself, hoping to regain the throne, promised the ruler of Danube Bulgaria, Tervel (700–721), “many gifts and his daughter as his wife.” Marriage ties with the Khazar qagans were later actualized: in 732/733, Emperor Leo III (717–741) “married [his] son Constantine and the daughter of the qagan, the ruler of the ‘Scythians’, converting her to Christianity and giving her the name Irina/Eirene.” I had to discuss this situation with Igor S. Chichurov, who believed that the Khazars who had made these marriages were not yet Jews—the conversion of a Jew required a special ritual. In fact, there is no specific date for the Khazars’ conversion to Judaism in the sources: the treatise “Kuzari” refers to the debate about faith to 740 (Kuzari 1.1), and some Arab sources testify that the conversion to Judaism took place under caliph Harun al-­ Rashid (786–809). 3 There are scholars who believe that archaeological data could clarify this date. There was hope in the 2000s that this date could be clarified by the excavations of the Roman settlement of Vyshesteblievka in the Taman Peninsula (Theophanes the Confessor noted the concentration of Jews nearby in the town of Phanagoria), which were led by Sergey V. Kashayev. They demonstrated that there were traces of the necropolis destroyed by arable land with Jewish tombstones of the fourth to fifth centuries near the settlement. We were eager to find the tombstones of the Khazar time in situ, but the lacuna between the ancient tradition (tombstones with Jewish symbols) and the Khazar time still remains insurmountable. The assertion of the Khazars’ domination in the steppes north and east of the Black Sea led to the spread of the Saltovo-Mayatsk archaeological culture dated from the eighth to ninth centuries, which was indeed a synthesis of the traditions of the Black Sea Alans and Bulgars, as well as the 3  The relative dating proposed in the Jewish-Khazar correspondence—a letter from the Khazar King Joseph sent to Hasdai b. Shapruth of the Cordoba Caliphate that related the Khazars’ adoption of Judaism to the first quarter of the seventh century—is an obvious anachronism.

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Altai Turks. This tendency to synthesize Eurasian traditions was most pronounced in the monuments of the elite—memorial complexes, such as those from the sites of Malaja Pereschepina, Voznesenka, etc., attributed to Khazars or Bulgars and dated from the second half of the seventh to the first half of the eighth century. The earliest (the last quarter of the seventh century) and the richest of them (by the number of gold and silver artefacts)—Pereschepina—is associated with the mentioned patrician Kubrat and includes items of a Christian cult. The composition of the treasures vividly illustrates the relations of the leaders of the steppes with the so-­ called world powers (Byzantium and Sassanid Iran) mentioned by quoted historians: feasting utensils, earrings and other decorations, and ceremonial weapons (especially swords). The “royal” luxury of these complexes, comparable to the monuments of the rulers of the Turkic Qaganate, is designed, at first glance, to reflect the “pagan” pre-state cult—sacral kingship. This cult was influenced by imperial China in the East, and by Iran and Byzantium in the West. But it was this influence, as quoted sources demonstrate, that introduced the world’s religions to the life of the nomadic and semi-nomadic elites: in particular, vivid evidence of its significance includes two (according to some scholars—three) golden patrician rings with Christian monograms, one of which supposedly reads the name of Kubrat, and the other, that of his uncle. The chronicler does not report the baptism of Kubrat, but the peace treaty between the Bulgars and the Roman- and Greek-speaking Christians from the 630s had to be backed up by some mutual obligations and oaths, most probably oriented to the Christian tradition. Memorial complexes do not contain burials. It is believed that the burnt bones found there may have belonged to human victims. Indeed, the idea of killed enemies being called to serve the hero in the Other world was spread in the archaic Turkic tradition; there are descriptions of the slaughter of captive enemies at the funeral of the leader in historical texts. Most striking are some details by Theophanes about the conflict between Justinian II and the Khersonites, who lured the Khazars to their side: there were three hundred warriors of the emperor in their captivity whom they gave to the Khazars. The Khazar archon of Khersones bearing the title “Tudun” moved with the prisoners to the Qaganate. “When Tudun died on the road,” Theophanes writes ca. 712, “the Khazars made sacrifice to him killing the turmarch with three hundred warriors.” It is significant, however, that the “parallel” source, Nicephorus, otherwise interprets

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what happened: “Taking the ‘Romans’, the Khazars killed them on the way.” The traditional sacrifice of horses in the steppes can be more definite, as adjudged or presented by the knot: accessories of the knot and stirrups of the beginning of the eighth century for several dozen horses were found in the quadrangular structure (resembling Voznesenka, etc.) near Tsimlyansk/Sarkel at the foot of the Blue Mound. Complexes of the Pereschepina type built to commemorate the predecessors date back to the period preceding the formation of the Saltovo-Mayatsk culture and sometimes stand out in the “Pereschepina culture”: the development of the Saltovo-Mayatsk cultural community in the eighth to ninth centuries demonstrates local options oriented to tribal traditions (primarily the Bulgar and Alanic). The disappearance of the custom to build memorial complexes in the second half of the eighth century evokes associations with information on the conversion of the top strata of the Khazar Qaganate to Judaism. Archaeological evidence of this conversion is practically absent and this corresponds to the mentioned tendency among the disparate subjects of the qagan to maintain the traditional beliefs. Unique evidence of the conversion in archaeology remains the discovery of the so-called Moses dirhams from the Gotland hoard of eastern coins of the ninth century: a legend reproduced on the coins in the Kufic font, “Musa the Messenger of Allah,” replaces the name of Mohammed with the Jewish prophet Moses (recognized also by Islam). The ruler, who had the right to mint coins, used the form of dirham adopted in the international markets of the ninth and tenth centuries to demonstrate his “Moses” faith. The exact location of the mint is unknown, and the estimated date—the first third of the ninth century—reflects not the time of the Khazar conversion to Judaism but rather the initial period of the spread of dirhams in Eastern and Northern Europe. The “Moses dirhams” demonstrate the conversion to Judaism of the ruling elite of the Khazars; and the search for traces of this conversion in the mass material of the Saltovo-Mayatsk culture focused on the identification of Jewish symbols in the inventory. Numerous images of tree-like symbols resembling the Jewish menorah, known for its early Bosporus tombstones (see Плетнева 2000, fig. 105), attract special attention. Crudely executed tombstones are known, but they are also found in settlements only in secondary use. This applies to the graffito resembling seven candles (on a pedestal) on a pot from a ruined grave with a dirham of

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772/773, published by E. Kravchenko. These motifs are known from seal rings and utensils of the Black Sea region; sometimes they clearly demonstrate apotropaic symbolism such as the five-pointed “star of Solomon” on numerous rings and a vessel from Nozharevo, Bulgaria. Sixth-century amphorae with representations of menorah were found recently in Phanagoria (published by L. Golofast), but these finds could be connected with the Jewish community from Phanagoria. The confessional situation in late Khazaria is vividly described by eastern authors, testifying to the presence in the capital cities of pagan, Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities there, with mosques, churches and synagogues. So far, the archaeologists have not found such cities (including the capital Itil); and the attempt to interpret the foundation of the building in Sarkel as a synagogue is unconvincing. The synagogue studied in Khersones, known as the “Basilica of 1935,” indeed belonged to the Jewish community of the late antique polis of the fourth century. Eastern (Muslim) sources unanimously claim that Judaism in Khazaria was adhered to by the qagan himself, isolated (as a sacred person) in his palace quarter, the chief executive (“king”) and their entourage (elite). At the same time, with some of their narrated stories, Eastern authors create a special problem with the Judaism of the elite. Al-Mas’ȗdı ̑ writes: “When the land of the Khazars suffers from drought or a misfortune befalls their country or they face a war against other nations […], the common folk and the people of distinction rush to the king of the Khazars and say to him ‘we have seen a bad omen in this Xâqân and his reign, we foresee (no good) from him. Kill him or hand him over to us so we may kill him.’ Sometimes, he hands him over and they kill him. Sometimes he takes (the task) of killing him upon himself. Sometimes, he shows him mercy, defends him (saying) he is free of offence….” It is this story that was used in the famous “Golden Bough” by James Frazer, who sought to discover the real ethnographic origins of the common mythological stories about the sacrifice of the sacral king. Frazer’s critics objected to the historicization of mytho-epic plots. Nevertheless, the plot of the transformation of Xâqân into a “victim” provokes not only a direct interpretation of this topos by al-Mas’ȗdı ̑, but also far-reaching constructions suggesting the loss of real power by the qagan in a coup committed by the king-Jews (see below). Either way, a blatantly pagan rite was impossible among the Jewish elite, which raises equally far-reaching doubts that this elite accepted Judaism. But it is obvious that the aspirations of the elite (and Bulan) corresponded

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to the requirement of the angel to obtain treasures for the establishment of the sanctuary in the campaign on the Iranian Ardebil. 4 In the Caucasus, the Church hierarchy of Caucasus Albania attempted to baptize the elites of nomads involved in the conflicts between the Caliphate and Byzantium. However, the baptism of the Khazar governor (?) and the son-in-law of Alp-Ilutver (in the neighbouring Caucasian country of “Khon,” i.e. “Huns”) in the 680s remained without consequences. An attempt to create a church organization by sending a bishop to the “Khons” also failed. Christian objects in ordinary burials of the Khazarian time (including the mentioned treasure from Malaja Pereschepina) are isolated. Victor S. Aksenov found pendant crosses in two burials of children in the Upper-­ Saltov catacomb burial ground; the exact analogy of the cross from catacomb no. 99 is not found, and other items with a rhombic middle-scratch are known in other catacombs (in women’s burial no. 85—20 items). The author of the excavations emphasizes that the catacomb burials are carried out in a pagan manner with inventory, and cautiously concludes that the ordinary Alan population was familiar with Christianity, but did not abandon pagan traditions. Either way, the discovery of cross pendants looks local and isolated, not comparable with the more numerous evidence of the spread of Christianity in neighbouring regions, in Crimea, the North Caucasus and Rus’. The Islamic impact on the rite of the Khazars looks different from the point of view of archaeology. Islamic sources indicate that Muslim mercenaries called al-arsiya were on military service to the Khazars in the tenth century. They were ready to fight the enemies of Islam, including the Rus’ warriors who plundered the Caspian lands, but were not engaged with the Islamization of Khazaria itself. The story of the acceptance of Islam by the qagan after the victorious campaign of the Arab warlord Marwan deep into Khazaria in 737 was composed by the authors of the tenth century (according to memoirs?) and only reflected the forced promise of the defeated qagan to accept the Muslim faith. The Muslim rite was compared to the burial complexes in the Saltovo-­ Mayatsk burial grounds of the Northern Donets basin with the narrow graves and the orientation of the deceased’s head to the northwest (sometimes with the eyes facing Mecca): more than three hundred of such 4  The attack against Ardebil could be dated back to 730, which corresponds to the supposed time of conversion of some of the Khazars to Judaism.

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complexes are interpreted as Muslim with remnants of pagan beliefs (suit, amulets and utensils included in the burial) and in some cases—the probable effect of the Christian rite (crossing of hands on the chest). The analogies of the rite are known in the early Muslim necropolises of Volga Bulgaria. At the same time, the origins of this tradition (Volga Bulgar or Central Asian) remain unclear, and the dating of its distribution, the general dating of the complexes of the ninth to tenth centuries, is cumulative, for the Volga Bulgars’ Islamic rite began to spread at the turn of the ninth to tenth centuries. The Lysogorsky burial ground was “biritual.” It contained pagan burials with signs of the rite’s “Islamization.” In addition, the early medieval Jewish burial rite, generally inherited (also true for the biblical tradition) by the bearers of world religions remains unknown: the refusal of cremation, burial equipment, etc., use of modest (“narrow”) graves associated with the custom of burial in savanas (?). In general, the situation of the choice of faith is directly related to geopolitical conflicts, which pushed the rulers to religious reforms. This was the case with the Khazar qagan after the defeat of the Arabs in 737, the opposition of the Khazar Jews against the rulers of the Volga Bulgars, and finally the Rus’, whose ruler began a debate about faith after the war with the Bulgar Muslims. Representatives of the three denominations participated in the debate on faith, with Muslims, preachers of the advancing Islam, being the most active in this debate. However, the efforts of the conquerors, as well as the Christian mission of Bishop Israel of Caucasian Albania in 680s and even the Byzantine mission of Constantine the Philosopher to the Khazars in 861, did not determine the results of the conversion: the initiators of religious reforms remained the rulers of the emerging states—Almiš of the Volga Bulgars, and finally (ca. 986) Prince Vladimir in Kievan Rus’. The prehistory of Christianity in Rus’ in the descriptions of “external” sources is similar to the stories of baptisms of the Bulgars (Kubrat) and Caucasian Huns (Alp-Ilutver): they had no consequences and are not reflected in the mass archaeological material. The story of the Patriarch of Constantinople Photius (858–867, 878–886) about the baptism of the barbaric Rus’ after the first Rus’ campaign against Tsargrad/Constantinople (860) should be considered in the context of his polemics with the Roman Church (the so-called “Photius Schism”). In the pagan Rus’, the Roman opponents of Photius saw a sign of God’s wrath. Photius, on the other

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hand, insisted that the Rus’ should recognize the truth of the Greek Christian faith and called for a bishop (his identity and see are unknown). In tribal society “the choice of faith” was impossible. Unlike Christians, the “pagans,” followers of tribal cults, did not doubt the “reality” of foreign gods, but they were considered as notoriously hostile since they were patronizing “foreign” peoples and lands. The Varangian Rus’ of the princes Oleg and Igor could swear by the Slavic god Perun not because of the “choice,” but because he was the god of the Slavic land where they lived and the god of the Slavic troops led by the Rus’ princely retinue. However, the Greeks, who took the oath of Rus’ by Perun under Oleg (RPC, ca. 911), already under Igor (in 944) led the Rus’ to the church of Elijah—and part of the Rus’ retinue was already Christian. The chronicle story of the baptism of Princess Olga (955) clearly correlates with the motive of pious cunning: she outsmarted the emperor who sought her love, and became his goddaughter (cf. Bulan, outsmarted his opponents in the debate about faith). The baptism of Olga (and her court?) in Constantinople affected the Rus’ elite, especially the female part—the chamber graves of the Old Rus’ elite in Kiev, Gnёzdovo, Pskov and other sites contain female burials with crosses and rich equipment. But Olga’s attempt to “overplay” the Greeks who did not work hard in missionary activities, and calling on the German bishop, did not end with an organized and stratified church. Olga’s efforts, however, cannot be considered as in vain despite the opposition of her son, the pagan Sviatoslav (d. 972). The choice of faith became possible when the Russian land (Rus’ state) found its geopolitical place in the world of early medieval civilizations. The next step, namely the chronicle’s story of the choice of faith by Olga’s grandson Vladimir (i.e. debates with Bulgar Muslims, Germans from Rome, Khazarian Jews) included in the “Tale of Bygone Years” ca. 986, is interpreted differently and with some contradictions in the historiography. Naturally, the first thing the researchers take into account is the obvious fact that the “choice of faith” or, more broadly, the debate about faith, is a common medieval topos with rather obvious Byzantine origins and even a supposed Jewish influence: for comparison, one can see the chronicle plot with the “choice of faith” by the Khazar qagan in the Jewish-Khazar correspondence, i.e. debates with Muslims and Greeks. In this respect, the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition was more significant for the Old Rus’, in this case—the debate about the faith of Constantine the Philosopher (St. Cyril) with representatives of the same

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denominations: Muslims-“Hagarians,” Jews in Khazaria and Latins in Venice. Not for nothing is the Greek uttering the final speech at the court of Prince Vladimir (catechisis) called a Philosopher. The Moravian prince Rastislav (846–871), who called in Constantine the Philosopher and Methodius in 862/3, also faced the choice of faith; however, this was within the still relatively unified Christian denomination. Again, one could compare the formula of calling teachers in the “Long Vita of Methodius” (Ch. 5): “many teachers of Christians came to us from the Vlakhs [Romans—my note, V.P.], and from the Greeks, and from the Germans, taught us in different ways… So good master [Emperor Michael III of Byzantium], send us a man who would teach the truth.” It would be hasty, however, to reduce the chronicle plot of the “choice of faith” only to the Byzantine, in fact the Old Slavic literary context. It is essential that the plot itself is introduced by the chronicler into the real historical context. Under 985, he tells of Prince Vladimir’s campaign against the Volga Bulgars. The campaign is drawn as victorious, Vladimir concludes the peace with the Bulgars and returns to Kiev. And there (instead of the traditional pagan victims on the occasion of the victory) the arrival of Bulgar Muslim ambassadors is described: “Bolgars of Mohammedan faith, who said, ‘Though you are a wise and prudent prince, you have no law. Adopt our faith, and revere Mahomet’. Vladimir inquired what was the nature of their law. They replied that they believed in God, and that Mahomet instructed them to practice circumcision, to eat no pork, to drink no wine, and, after death, promised them complete fulfillment of their carnal desires.” The establishment of contractual relations with Volga Bulgaria has its continuation: Bulgar ambassadors preach Islam. For the Muslims, Vladimir really does not know the “law,” because the law is the Holy Scripture. And only with the “people of scripture,” e.g. Jews and Christians in the Islamic tradition, could there be legal relationships; pagans were to be converted to “true faith.” Prince Vladimir’s questions to the Bulgar ambassadors about their law correspond to the context of the chronicle: pagan Vladimir listened to them, for he was fond of women and indulgence, regarding what he heard with pleasure. But circumcision and abstinence from pork and particularly wine were disagreeable to him. “Drinking,” said he, “is the joy of the Rus’. We cannot exist without that pleasure.” Indeed, in Rus’, feasts with the retinue were an important feature of state life and a form of income distribution (“feed”/корм).

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The Bulgar embassy itself corresponds to the general historical context, in the context of Kiev’s traditional historical ties in the tenth-century world: via Bulgar, in particular, silver from the East entered Rus’ (bypassing Khazaria); it was again Volga Bulgaria that provided the connections with Khwarazm and the Samanid Islamic state in the East as well. A characteristic of the chronicle debate about the faith of the embassy is not attributed to some “abstract” Hagarians or Ishmaelites, but has a specific ethno-confessional address, as also occurred in the subsequent embassies. “Then,” continues the chronicler, “Germans from Rome” came. They added, “Thus says the Pope: ‘Your country is like our country, but your faith is not as ours. For our faith is the light. We worship God who has made heaven and earth, the stars, the moon, and every creature, while your gods are only wood.’ Vladimir inquired what their teaching was. They replied, ‘Fasting according to one’s strength. But whatever one eats or drinks is all to the glory of God, as our teacher Paul has said.’ Then Vladimir answered, ‘Depart hence; our fathers accepted no such principle.’” The phrase “Germans/Nemtzy from Rome” reflects the real historical situation that accompanied the time of the choice of faith and baptism of the Kievan Rus’, when the German emperors, starting from Otto I (962), took possession of Rome, subordinated their influence to the Popes (cf. that the Germans came from Rome “from the Pope”) and came into conflict with Byzantium; in this conflict they sought to enlist the support of the Rus’. In the chronicle’s information about the Germans “from Rome,” Alexander V. Nazarenko sees the reflection of the information about the embassy from Emperor Otto II (which dates to 982/983), and even in most of the chronicle dialogue with the Germans he sees a hint of the unsuccessful mission of Adalbert, sent by the bishop to Rus’ under Olga in 961; and it should be noted that Prince Vladimir sent the ambassadors back with the words, “our fathers accepted no such principle.” It is hardly possible, however, to consider this chronicle motive outside the context of the polemics between the Greeks and Latins, Greeks and Muslims, and Greeks and Jews, which is presented in the subsequent speech of the Byzantine ambassador—the Philosopher: he, the Philosopher, reproaches Latins that they “have modified the faith.” It is not clear from the chronicle as to what exactly Vladimir’s ancestors did not come to—“the commandments” in general, or “the feast” (fast). The requirement of ritual purity was characteristic of the initial Rus’ Christianity—a question about the essence of the Deity, according to the Chronicle, was not touched. Rather, it is still a speech in the prince’s

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reference to the “law” as a whole: the chronicler, of course, could not attribute to the pagan Vladimir the anti-Latin arguments used in the Speech of the Philosopher, so he had to refer to the rejection of the Latin faith by “fathers.” The prince’s reciprocal embassies to the Bulgars, Germans and Greeks are called to test their “law,” and the absence of “beauty” in worship disgusts the ambassadors who came “in Nemtzi,” meaning Germans. Then the ambassadors go further “to the Greeks” and return to Rus’, amazed by the beauty of the Greek service: “we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth.” It is significant that the chronicle route of the Rus’ embassy does not include Rome—ambassadors do not follow the chronicle route from the Varangians to the Greeks, and go directly “to Nemtzi” and then to Tsar’grad/Constantinople, which can also be seen as the reflection of the historical realities of the second half of the tenth century; the ambassadors go by way of the German missionaries. These realities are immersed in the context of traditional polemics, but the historical relevance of the choice of faith itself, i.e. the Greek or Latin rite, the “acquisition” of faith in Byzantium or baptism from German missionaries, in the initial history of Christianity in Rus’ and at the beginning of Vladimir’s rule, seems quite obvious. The characteristic of the Jewish embassy is also particularly noteworthy. This is the only case in Old Rus’ (and Byzantine) literature when it tells of Judaism in connection with the Khazars. Prince Vladimir’s test of their faith is reduced in the Chronicle to a rhetorical and, at the same time, important question for the choice of a state religion: they were asked “where their native land was, and they replied that it was in Jerusalem. When Vladimir inquired where that was, they made answer, ‘God was angry at our forefathers, and scattered us among the gentiles on account of our sins. Our land was then given to the Christians.’” The prince (and chronicler) knew that the land of the Khazars was destroyed by his father Sviatoslav. The attempt of the Khazar Jews to declare that their land was “in Jerusalem” was immediately exposed, and when they admitted that the sins of God “waste” them in the countries, Vladimir accused their embassy of maliciousness: “Do you expect us to accept that fate as well?” (it should be noted that the motive of maliciousness of the Jews is typical of both Byzantine and Old Rus’ literature in general). The Jewish confession that “their land”—Jerusalem—was “betrayed by the Christians” was perceived by the researchers as evidence of the late origin of the entire motive of the Jewish embassy; indeed, Jerusalem was

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captured by the Crusaders as a result of the First Crusade in 1099. But the city was recaptured not from the Jews, but from the Muslims. Rather, in the Chronicle they are talking about the traditional “imperial” claims of Byzantium to the Holy Land: in “The Speech of the Philosopher” (as well as in the ideologically close “Sermon on Law and Grace” by Hilarion) it is said that the Jewish land was taken over by the “Romans,” i.e. the Byzantines. So, in the motive of the Khazar Jews, the chronicle follows the early tradition and not the constructions of the beginning of the twelfth century. It was Norman Golb (1928–2020) who shed more light on the letter of the Jewish-Khazar community of Kiev, dating it back to the tenth century. Thanks to his efforts, the local Kiev origins of the chronicle tradition about the embassy of the Khazar Jews became obvious. Judging by the anthroponyms of the Kiev letter, the Cohanim, the heirs of the Jewish priestly estate in Kiev, received Turkic and Slavic names (Gostyata et al.). They did not abandon the “pagan” tradition, just like the princes who stayed pagan (Vladimir and Olga) along with their new Christian names. 5 Significantly, the Chronicle story does not mention the Judaized Khazars, but a Jewish community from Khazaria. Contrary to long-held popular belief, the activity of the Jews could not be compared with the missionary activities of Latins or Muslims, because missionary activity was not typical of the Jewish tradition. Those wishing to convert to Judaism had to be warned first of all about the persecutions that the Jewish people suffered; so, it was not strange that the motive for scattering Jews for sins was mentioned in the Jewish-Khazar correspondence. The historical “realities” of the tenth century, therefore, can be attributed to the mention of the “Jews of the Khazars,” even their participation in the “debate” at the Court of Vladimir, but not their embassy, meaning “mission.” 5  The situation with the change of names of rulers in Rus’ looks clearer than the Khazar tradition. The first baptized ruler, Princess Olga, received the baptismal name of her godmother Helena, the wife of Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus; Vladimir, who was baptized in the Byzantine Khersones (Korsun), became known by his royal name Basil, in honour of his godfather, the Emperor Basil II (976–1025). Paradoxically enough, both Olga and Vladimir were revered by their pagan names by the late Christian tradition. The same goes for their descendants Boris and Gleb (in baptism, Roman and David). In this case, princely ancestors were more important than heavenly patrons. Rus’ princes after baptism retain their “pagan” names, including Scandinavian—cf. Rurik, Oleg/Olga, Igor, referring to the era of the calling in of the Varangians. According to the “Cambridge document,” the Khazars elected a judge who became qagan, and the chief prince accepted the Judaic name Savriil/Sabriel: the common identification of this prince with Bulan is hypothetical.

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The choice of faith made by the Khazar ruler Bulan never ceases to amaze both witnesses of the Khazar conversion and subsequent scholars— the election of the faith of the Jews, who were known for being persecuted everywhere. The victory of Bulan over the messengers of the Caliphate and Byzantium trying to bring reason to a qagan convert to Judaism, looks like a literary anecdote, following the archetypal trickster; he outsmarted his opponents, who had to recognize the true faith in the biblical prophets (“The Moses faith”). Indicatively, the Jewish-Khazar correspondence called Bulan “God-fearing” (inclined to monotheism, according to Pavel Kokovtsov), but he retained his “totemic” name (“Deer,” “Moose,” “Elk”). Such an outlandish story distracted from the natural “historical” question: where did Judaism come from in the Khazar steppe? No less ridiculous from the point of view of historical realities are some parts of the polemics of the Khazar Jews, both in “Constantine’s Life (Vita Constantini)” and in the text of the “Russian Primary Chronicle.” In the text of the Vita, the qagan, in a letter to the emperor (where he asks the emperor to send scribes-teachers), recognizes the customs of his people as “shameful” and the Empire of the Greeks—divine. The embassy of the Khazar Jews to Prince Vladimir ca. 986, known from the Chronicle, begins the sermon with the statement that the Jews crucified the god in whom Christians believe: the statement is “historically” improbable from the point of view of Judaism, but characteristic of the Orthodox thinking adversus Judaeos, which did not involve the Jews themselves in the polemics. Indeed, for Judaism, missionary work is uncharacteristic: it is known that a descendant of Abraham, born by a Jewish mother, becomes a Jew. The Angel of God inspired Bulan with the idea of conversion, while in the “Cambridge document” (adjacent to the Jewish-Khazar correspondence) Jewish refugees from Armenia (?), mixing with the adopted residents of the Khazars, return to Judaism. This specificity of Judaism explains the limited spread of Judaism adopted by the Khazar elite; the conversion of a foreign man (giyyur) was only possible at the request of the host of the new faith. The political considerations of the elite, which sought a religion that would allow it to remain independent from the great powers (in the case of the Khazars—the Caliphate and Byzantium), were alien to the common people in Khazaria. The same specifics of Judaism can clarify the peculiarities of the early Slavic hagiographic tradition, i.e. the Khazar mission of Constantine the Philosopher (860–861), the history of which is given in detail in the

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“Longer Life of Constantine” (chapters 8–12). The outcome of this mission receives conflicting assessments in the historiography. The most obvious “result” seems to be the failure of the mission. According to the Vita Constantini, Jews and Saracens argued at the court of the Khazar ruler, urging the qagan to accept their faith. Constantine was sent by the Byzantine emperor to the qagan at the request of the Khazars to judge whose faith is better. In the debate, Constantine the Philosopher defeated the Jews at the court of the qagan, but the result of the victory was not impressive: Vita tells us of the decision of the qagan to forbid his subjects to follow Judaism and Islam; however, Constantine managed to convert only two hundred pagans. In a message to the emperor, the qagan said that the Philosopher had convincingly interpreted Christian dogmas, and the Khazar authorities would not prevent Christianization by demonstrating friendship and willingness to serve the interests of the Empire (Vita Constantini, chapter 11). The discussion in the historiography is related to the problem of the religion of the Khazar authorities themselves, including the qagan. Byzantine sources do not mention the Judaism of the Khazars, rather distinguishing the Khazars and Jews by “ethnicity.” This gave rise to the assumption that Judaism had spread to Khazaria post 861, after Constantine’s (St. Cyril’s) failed mission. This assumption was made by George Vernadsky, who tried to date the Judaization of the Khazars to the 860s. His main thesis was repeated in 1995 by Constantine Zuckerman. The very setting of the problem is not quite correct, because Greek (Byzantine) sources do not report on Judaism in Khazaria in the tenth century: for them, the Khazars remained a different (from the Jews) ethnos, regardless of religion. And though the Khazar King Joseph informs in his letter that he “committed over himself, his servants and all his people (italics mine, V.P.) to circumcision” and then sent for the teachers of the Law of Moses, here we are dealing with a biblical topos (the whole people—a witness of the conversion) rather than with the historical realities of mass conversion. As has lately been demonstrated by Boris E. Rashkovsky, the Jewish medieval texts (including the Jewish-Khazar correspondence) do not contain a terminology related to the full conversion of the Khazars as well. In these texts, the Khazars remain a separate people, not Jews or part of the Jewish people. The Vita Constantini, however, quotes the beginning of the speech of the qagan, who meets Constantine, the future St. Cyril (d. 869), holding a special drinking cup: “I drink in the name of a single God who created

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every creature.” It is a blessing—the berakha—which corresponds to the Jewish tradition. It was performed in early Christianity, too. Despite the predetermined results of the rhetorical controversy and the victory of the main character of the story, in these texts there is a motive that relates to a not quite motivated “failure” in the process of conversion. According to King Joseph’s letter, Bulan meets an angel in his sleep who, on behalf of the Lord, promises him victory if he (and his people) accepts the Jewish law. Bulan, referring to the ignorance of his people, asks the angel to encourage the conversion of a certain authoritative prince (cf. ha-­ sar ha-gadol, “grand prince,” of the “Cambridge document”). Together with this and in accordance with biblical tradition, Prince Bulan gathered “all princes and slaves of his own and all their people” to accept the new faith. This motive gave rise to a wave of historical interpretations. Since the time of Abraham J. Garkavi, it has been considered as a testament to the so-called dual kingship in Khazaria, a tradition that is typical for the Turkic peoples. Anatoly P. Novoseltsev considered Bulan to be a “shad” who forced an unnamed Khazar qagan to convert to Judaism: the “coup” that occurred after the Khazar conversion contributed to the pushback of the qagan to second place as the “king” and the “silence” of the role of the qagan in the Jewish-Khazar correspondence. In the interpretation of Lev N. Gumilev, the coup was carried out by a Jew (Grand Prince), mentioned in the “Cambridge document.” Significantly, however, Bulan’s descendant Joseph insists on his non-Semitic origins—Khazar (the first-born of the people) was the seventh son of Togarmah, most probably denoted as the “ancestor” of the Turkic peoples, a commonplace in medieval Jewish and Caucasian tradition. It is significant that in the Vita Constantini, Сonstantine the Philosopher, a missionary who “replaces” the angel, mentions the “first counsellor” of the qagan, in connection with the controversy about the incarnation of God. The counsellor (admittedly not named first) himself enters into a debate: he is referred to as an expert on the hostile Islam (“the evil of Saracens,” according to the Vita). He asks a provocative question: why do Christians not honour Mohammed (he recognized Jesus as a prophet)? Denying the Muslim interpretation of the Christian Messiah as a prophet, Constantine appeals to the decision of the qagan himself who remains an arbiter in the controversy. Byzantine diplomacy was aware of the “dual kingship” of the Khazars: in the mid-tenth century, Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus reported on the embassy of the qagan and the pech/beg, who asked to build the fortress of Sarkel on the Don approximately two

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decades before the mission of Constantine (Sarkel was built in about 840). But judging by the Vita Constantini and other sources, in the Byzantine world, the qagan was recognized as the main figure amongst the Khazars. It seems that the sacrifice of the Khazar qagan, as in Frazer’s “plot,” is no more than a topos, in view of the traditionally incriminated Jews because of their decision to crucify the Christian Messiah. In the “Primary Chronicle,” the Greek Philosopher came to Prince Vladimir after the Khazar Jews and, when asked by the prince about the Jewish faith, replied that the Christians really believe in the Messiah crucified by the Jews. This is followed by a catechism, which ends, as it should, with the story of the Last Judgement. Naturally, the prince wants to go to heaven, but to the Philosopher’s offer to be baptized, he answers “wait and not enough.” The council then follows, but not in the person embodying “executive power,” although the uncle of the prince and governor Dobrynya could claim the role of vojevoda (equal to “beg” in Khazaria) under Vladimir; instead, the council was held with the Boyars, the senior retinue. Vladimir continued testing the faiths by sending embassies to places where there was an active cult (i.e. in all countries, except for Khazaria, which was crushed by his father Sviatoslav in the 960s). This was the traditional custom of the Old Rus’ administration. Impressed by the words of the Byzantine rite, demonstrating a paradise on earth (in the cathedral), at last Vladimir leans towards Byzantine Orthodoxy. It was Fedor I. Buslayev who also suggested many years ago that the delay in the prince’s baptism was not only because he needed time to test faiths. As a parallel, Buslayev cites an episode in the baptism of the Frisian King Radbod (d. 719) in the St. Wolfram Vita: the king has already put one foot in the font, but suddenly asks where his ancestors are staying— were they between the righteous or in hell? The preacher had to answer that the Gentiles had destroyed their souls. Radbod refused to be baptized, wishing to share the afterlife with his relatives. According to the chronicle’s debate about faith, Prince Vladimir was particularly interested in the afterlife. He listened with pleasure about the gurii (ḥūrı ̄) of the Muslim paradise, “for he was fond of women and indulgence.” It is significant that the punishment of the woman-lover (zhenolyub) is also known in the early medieval Western tradition: under Emperor Louis the Pious (d. 840), a “vision” of the afterlife was created in St. Gallen monastery, according to which his father Charlemagne (d. 814), in the run-up to hell, had to endure torments for his love for

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women—a monster tormented his genitals there. Vladimir had something to think about during catechization. One way or another, the “hitch” in the conversion was connected in both the Khazar and Old Rus’ texts with an appeal to the historical tradition, which has nothing to do with the literary topos in the plot of the choice of faith. The Old Rus’ chronicle paradoxically summarizes the narrative of the era of conversion (under 996). It is said: “Thus Vladimir lived according to the prescriptions of his father and his grandfather.” This conclusion, of course, does not refer to the “dispensation” of the confessional issues for religion changed after the baptism of the Rus’: it is about the rejection of Byzantine legislation, the principles of which the Byzantine bishops have tried to impose. Referring to the fear of sin, Vladimir refused to impose a death penalty for “robbers.” Instead, he preferred the traditional penalty—vira, since this kind of fine was used to replenish the treasury. What happened in Khazaria? There, the religious reform itself, as already mentioned, causes the bewilderment of experts in Judaism: Bulan, who was really granted a victory in the war, arranged for a portable sanctuary, a tabernacle in the description of King Joseph’s letter. It did not correspond to the customs of the synagogue cult and was properly understood in the Jewish book called “Kuzari” (2.1). However, the portable sanctuary corresponded to the “nomadic” life of the qagan and his court (portable “mosques” and altars are typical in medieval life in general). Bulan’s conversion dates back to the mid-eighth century. King Joseph wrote his letter in the 960s and kept the tabernacle in his palace, for by the tenth century, Khazar urban culture has already been formed, with synagogues for Jews, mosques for Muslims and churches for Christians. At the same time, Joseph was betrayed by another ancient tradition that was incompatible with Judaism: at the beginning of his letter, he insisted that he was coming “from the sons of Japheth, from the offspring of Togarmah.” This was in direct contradiction with the attitudes of giyyur, the transition to Judaism; those who passed giyyur renounced the “pagan” origin and became descendants of Abraham, their semitic father. The fact that Joseph and the Khazar kings insisted on pagan genealogy corresponded to the phrase “according to the prescriptions of his father and his grandfather,” as the Rus’ chronicler would say, and was intended to demonstrate the legitimacy of power to the “common people” subject to the qagan. These people had preserved their customs and did not convert to Judaism. Apparently, for the same purpose, the Turkic epic motive about

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the willingness of the qagan to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his subjects was preserved in Khazaria, while in Kievan Rus’, the “father’s prescriptions” of Prince Vladimir were revered. Thus here, history was separated from the “narrative,” and the earthly kingdom—from the kingdom of Heaven. The Khazar qagan was not going to force his subjects to convert since his religion did not require it. Prince Vladimir (who, according to Hilarion, accepted the archaic title of qagan) was to baptize “the entire Rus’ land” by subverting idols and building churches.

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CHAPTER 9

The Times of St. Tsar Boris-Michael of Bulgaria (852–889; † 907): Between the Real Historical Facts of the Ninth Century and the ‘Facts’ of Selective Memory Tsvetelin Stepanov

Facts of history and/or those of memory? The modern-day problem of deciding which study subject is more valuable—history (the historical past and historical times) or the memory of it—has long been well-known to the academic community. This tension between ‘classical’ historians and (mostly) sociologically driven ones, influenced by the innovative views and studies of some sociologists, was initiated to a high degree by the research of Pierre Nora in France in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as by the studies of Reinhart Koselleck and Jan and Aleida Assmann in Germany dealing with various aspects of memory in different human communities. The vast majority of this type of research is concerned with Modern times, the nation and, in particular, the Holocaust. Jan Assmann has also done a lot in the field of history and cultural memory in Ancient Egypt and Ancient

T. Stepanov (*) St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_9

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Israel. In my opinion, such extreme oppositions are hardly necessary and, therefore, there is no need for any contrasting or prioritization of either one of them. What is needed instead is a clear distinction between the two and, accordingly, a clear definition of theses/hypotheses and especially methodologies. Maurice Halbwachs, followed later by the aforementioned Nora and Assmann, took note of the fact that what we call memory and what is known as history are marked by their own specific purposes and therefore follow separate and quite different strategies for storing information, its use and transmission to future generations. Undoubtedly, these concepts conceal various ideological ‘uses’, which become especially well visible in situations of long historical periods containing fragments, oblivion of facts and even actual hiatuses in what is memorized by the generations in one way or another. In regard to the European Middle Ages, one should not overlook the special role of the Church in ‘composing’ in a specific way the events of the past that ought to be preserved and passed on to the coming (in this particular case, Bulgarian) generations. This type of control by the Church is especially evident during the period of the Second Bulgarian Tsardom (1186–1396). And, in the absence of the specific carriers, since they would have passed away many, many years prior to the relevant events that needed to be stored in people’s memory, there would always be a real danger of these events being stored ‘in the memory in trivial models, in the vein of the typical’, in the words of Maria Stepanova. These brief introductory remarks are needed to clarify at the very outset what this article’s title suggests. The present article shall not concern itself—yet again and far too extensively—with the diplomatic successes and/or failures during the rule of the Bulgarian archon (and, subsequently, prince) Boris-Michael the Baptizer (852–889; † 2.05.907), but will instead focus on the way they were memorized or omitted from memory (involuntarily or deliberately?) by later generations of writers in medieval Bulgaria. As shall become clear from the exposition, the latter clearly selected the actual historical facts from the second half of the ninth century, directly related to the deeds of Boris-Michael, in order to create an acceptable—especially in the eyes of the Church—image of this Bulgarian ruler. Thus, the aim of this work is not so much to make an evaluation of the diplomatic aspects of this Bulgarian ruler’s actions or a detailed description of the geopolitical realities of Europe at the time of their occurrence, but, rather, to connect the latter with a specific aspect, namely, the selective uses of memory, which processes the past in a specific way (with

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varying purposes and ideological motives), and thus gives a special meaning to some facts from it, while altering others and at times even deliberately pushing them into the background and even ‘omitting’ them. Such an overview would reveal at least two things: first, what is preserved by the ‘official’ (or ‘state’) memory from the political successes of this same prince and, second, what is kept by the ‘lower’ (unofficial) memory. It is clear that for such an undertaking to be realized in full, it would require a large amount of space for an extensive analysis, which is something that cannot be done within the scope of one single article. Such a task would imply the need for a preliminary selection of Bulgarian sources (by time and especially by genre and order), as well as a synthetic presentation of some general specifics, trends and patterns in the development of Europe during the second half of the ninth century, which would allow the positioning of the Bulgarian state and its ruler within that era. From all the sources available to date, be it the product of authors from medieval Bulgaria or of writers stemming from other countries and their respective writing traditions, it is clear that Prince Boris-Michael is presented through different images: (1) a warrior (of Christianity—cf. the crushing of the revolt of the Bulgarian boilades (bolyars) dissatisfied with the conversion), (2) a diplomat and politician (cf. his negotiations with the East Franks, as well as with the Byzantines, the Serbs and the Croats, and especially with the Papacy), (3) a visionary (cf. Boris-Michael’s reception of the disciples of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in Danube Bulgaria after 886 and Bulgaria’s role in preserving the work of these holy brothers), (4) the ‘Magical King’ (in the words of Veselina Vachkova), (5) the ‘Last King’ before the End of Times (cf. historical apocalyptic texts in Bulgaria dating after the second half of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries), and quite possibly also (6) a saint, canonized soon after his death on May 2, 907 (despite the existence of many ambiguities in this aspect, and hence— disputes in historiography). It cannot be denied that the political vision of Prince Boris-Michael was extremely ambitious, since it integrated both the geopolitical and the cultural and civilizational aspect. The latter became especially visible after the mid-880s, thanks to Boris-Michael’s decision to offer shelter to Climent Ohridski, Naum and Angelarius in Bulgaria. Their work, together with that of their disciples and followers, would contribute to the gradual formation of Slavia Orthodoxa and would also give meaning to the concept of ‘Byzantine commonwealth’, ‘coined’ by Sir Dmitri Obolensky several decades ago. However, when we read the testimonies preserved over the

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centuries on the life and work of this same Bulgarian prince, we immediately notice the difference between his presentation from a real historical perspective, based on facts, by his contemporaries and his presentation post mortem, i.e. after the memories have been processed for the following generations. Therefore, let us first take a look at the historical factual knowledge, preserved in various Byzantine, Western European and Bulgarian sources from the second half of the ninth century onwards. From all these testimonies differing in origin and character, one can briefly outline the main parameters of those realities in Europe, which Bulgaria would have had to fit into in the mid-ninth century. As there already is a sufficient number of works on this topic, let me just sketch out some basic points here. Some of the realities of the middle and second half of the ninth century divided Europe into two parts, East and West. But geography here has only a supplemental meaning, since in its essence, the first division is political and imperial at its core, while the other one is religious. At the intersection of both during the ninth century were the Danube Bulgarians. First of all, this geographical division into East and West can be seen in a political light—through the prism of the Roman imperial paradigm/doctrine (Pax Romana) and its further development in Byzantium, and from there the positioning of Bulgaria in the time period after 681 and until the end of the ninth century. After the feast of the Nativity of Christ in 800, and for the first time since the late fifth century, the map of Europe saw the emergence of a second empire that claimed the legacy of the once unified Roman Empire: that was the empire of the Franks, then ruled by Charlemagne (768–814). The Byzantines recognized his imperial title only in 812, and only in order to win him over to their side in their fight against the Danube Bulgars. As has been long known, it was not by chance that Byzantium agreed to this concession only after the complete defeat and the death of the basileus Nicephorus I (802–811) in one of the passes of Stara Planina Mountain in Bulgaria in July 811. At the same time, the Byzantines knew that the Bulgars, ruled by Krum (802–814) at the time, had by then approached the Frankish borders in Central Europe, after having successfully incorporated into their state the remnants of the Avars, conquered at the end of the eighth century by these same Franks. Thus, Bulgaria managed to insert itself between the two Christian empires as early as the beginning of the ninth century, although, from the viewpoint of the division of the Roman Empire by Theodosius the Great (after 395), it remained situated basically to the east of the so-called Theodosian

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boundary. At the same time, however, according to the accurate observation of Ivan Bozhilov, even though Bulgaria was located in the region where the dominant centre was Constantinople (and not Rome or Aachen and Ingelheim, or Regensburg and Quedlinburg later on), up until 865 it was part of this space only in a geographical sense, but not civilizationally speaking. And such was undoubtedly also the Bulgars’ own vision of themselves, at least until the time of Boris-Michael (852–889), who changed the direction of development and the cultural model of Danube Bulgaria by converting it to Christianity in the mid-860s. From the Byzantine viewpoint, the latter fact, correlated with the traditions of the Theodosian boundary (and also with those of some of the reforms of Leo III after 732 with regard to Illyricum, which shall be discussed below), gave the Byzantines even more reason to fight in order to win over the Bulgars: they had to belong to the Byzantine cultural, religious and political model, and not to the Western European one, which had already begun to take shape around Rome and the Franks. And another observation of significance: until the beginning of the ninth century, Danube Bulgaria was a ‘closed’ system in its type of development, in total opposition to one main adversary, Byzantium, while after Krum the role of diplomacy in Bulgar politics clearly grew, along with the increasing number of adversaries and potential allies of Bulgaria. This is especially visible during the rule of Boris-Michael and from its very beginning, i.e. from the 850s. It is true that even during the time of kanasybigi Omurtag (814–831), a large number of diplomatic missions were undertaken in a non-traditional direction for Bulgaria—to the West, and, in particular, to the Franks of Louis the Pious (814–840). The first mission to their lands was in 824, followed by others up until 827. All of them, however, ended without success, which forced the Bulgars in 829 to seize by force the lands disputed between them and the Franks. The pinnacle came during the rule of Boris-Michael, in particular due to his ties and negotiations with Louis the German, the Papacy, with the Serbs and Croats, and especially with the Byzantines. Thus, by participating at times directly and at times indirectly in the struggle between the Frankish Empire and Byzantium for dominance in Southeastern Europe from the very first decades of the ninth century, Bulgaria gradually became one of the leading forces in the region in the course of that century. There, it stood alongside but also against the Franks and Byzantines, participating in the creation of zones of influence and in the arrangement of buffer possessions especially in areas that were not along the direction of the main

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conflict between the two Christian empires. Therefore, it was towards the middle of the ninth century that the first Bulgar invasion into the big ‘geopolitical game’ at the centre of Europe took place, and it was accomplished against the backdrop of the first truly serious opposition between Constantinople and the Roman Curia. Eventually, after the 860s, Bulgaria became one of the four ‘Great powers’ of the time on the European continent—if we were to accept today’s view of the geographical expanse of Europe, i.e. stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. Bulgaria stood alongside Byzantium, the Frankish Empire (and its ‘extensions’ after 843), and also Khazaria. If we were to take as a starting point the view of the people of the ancient Roman-Hellenic civilization who considered the Don River as the end/border of the European continent—for them, to the east of this river lay Asia—then Bulgaria during the ninth century would have even been in the position of one of the three European ‘Great Powers’, immediately following the Byzantines and the Franks. It is clear that the geographical position of Bulgaria and its great territorial expansion from the beginning of the ninth century onwards (to the northeast, to the mouth of the Danube, but with real control exercised all the way to the Dniester River, and to the rivers Sava/Danube and Tisza, respectively, in the northwest; in the east—to the Black Sea, and to the southeast—to Adrianople/Edirne, to the southwest, to Thessaly and today’s South Albania) permitted such a ‘game’, since Danube Bulgaria was at the crossroads of East and West (assessed also through the prism of the religious opposition between the two main Christian centres). However, seen in the light of the ‘battle for the souls’ fought between Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the choice of a (monotheistic) religion in Danube Bulgaria towards the mid-ninth century begins to seem all the more complicated. At the same time, it should be noted that Boris-Michael was the first ruler of the Danube Bulgarians who, in my view, became actively engaged with both ‘segments’ of the West: that of the Franks or the so-called by me ‘northern’ segment and that of the Papacy, respectively, i.e. the ‘southern’ segment of the West. On the other hand, he, as any other Bulgar ruler by presumption, actively participated in the political life of the so-called ‘southern’ segment of the East, i.e. Byzantium. Only the ‘northern’ ‘segment’ of this East remained calm during Boris-­ Michael’s rule and did not require any special handling, since neither the Khazars, nor the Magyars, nor the Rus’ at the time manifested any serious activity with regard to the Danube Bulgarians. Therefore, Boris-Michael had free reign to push in a western direction and towards the lands of the

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Serbs and Croats in particular, something which was also ingrained in the policies of his predecessor, Persian (836–852). This same division into East and West in Europe can be seen not only through an imperial, i.e. political prism, but also through that of the Christian faith (cf. the doctrine of Pax Romana Christiana, which pairs the two legacies, the imperial/Roman one and the Christian one). Like the first division, this one should be outlined, at least in general, to give a very basic idea of the complexity of Bulgaria‘s choice of spiritual patronage in the mid-ninth century. The act of the basileus Leo III (717–741) from 732 was of utmost importance for the future of the Church in Europe. With it, a large part of Eastern Illyricum was taken away from the Papal Diocese and given over to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. A number of provinces that were under Byzantine political control, namely Calabria, Sicily and Illyria, along with the remnants of the papal vicariate of Thessaloniki, fell into the hands and under the custody of the spiritual leader of Constantinople. This change was the result of both the clashes between Constantinople and Rome following Leo III’s iconoclastic policy, as well as the desire of the emperors in the Byzantine capital to control much more visibly and directly, even at the Church level, the processes of the permanent inclusion of the Slavic population of Illyricum (and the Thessaloniki region, in particular) into the Empire. Failing to do so could create serious problems for the Byzantine central authorities further on. Thus, after the second quarter of the ninth century, following the great territorial conquests of the Danube Bulgars, the Bulgarian territories now included a number of lands that had actually been under the spiritual authority of the Roman church up until the 720s and prior to the act of the basileus Leo III. That is why the idea of Bulgaria as a part of (Eastern) Illyricum was already clearly visible in the decisions of the Council of 869/70 in Constantinople: ‘… the land of the Bulgarians which is located in Illyricum, to become subject to the Diocese of Constantinople’. This fact made it possible for the Bulgars who were converted in 864–865 to manoeuvre, especially against the backdrop of the enmity that erupted in the middle and second half of the ninth century between the two centres of Christianity in Europe—Rome and Constantinople. The tension between them had been provoked not only by the emergence of new Christian peoples at the centre and the southeastern part of the continent, but also by the characteristic traits and the great egos of those at the head of the two main churches at the time, Pope Nicholas I (858–867) and the Patriarch of Constantinople

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Photius (858–867, 877–886). These new realities, along with the personal ambitions of both leaders, instigated the argument over the jurisdiction and the legitimate boundaries of each of the churches over certain territories in Europe and their respective populations. The involvement of the Bulgarians in these disputes in the 860s eventually led to the attainment of an unexpectedly high status for a local church whose flock had only recently embraced the Christian faith. Thus, Prince Boris-Michael took advantage in an outstanding way of the tensions in the Church, taking into account in the course of many years, from 866 to 880, the changes in the situation and the balance of power in this dispute. Of great importance was the fact that the Bulgarian prince was well aware that both Rome and Constantinople started out from the same premise, namely, that Eastern Illyricum could be viewed through different prisms: an imperial and an ecclesiastical one, respectively. He also realized that the first one favoured the Byzantines in the above dispute, while second one— the popes. From 866 onwards, however, much of the lands of the former Eastern Illyricum were already within the Bulgarian borders in purely political terms, and in fact, the Bulgarian ruler (and his entourage) had the right and the real opportunity to choose between the two options for the settlement of the Bulgarian Church issue. It is also important to note that the two aristocrats who stood closest to the ruler, the kaukhan and the ichirguboil, repeatedly and personally took part in this struggle to gain the highest possible status for the Bulgarian Church. Along with other Bulgarian nobles, they received letters with special messages from some of the popes that came after Nicholas I, in particular Pope John VIII (872–882). Some of these nobles were also included in the diplomatic missions to Rome, to negotiate personally with the popes and also to bring letters and gifts to the Roman high priest on behalf of the Bulgarian ruler Boris-Michael. Against the background of these political and religious details of Europe’s history during the ninth century, it is important to attempt to answer the question, what parts of the image of Bulgaria’s Baptizer Boris-­ Michael were prioritized by the Church in Bulgaria with regard to the memory of him among the following generations in the country. Was this the ‘historical’ narrative, based on real facts, or maybe an ideological one, or even (parts of) both? And also: why is it that the Bulgarian written sources after the tenth century do not contain any detailed records (sometimes not even a mention) or any emphasis on the actual diplomatic

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victories (or defeats) of Prince Boris-Michael, while instead giving priority only to the Christianization during his time? First of all, let us look at some of the real diplomatic successes of Prince Boris-Michael that deserve to be mentioned in later historiography, at the very least. Here, I shall briefly present them in general: 1. A Bulgar-German military and political union from 853 onwards, reaffirmed several times also in the early 860s, and directed mainly against Great Moravia, a state, which was on the rise in the middle of that century and was situated at the very centre of Europe, precisely between the territories of the East Franks and the Bulgars. 2. Boris-Michael succeeded in freeing his son Rasate-Vladimir, along with 12 ‘great Boilades (Bolyars)’, all of whom were captured by the Serbs after an unsuccessful Bulgarian westward military operation. Ivan Bozhilov points out the two main hypotheses regarding the dating of this Bulgarian-Serbian clash: it occurred either in 852–860 or in 870–889. If Boris-Michael was born around 837–838 and ascended to the throne in 852 as a minor, and his eldest son Rasate could have gone to war only at the age of around 15, then the latter’s birth could not have occurred earlier than the second half of the 850s. In such a case, the above-mentioned conflict is more likely to have happened after 870. This last clarification is important with regard to the following: if we assume that the chroniclers and the writers of panegyrics on Boris-Michael deliberately disregarded the years of his reign while he was a pagan archon (852–864), it turns out that some of his diplomatic successes even after the conversion in 865 did not earn their attention either. 3. A treaty with Byzantium regarding the conversion from 863, known as the ‘Deep Peace’ (the Bulgarians kept the main territories to the south of the Stara Planina Mountain range/Haemus). Also this fact, however, was in no way reflected by the following generations as one of his diplomatic successes. 4. After 886, Boris-Michael sheltered the disciples of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria; this way, the Bulgarians acquired a new sacred liturgical language (!) and a writing system that was different from the Greek and Roman ones (!), which subsequently created an opportunity for the formation of Slavia Orthodoxa and of the Byzantine Commonwealth, which were discussed above.

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5. After March 870 and again after 880, an independent Bulgarian Church was established, headed by an archbishop; by its rank in the hierarchy, it followed immediately after the Church of Cyprus. But what of all this was remembered by his contemporaries and especially by the generations that came after the death of the prince-baptizer in 907? Did the memory of his various victories in the diplomatic field remain, or did the Church and the supreme secular authorities create some clichéd, stylized and therefore homogeneous image of him? In a text called The Miracle of St. George and the Bulgarian that probably appeared during the lifetime of Boris-Michael, who became a monk in 889, since it deals with the war of the Bulgarians against the Magyars from 894 to 896, the Bulgar Baptizer is shown by the unknown author only as the founder of the Christian church in Bulgaria. He is described as having introduced the Orthodox faith, erected churches and monasteries, destroyed pagan temples of worship, given way to light in its battle against darkness, before finally taking on an angelic image, i.e. becoming a monk, and so forth. It is quite clear that this text does not contain a trace of any mention of Boris-Michael’s successes in any other fields; neither is there any hint of the fact that the Christian cult and religious norms had been enforced among the Bulgarians with sword and bloodshed. It is interesting that also in the apocryphal literature, in particular in the so-called Bulgarian Apocryphal Chronicle, a narrative that is essentially a prophecy on behalf of Isaiah, dated by Anisava Miltenova to the late eleventh or early twelfth century (i.e. to the times of Byzantine rule in Bulgaria), Boris-Michael is again presented above all as a righteous Christian: he is pious, he baptizes Bulgaria and builds churches, especially in the region of Ovche pole and Bregalnitsa, he goes to the town of Dobrich and dies there; moreover, he rules over the Bulgarians for only 16 years (cf. with the actual 37), and without being married (which is not true—Author’s note) or having any sins; that is why his reign is blessed. Again, there is no evidence of any relations with the Germans, Serbs and Croats, nor of the difficulties surrounding the Christianization of Bulgaria and the prolonged diplomatic games that were played to outmanoeuvre the Byzantines and the Papacy. There is no mention of the reception of the disciples of Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria and what that act led to, namely, the introduction of a new liturgical language and, respectively, new alphabet among the Bulgarians.

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And what is the notion of the Baptizer in other Bulgarian texts from the same specific genre ‘field’ of the above-mentioned historical apocalyptic texts from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, i.e. from the literature that was not a product of the official authorities but of monastic circles? There—among other things—the emphasis is more on the sword of Boris-Michael, as well as on ‘Sun City’, a topos related to the prince, rather than on any real diplomatic or other successes of this same prince. With regard to the appearance of the sword in this kind of works, two interesting hypotheses have emerged recently, proposed by Veselina Vachkova and Petur Angelov, respectively. They also deal with the possible interpretation of an essential part of this ruler’s ‘legacy’ and the memory of him, namely, the special emphasis made on his sword. This attribute, sacred for all rulers, appears as an important element in the story of the prince’s rule and his deeds during and soon after the revolt of the Bulgar boilades (bolyars) in 865, especially in the Western European accounts of the same historical period. Here, I shall only mention the Annals of St. Bertin, as well as chapter 17 of The Responses of Pope Nicholas I to the Inquiries of the Bulgarian Prince Boris-Michael, where this question is also addressed; the latter source has long been known in the scientific community as ‘Responsa Nicolai I. papae ad consulta Bulgarorum’. On the other hand, the Byzantine sources rather emphasize the aid of the sign of the Cross for the victory over the rebels. The same motive, of the victory over the rebels with the help of the sign of the Cross, can also be found in a Bulgarian text from another genre; the latter is known as Old Bulgarian Tale of the Conversion. It originated during the years of the Second Bulgarian Tsardom (late thirteenth century or early fourteenth century) on the basis of direct accounts from the Byzantine chroniclers Symeon the Metaphrastes or George the Monk, or perhaps even on the basis of the Old Bulgarian translation of the Chronicle of George the Monk. Among the weapons that Boris-Michael used in order to crush the rebellion against the conversion, undoubtedly was the ruler’s sword. According to Western sources, these weapons were sent by the Bulgarian prince to Rome in 866 as a gift to St. Peter’s Basilica. Ivan Bozhilov is hesitant as to whether the cross or the sword that helped the Bulgarian ruler to defeat the rebels was among these weapons sent to the Pope. The author is acquainted with the Latin, but also the Byzantine tradition to present the events surrounding the Bulgarian Christianization through well-known topoi connected with the Christianization of one people or another in the Middle Ages: ‘the scene of the Last Judgment’, in

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connection with the ‘sign of the Cross’ or of the discovery of the True Cross. If, however, we were to add to these reflections and hesitations the exchanged messages between the Pope and the ruler of the German kingdom, Louis the German (840–876), as well as the account that Louis II (king of Italy from 843 onwards and emperor from 855 until his death in 875) had asked of the Roman Pope to be given the weapon gifted by Boris-Michael, then there is no doubt that this story is more about actual weapons (the main one of which most likely was the sword of the Bulgar khan/prince), and not so much about a cross worn by him during the suppression of the revolt of 865/6. After all, a powerful ruler such as Louis II undoubtedly considered himself to be interested first and foremost in the symbols of supreme secular authority of the Bulgarians, among which the main one would undeniably be the sword. For his part, P. Angelov finds it much more plausible to interpret Boris-­ Michael’s decision to gift Pope Nicholas I with the sword by sending it in 866 with a special Bulgarian mission to Rome through the prism of Lord’s commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’, well known to all Christians. Since Boris-Michael had killed 52 prominent boilades (bolyars) along with their entire families after the revolt was put down, he probably wanted ‘to part with the weapon of sin and hand it over to his spiritual judge in Rome’, says Angelov. It seems clear that the late Bulgarian authors of apocalyptic works (after the second half of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries) could not have had access to the above-mentioned Latin sources in order to directly obtain information regarding the punishment by sword and, respectively, the weapons (the sword) being sent by Prince Boris-Michael to Rome. But such a story, yet again concerning a sword and the same ruler, appeared much later in the Bulgarian written sources from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, and precisely in such a highly specific genre as the apocryphal literature and its special subdivision, referred to as ‘historical apocalyptic literature’ by Vasilka Tăpkova-Zaimova and Anisava Miltenova. We would, therefore, have to accept that the legends about (Boris-) Michael’s sword in them are an echo of the so-called folkloric memory or are somehow connected with the sword of St. Michael the Archangel. Let us recall that in this type of texts, the image of Prince Boris-Michael is blended with that of both St. Michael the Archangel and the supreme ruler of the so-called Steppe empire—the khagan/qagan, as well as with the ‘Last King’ Michael before the End of Times. For example, the ‘chosen king’s’ acceptance of a sword from the angels, seen in the ‘Hagia

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Sophia’ in Constantinople, can also be found in one of these Bulgarian texts, namely, Revelation of Prophet Daniel of the Last Times and of the Antichrist. Another similar but earlier text, Tale of the St Prophet Isaiah about the Future Times and about the Kings, and about the Antichrist Who Is to Come, dated to the second half of the eleventh century, when the Bulgarian lands were under Byzantine rule, contains the following passage: ‘And it shall come to pass in those days that Michael shall mount his horse, and travel to Rome by sea with a sword (sic), and tell the Romans: “Open the gates for me!”. And they shall reply: “We will not open the gates for you, because you are a deceiver”. And he shall swing the sword (sic), but will not strike, and the copper doors shall become dust. [….] And from there Michael shall mount his horse and go about the world, prescribing only with his sword (sic) the faith and law for eleven years. And he shall again return to his land, called New Jerusalem…’. It does sound quite plausible that the writers of Bulgarian historical apocalypticism followed the paradigm of St. Michael the Archangel, the latter being often depicted with a sword, especially after the eighth century. This way, we could also explain the blending of the name Michael and its various ‘incarnations’. As for the archetype (St. Michael the Archangel), it is logical to recall Joshua the Son of Nun, who, being near Jericho, was surprised by the appearance before him of a man who introduced himself as ‘the commander of the army of the Lord’, i.e. St. Michael the Archangel. The latter is described as carrying a sword drawn from its scabbard (Joshua 5: 13–14). This scene from the Old Testament became an archetype in the Middle Ages, including iconographic one. This is why those authors who accept as quite logical the blending of the name Michael (of Prince Boris-Michael) and one of the iconographic versions of the depiction of St. Michael the Archangel are not so far from the truth. As for the use of the ‘Sun City’ topos in this same type of writings of the unofficial literature, we should ask ourselves whether it aimed to accomplish a more special, specific remembrance of an important part of the actions of the Bulgarian Baptizer by future generations, or whether it was simply an imitation of similar ‘common places’ in the apocalyptic literature of Byzantium. It is clear that the actions of the prince are directed at Rome (cf. the role of the sword here!), or at Jerusalem/Calvary, as well as the fact that he starts from ‘Sun City’ in order to carry out his destiny before the End of Times. These important starting points undoubtedly mark places of sacred topography (cf. such common places like ‘chosen kingdom’, ‘chosen people’, ‘sacred capital’, ‘Promised Land’, etc.), but at the

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same time, they are connected with the topos of humankind’s Salvation. It is therefore no coincidence that the unknown Bulgarian scribes paid so much attention to them after the mid-eleventh century. Thus, for example, in an apocalyptic text entitled Interpretation of Daniel, we can find the following passage: ‘And [the tsar] shall die for seven years and shall lie until this [seventh] year. By God’s will he shall rise from the grave as if from sleep. And he shall transform into a youth…, whom everyone will think dead. Furthermore, he shall rule the tsardom for 33 years. His name is Michael. He shall rise from Sun City (sic)… And God shall send an angel to awaken him. … And as he mounts his horse, he shall ride with only a sword (sic). And he shall reach Rome.’ Shortly before that, there is another passage in the same text that again deals with the tsar from Sun City, but in this case he is to appear ‘among the Ugrians’, i.e. the Magyars/Hungarians. The apocalyptic cycle of texts from the second half of the eleventh century includes one more text that also contains the Sun City motif, Vision of the Prophet Daniel about the Kings and the Last Days, and the End of the World. There, the tsar is nameless, but through his deeds is again linked to Rome, which is called the ‘City of Seven Hills’ in the text. And in Tale of the Prophet Isaiah from the same cycle, the tsar who leaves Sun City goes by the name of Gordie, also called Chigochin. His ethnic origin and affiliation, however, are not mentioned. V. Tăpkova-Zaimova and A. Miltenova obviously interpret ‘Sun City’ as a topos borrowed by the Bulgarian writers directly from various older prophetic texts (the so-called Tibourtine Sybil). Traditionally, they associate it with the Lebanese city of Baalbek, although they also reflect the opinion of some other authors that for the medieval Bulgarians, Sun City was actually Okhrid. It is known that the city of Baalbek also bore the Greek name of Heliopolis, which translates precisely as ‘Sun City’; this last interpretation also did not escape the observation of the two authors. It is difficult to give a clear answer to the question which city exactly the unknown Bulgarian monks had in mind when using the term ‘Sun City’ in this type of texts, but it is permissible to think that they referred to one of the actual capital centres of the First Bulgarian Tsardom (Pliska?, Preslav?, Okhrid?), prior to the era of independence lost after 1018. It seems to me that in this connection, it is worth considering a naming found in the lands of the former Volga Bulgaria and, more accurately, in the territories inhabited by the Suvars there. In later folkloric writings, their ancient city Suvar is known as ‘Sham Suar’, with the epithet here marking a semantic field around concepts such as ‘greatness’ and ‘glory’. In the words of Anton

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Salmin, the use of ‘Sham’ is a symbol of beauty and light. Recently, Zhivko Voinikov presented additional data from the Chuvash tradition, in which various places are named with the term ‘Pliska’: cf. ‘Pliska-var’—a river valley along the river Khyrla, ‘Pliska’—an area in northern Chuvashia, and ‘Pliska-tiurem’, a flat area near the river Iunga. Referring to M. Iukhma, he hypothesizes that the topos ‘Pliska’ occurs where Bulgars lived: in Ukraine, near Vinnitsa—the ‘Pliskov’ settlement, next to the town of Knin (Croatia), the village of ‘Pliska’ (with reference to B.  Katančić and P. Škorpil), and respectively the settlement in mainland Greece (with reference to M. Vassmer). Voinikov brought all these names closer to the capital of the Danube Bulgars, Pliska (while also not failing to see the connection between ‘Michael Khagan’ and ‘Sun City’, i.e. between Prince Boris-Michael and the Bulgar capital city until the end of the ninth century), by etymologizing its name through the ancient Tocharian language. Thus, in his view, the translation of this name should be ‘sunny’, ‘bright’, ‘brilliant’: cf. the Toch. (A) ‘palsk’, ‘bright’, ‘white’, as well as the Toch. (B) ‘plyskem’, ‘shining’. No wonder then that in this type of texts stemming from medieval Bulgaria, behind ‘Sun City’, one can find allusions to Pliska as the ‘centre’, ‘capital’, the city protected by God (in pagan beliefs—by the Sky and the Sun), etc., as the Sun is directly linked by a number of Eurasian traditions to the supreme kingship. Of course, these convergences remain only a speculation regarding the possible occurrance of contaminations in the distant past of the Middle Ages, and we must wait whether they will be accepted or refuted by historiography in the future. The role of the Bulgarian Church was undoubtedly extremely important for the preservation of the type of memory of the ruler Boris-Michael. This became especially clear in the years of the Second Bulgarian Tsardom (1186–1396). It was somehow evident to the church authors that the Baptizer was the First Bulgarian tsar, and this is clearly presented in some of the official documents, which were drawn up with the direct participation of the Church, i.e. in the Synodic of 1211 and in the Commemoration Books. This is why it is of the utmost importance to trace the way Prince Boris-Michael was presented in these later official documents in Bulgaria that appeared during the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. They would also answer the question of whether there were any discrepancies in the memory of the prince in the years of the First Bulgarian Tsardom and the subsequent period of Byzantine rule over the Bulgarians and, respectively, in the years of the Second Bulgarian Tsardom. And so, which of the deeds

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and successes of the Baptizer were deemed by the Church to be worth remembering after the end of the twelfth century is evident from the following official sources, of a state or mostly clerical nature: (a) In one of the most official texts of the Bulgarian sovereignty and Church from the initial period of the Second Bulgarian Tsardom, the so-called Synodic of Tsar Boril, which was the result of the council against the heretics called by the Bulgarian tsar Boril (1207–1218) in February 1211, the beginning of the Bulgarian tsardom is marked with the name of the Baptizer Boris-Michael (cf. ‘To the first Bulgarian tsar, called in holy baptism Michael, who brought (or “gave”) his Bulgarian kinsmen the knowledge of God with the holy baptism, in eternal memory’), and not with the well-­ known rulers from the pagan period, in particular, Asparukh, the founder of Danube Bulgaria. What is interesting here is that the prince is not mentioned as a saint, nor is his merit in the preservation of the work of St. Cyril and Methodius remarked upon. Alas, the historiographical model introduced by the Bulgarian Church, according to I. Bozhilov, had to emphasize only one thing: that at the beginning of the Bulgarian history stood Christianity. This principle would also shape the past of the Danube Bulgarians. ‘In the beginning was the Word’, i.e. Christ and His preaching; Christ is also the ‘King of Kings’, and the royal title is a product of Christianity. This is why Boris-Michael, as the one who introduced the Christian faith in Bulgaria, could also be the first (Bulgarian) tsar, with no regard as to whether this was consistent with the historical truth or not. We should, of course, clarify that this is a model from the early decades of the thirteenth century; by the time of Tsar Ivan Alexander (1341–1371), things in this aspect would change and, for example, in the supplements to the Manasses Chronicle, which will be discussed below, we shall see a lot of information about the pre-Christian history of the Danube Bulgars skilfully woven into the history of the ‘world’, i.e. Rome. (b) In the Bulgarian Commemoration Books from the Second Tsardom (from Boiana Church, Poganovo Monastery and Zograf Monastery), the very first ruler is also Boris-Michael, while his pagan ancestors are completely ignored. In addition, there, the prince is presented yet again with the title ‘tsar’ (‘Boris the tsar’ or ‘Tsar Boris’), even though the title ‘tsar’ first appeared during the

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rule of his son Simeon (893–927) and was officially recognized by the Byzantines with regard to his grandson, Petur I (927–969) in the autumn of 927. (c) In the Bulgarian supplements to the Chronicle (in verse), known in Bulgaria as the Manasses Chronicle and written by the highly educated Byzantine author Constantine Manasses from the twelfth century. It was translated before 1344/5, and the translator also included important chronicle records concerning Bulgarian history in several places. Since the Chronicle follows the model of the interchanging world kingdoms, the Bulgarian author added brief notes on the past of the Bulgarians, who inserted themselves into this model, thus introducing themselves and their tsardom into the world history of Salvation. Even some of the terms deliberately follow the model of the Jewish ‘Chosen People’: for example, ‘from the exodus (sic) of the Bulgars’ during the years of Emperor Anastasius (491–518) until the time of the composition of these Bulgarian supplements, ‘870 years’ have passed. This means that in this case, the absolute beginning is given, when the Bulgars first appeared in Southeastern Europe and began ‘to take the Lower Land of Okhrid’, situated within the borders of the Roman Empire. The second main ‘benchmark’ in this type of supplements is connected with the creation of Danube Bulgaria by Asparukh during the time of ‘Constantine Tsar’ (the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IV, 668–685), when the Bulgars crossed the Danube, defeated the Greeks and took from them the land which they inhabited up till that point, i.e. the mid-fourteenth century. And the third ‘benchmark’, which is the most important one for us, is linked to the conversion to Christianity: it took place ‘in the times of this Michael Tsar (the Byzantine Emperor Michael III, 842–867) and of his mother… (Theodora—Author’s note)’; and ‘from that time till this day 511 years have passed’. Strangely enough, this insertion does not contain even the name of the Bulgarian prince and Baptizer, let alone any mentions of his successes in the field of diplomacy and politics! In this case, too, the inclusion of the Bulgarians is obviously done according to the scheme of the interchanging world Kingdoms/Empires, but at the same time it should be specified that in the visions of the unknown writer from the capital of Tarnovo, the most important moments in the Bulgarian history develop against the backdrop of one of these Kingdoms—the

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Roman/Byzantine one. Such an ‘adaptation’ of the Bulgarian past to the world history of Salvation does not leave any room for the inclusion of many details from the Bulgarians’ own past prior to the reign of Ivan Alexander. As a consequence, their deeds, as well as those of Boris-Michael, are not presented with due thoroughness. Against the background of these accounts from the palace and from the Church in Tarnovo, it seems, at the very least, strange that there is no mention of Boris-Michael‘s diplomatic contacts with the Papacy from 866 up until 882 (successively with the Popes Nicholas I, Hadrian II and John VIII), or of the fact that the Bulgarian Church was officially under papal rule between 866 and 870. These negotiations are wholly absent from other official documents as well, such as the correspondence from 1202 to 1204 between the Bulgarian tsar Kaloyan (1197–1207) and Pope Innocent III. It is clear that in this long-running correspondence, which is essentially of the type of preliminary negotiations aimed to satisfy the goals and interests of both parties, both the pope and Kaloyan avoided the memory of the diplomatic contacts of Prince Boris-Michael with Rome, since for the popes this mention of their failure in communicating with the Bulgarian prince in the third quarter of the ninth century would be extremely unpleasant. Thanks to this flexibility shown by both parties, at the end of 1204 Bulgaria gained the international recognition it had longed for after the Assenids uprising of 1185, while the Papacy obtained an expansion of its diocese to the east. In conclusion, the accents in the memory of Prince Boris-Michael were obviously dependent on the type of sources and their genre characteristics, as well as on the change of the cultural model in Bulgaria in the centuries following 865. In view of this finding, we can also expect to discover discrepancies in the texts stemming from the ‘high’ (and official) culture and those from the so-called lower culture. According to V. Vachkova, the idea to supply the Bulgarian Prince Baptizer with ‘an image that is not only worthy of imitation, but also monolithic and uncontroversial from a Christian point of view’ has quite clearly seeped into the official Orthodox descriptions. The latter statement also clarifies why the official image of Prince Boris-Michael, created by the Bulgarian Church much later and mostly in order to be remembered by the following generations, lacks important details from his political activity, including his many successes (as well as failures) in the diplomatic or the battlefield. This last sentence indeed proves the old dictum of Ernst Cassirer that history cannot describe

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all the facts of the past since it deals only with ‘recalled’ facts, facts that ‘deserve’ to be recalled. In Cassirer’s words, the true criterion does not consist in the value of the facts, but in their practical consequences, that is to say, a fact becomes historically relevant if it is rich in consequences. That is why in the fourteenth-century Bulgaria, emphasis was made on Boris-­ Michael’s role in tracing the path of the Bulgarians towards the Christian faith and hence—to the salvation of their souls.

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Центральной Европы на пороге второго тысячелетия, Отв. ред. Б. Н. Флоря, Москва: Языки славянской культуры, 2002, 60–132. Пикио, Рикардо, ““Православно славянство” и “римско славянство” (литературно-историографски въпроси),” Idem, Православното славянство и старобългарската културна традиция, София: УИ “Св. Кл. Охридски”, 1993a, 35–136. Пикио, Рикардо, “Функцията на библейските тематични ключове в литературния код на православното славянство,” Idem, Православното славянство и старобългарската културна традиция, София: УИ “Св. Кл. Охридски”, 1993b, 385–436. Полывянный, Дмитрий, Культурное своеобразие средневековой Болгарии в контексте византийско-славянской общности IX–XV веков, Иваново: Ивановский государственный университет, 2000. Попруженко, Михаил, Синодик царя Борила, София: БАН, 1928. Салмин, Антон К., Савиры, булгары и тюрко-монголы в истории чувашей, СанктПетербург: Нестор-История, 2019. Стара българска литература. Т. 3: Исторически съчинения, Съставителство и редакция Иван Божилов, София: Български писател, 1983. Степанов, Цветелин, “България между 822 г. и края на ХІ в.: “разбуждането” на един традиционен образ,” Mediaevalia Christiana: Власт–Образ– Въобразяване, Съставителство и научна редакция Г. Казаков и Цв. Степанов, София: Изток-Запад, 2005, 182–199. Степанов, Цветелин, Власт и авторитет в ранносредновековна България (VII–ср. IX в.), София: Агато, 1999. Степанова, Мария, В памет на паметта: Романс. Превод от руски, S. l.: Жанет 45, 2019. Тъпкова-Заимова, Василка, Милтенова, Анисава, Историко-­апокалиптичната книжнина във Византия и в средновековна България, София: УИ “Св. Кл. Охридски”, 1996. Фахрутдинов, Равиль Г., Мелодия камней: История средневековых городов Татарии, Казань: Таткнигоиздат, 1986. Флоря, Борис, Турилов, Анатолий, Иванов, Сергей, Судьбы Кирилло-­Мефодиевской традиции после Кирилла и Мефодия, Санкт-­Петербург: Алетейя, 2004. Христов, Янко, “Владетелски смени сред българи, сърби и хървати през IX век. Сходства и различия,” Изследвания в памет на проф. д-р Георги Бакалов (1943–2012), Съставител В. Гюзелев, София: ИК “Гутенберг”, 2017, 162–182. Христов, Янко, “Култът към Покръстителя в средновековна България през Х век. Аспекти на утвърждаването, признанието и съществуването,” Исторически преглед (2008), № 5–6, 28–51. Чешмеджиев, Димо, Кирил и Методий в българската историческа памет през Средните векове, София: БАН, 2001.

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Swoboda, W., “L’origine de l’organisation ecclésiastique en Bulgarie et ses rapports avec le patriarchat constantinopolitain (870–919).” Byzantinobulgarica, Vol. II, Sofia, 1966, 67–81. Szádeczky-Kardoss, Samu, “The Avars”, The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. D.  Sinor, Cambridge-New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990, 206–228. The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans, ed. F. Curta (with the assistance of R. Kovalev), Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2008. Vita Hludovici imperatoris, Латински извори за българската история. Т. 2, София: Издателство на БАН, 1960. Ziemann, Daniel, Vom Wandervolk zur Großmacht: die Entstehung Bulgariens im frühen Mittelalter (7.–9. Jahrhundert), Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau, 2007.

CHAPTER 10

The Conversion of the Volga Bulgars to Islam István Zimonyi

The spread of Islam was the consequence of the grand-scale conquests of the Arabs in the age of Orthodox Caliphs and later under the Umayyads, extending to China in the East and Andalusia in the West in the seventh to eighth centuries. The new wave of Islamization was directed toward the nomads of Central Asia, Eastern Europe and India. New states were formed in Eastern Europe in the tenth century and three monotheistic religions competed with each other to convert these states to their own religion. The Khazars adopted Judaism earlier, but Islam and Christianity became involved in religious conversions. The Volga Bulgars embraced Islam in the beginning of the tenth century, whereas the Kievan Rus’ converted to Christianity from Constantinople by the end of the tenth century. The turning point in the process of Islamization of the Volga Bulgars was the visit of the embassy of Caliph Muqtadir-billah to the court of the Bulgar king, Almiš, in 922, which was documented by the participant of the embassy, Ibn Faḍlān, who called the Volga Bulgars Ṣaqāliba in his

I. Zimonyi (*) University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_10

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report. According to Ibn Faḍlān (translations from Lund, Stone 2011), “When the letter arrived from Almiš ibn (Šilki) Yiltawar, king of the Ṣaqāliba, addressed to Muqtadir, the Commander of the Faithful, in which he asked for someone who could instruct him in the Faith, teach him the laws of Islam, build him a mosque and erect a minbar so that he could have the prayers said in his name in his lands and in all parts of his kingdom and also requesting that a fortress be built, for defence against the kings who were his adversaries, a favourable answer was given.” The mission of the embassy was accomplished from a religious point of view. The conversion of the Volga Bulgars was legitimized by the caliph, and the Volga Bulgars officially became part of the Muslim community (umma). By the time of the visit of the embassy of the caliph in 922, some groups of Volga Bulgars had already converted to Islam. Ibn Faḍlān reported in connection with the Friday sermon: “Before I arrived, the khutba was read for the king from his pulpit in these words: ‘O God! Preserve King Yiltawar, king of the Bulgars.’ I said to him: ‘The king is God and from the pulpit none but He, the All-high and the All-powerful, should be called king. Your master, the Commander of the Faithful, is satisfied that the following should be pronounced from the pulpits in both East and West: “My God, preserve your slave and caliph, Ja’far, al-Imam al-Muqtadir-­ billah, the Commander of the Faithful.” And the same was done by his forefathers, the caliphs who reigned before him. For the Prophet—may God’s prayers and peace be upon him’—said: ‘Do not address praises to me, as the Christians do to Jesus, son of Mary, for I am only the servant of God and His messenger.’ Then the king said to me: ‘In what form may the khutba be read for me, then?’ ‘Using your name and that of your father,’ I answered. ‘But’, he said, ‘my father was an unbeliever and I do not want his name mentioned from the pulpit, and as for myself, I do not want my name mentioned either, because he who gave it to me was an unbeliever. But what is the name of my master, the Commander of the Faithful?’ ‘Ja‘far,’ I told him. ‘Am I allowed to call myself by his name?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Then I shall take the name of Ja‘far and my father that of ‘Abd Allah. Give the man who pronounces the khutba his orders.’ And that is what I did. He pronounced the khutba for him, saying: ‘O God, preserve in good health your slave Ja‘far, son of ‘Abd Allah, amir of the Bulgars, client of the Commander of the Faithful.’” The mentioning of the names in the khutba (Friday sermon) had basic political connotations in the Islamic world. Before the arrival of the

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embassy from Baghdad, only the name of the Volga Bulgar ruler was mentioned, which reflected the absence of official acceptance of the Caliphate. The corrections of Ibn Faḍlān using the term amı ̄r “prince” and client for the Volga Bulgar ruler with the name of the ruling Caliph meant that the Volga Bulgars with their amı ̄r officially became part of the Islamic world. At the same time, it is evident from the data of Ibn Faḍlān that the ruler of the Volga Bulgars and some groups converted to Islam before 922. Almiš’ father Šilki was pagan which refers to the conversion of Almiš as the first Muslim ruler of the Volga Bulgars. It is well-known among Muslims that the father’s name ‘Abd Allāh generally means that he is newly converted, and his father was non-Muslim. Barthold, however, emphasized that Ibn Faḍlān contradicted himself, as he stated in another passage: “Thus, the first night that we spent in this land, before the light of the sun faded, [a full hour before sunset,] I saw the horizon turn a brilliant shade of red and in the upper air there was great noise and tumult. I raised my head and saw a red mist like fire close to me. The tumult and noise issued from it and in the cloud were the shapes of men and horses. These spectral men held lances and swords. I could see them clearly and distinguish them. Then suddenly another bank of mist appeared, just like the first, in which I saw men, horses and arms; it advanced to charge the first, as one cavalry detachment falls upon another. Frightened, we began to pray and beseech God most humbly, while the locals laughed at us and were astonished at our behaviour. We watched the two armies charging. They clashed for a moment and then parted, and so it continued for an hour after nightfall. Then they vanished. We questioned the king on this subject. He claimed that his ancestors said: ‘They are the believing and the unbelieving Jinn. They fight every evening and have not failed to do so every night since they were first created.’” The reference to an ancient habit might have contradicted a recent conversion; however, as Togan has already pointed out, this statement reflects a shamanistic worldview, the conflict between good and evil reinterpreted according to the Islamic view, i.e. the believer Muslim and unbeliever non-Muslim. Yanina tried to identify the king of the Volga Bulgars, Almiš, whose Muslim name was Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbdallāh according to Ibn Faḍlān on a fragmentary coin. The following names can be read on the fragment: the caliph al-Muktafiʿ Bil/lāh/(902–908); below: Ismāʿı ̄l ibn Aḥ/mad/, the Samanid emir (892–907); below: Jaʿfar ibn … On the other side, the name is .bd Allāh under the ordinary quotation about the unity of the god. Yanina dated this coin to between 902 and 907, because the reign of the

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caliph Muktafiʿ and that of the Samanid emir coincided only between these two dates. From a typological point of view this coin is similar to the coins of the Abū Dā’udids minted in Andarūn, Balkh and Huttal. The name Jaʿfar ibn Aḥmad is found on coins of Huttal between 922 and 925. Yanina suggested that the names on the lower line of the two sides should be the same, and she reconstructed the name on the obverse as Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbdallāh and on the other side as ʿAbdallāh or Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbdallāh. Accordingly, there is a coin struck between 902 and 907 on which the Muslim name of the Volga Bulgar ruler, Almiš, can be reconstructed. However, Ibn Faḍlān recorded that the Volga Bulgar ruler only received this Muslim name in 922. Yanina gave another interpretation of Ibn Faḍlān’s text, “I have already changed my name to Jaʿfar and my father’s name to ʿAbdallāh.” She assumed that Almiš would change his name at the time of his conversion to Islam before 922. His conversion can be dated to between 902 and 907, when his Muslim name appeared on a coin, at least 15 years before the arrival of the embassy from the Caliph. The context of Ibn Faḍlān’s report about the name change does not support Yanina’s interpretation, and the reconstruction of the name Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbdallah from the two sides of the fragmentary coin would be convincing if this full name occurred together on other coins. Yanina’s identification is hardly acceptable. Rispling confirmed that large Volga Bulgar imitative coinage existed in the first half of the tenth century. He set up die chains from the Volga Bulgar imitation coins. Chain 101 included 1131 coins struck from 68 obverse and 48 reverse dies, producing 134 die combinations; chain 102 consisted of 121 pieces, struck from 7 obverse and 3 reverse dies, producing 10 die combinations. The coins of the two chains were struck and put into circulation between 906 and 934. The different name forms from these chains refer mostly to Amı ̄r Yiltawār and Mı ̄kāʾı ̄l ibn Jaʿfar. The former refers to the titles of the Volga Bulgar ruler identified with Almiš. The second is the son of Jaʿfar, the Muslim name of Almiš. Kovalev noted that the official Volga Bulgar coinage started in 949/50, including the name of the local amı ̄r, the correct date and the location of the mint. Almiš must have converted to Islam around the turn of the ninth to tenth centuries, and his coins with the name al-amı ̄r Yalṭawār were struck from 927/8. However, there was another ruler called Aḥmad ibn “D/K” ʿAbdallāh Yāldawar, for whom coins were struck in 901–910 and 920. He was a contemporary of Almiš and had a Muslim name, which implies that he also adopted Islam at the end of the ninth century.

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There are other concepts about the time of adoption of Islam. According to the legend of the late (nineteenth-century) Volga Muslim tradition reflected in the Tawārı ̄kh-i Bulghāriyya, three companions of the Prophet were sent to Bulgar in the 9th year of the Hijra (630/1). They cured the daughter of the ruler and he together with the inhabitants converted to Islam. Frank, referring to Marjani, remarked that the Islamization of the Volga Bulgars in the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad is anachronistic and the leading person in this narrative is Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Zubayr ibn Zayd, the companion of the Prophet who did not even travel outside Arabia. Togan assumed that the conversion of the Volga Bulgars can be connected with Marwān’s campaign against Eastern Europe in 737. Defeating the Khazars there, Marwān forced the Khazar ruler to convert to Islam. He sent to the Khazar king two Muslim scholars, Nūḥ ibn al-Sāʾib al-Asad and Abd al-Raḥmān ibn X al-Khūlānı ̄, to explain the Muslim religion as recorded in the historical work of Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfı ̄ (VIII: 74). Togan identified Abd al-Raḥmān ibn X al-Khūlānı ̄ with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Zubayr mentioned in the late Tatar legend and suggested that the Khazars and the people called Ṣaqāliba also embraced Islam, but later the Khazar qagan and his entourage adopted the Jewish faith, while other subjects of the Khazar ruler and some of the Ṣaqāliba remained Muslim, and they appeared as Volga Bulgars at the beginning of the tenth century in Muslim sources. This construction is based on two elements: Ibn Faḍlān called the ruler of the Volga Bulgars the king of the Ṣaqāliba and identified the companion of the Prophet as a person who lived one hundred years later. This hypothesis is hardly defensible, because linking the later Tatar tradition with early medieval data in a missionary legend would always remain uncertain. Besides, the Tatar sources do not contain historically valuable information before the Mongol period. There is another reference to the early embrace of Islam by the Bulgars in the work Fihrist, written c. 988 by Ibn al-Nadı ̄m in Baghdad. It is noted that the caliph, al-Maʾmūn (813–833), wrote a book whose title was “Answers to the Questions of the Burghar Addressed to Him [al-Maʾmūn] about Islam and the Unity [Theology]” (Dodge 1970, 254; Arabic: Flügel 1871, 111). Ibn al-Nadı ̄m mentioned that the Caliph’s letter to the King of Burghar comprises more than a hundred pages. First, it is not about the conversion of the king, but an inquiry. Opinions about the interpretation of the term Burghar are not evident. Togan, validating his concept on the early conversion, emphasized that the king of the Burghar was obviously

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identical to the king of the Volga Bulgars. Pritsak suggested that the ethnonym was meant to denote the Bulgars living near to the Bosphorus. They lived north of the Black Sea from the 480s; the majority of them remained in this area after the disintegration of the Empire of Kuvrat (circa 670) and came under the rule of the Qagan of the Khazars. The proximity of the Bosphorus and Crimea, with its Hellenistic culture, provided the opportunity to become acquainted with the world religions, so the king of Burghar might have had the opportunity to accept Islam in the eighth century; so Maʾmūn should be connected with him. Later, around 880, these Muslim Bulgars moved to the Volga-Kama region under unclear circumstances. Maʾmūn may have urged the Khazar king to accept Islam, too. The Khazar king and his entourage accepted the Jewish faith, but its date is uncertain. If it is dated around 800, then the Muslim caliphs may have tried to win the Khazar Qagan over to their faith by force or with marriage ties. Considering this background, the letter of the caliph can be interpreted differently. Maʾmūn answered the questions of the king of the Khazars instead of the Bulgars, as in the tenth century, when the adoption of Islam by the Volga Bulgars became widely known in the Muslim world, the correspondence between Caliph Maʾmūn and the Jewish Khazar king seemed to be meaningless for Ibn al-Nadı ̄m, so he anachronistically exchanged it with the king of the Bulgars. In any case, the Islamization of the Volga Bulgars during al-Maʾmūn’s reign remains controversial. In 842, Caliph al-Wātiq sent a mission to the Wall of Gog and Magog to investigate its condition. Its leader, Sallām, gave an account of the journey. The delegation passed through the Caucasus and crossed the land of the Khazars. In the north, they met Muslim people who lived next to the Wall. Sallām’s account of the journey was constructed from three sources: (1) the story of the Wall of Gog and Magog; (2) Alexander’s novel in Qur’anic and Muslim tradition; and (3) historical and geographical information about an itinerary. The mention of the Muslim people north of the Khazars may belong to the third category. Sallām noted that this tribe speaks Arabic and Persian, but knows nothing about the caliphs. Bı ̄rūnı ̄, in his “Chronology of the Ancient Nations” written in 1000, was already suspicious of these statements: he noted that only the Muslim Bulgars and Suvars were distant from the Muslim lands. However, they did not mention the Wall of Gog and Magog, and they are closely connected to the caliphs. As for their language, they do not speak Arabic, but their Turkic-­ Khazar mixed language. Thus, the narrative about the Muslim people near the Wall of Gog and Magog behind the Khazars in the middle of the ninth

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century cannot be identified with the Volga Bulgars, who became well-­ known only in the tenth century in the Islamic world. Sallām’s Muslim community in the vicinity of the Wall seems to belong to the literary tradition of the Muslim Alexander’s Novel. Masʿūdı ̄ preserved an account of a Rūs raid on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea in 912/13. The Rūs sailed from Kiev via the Dnieper, the Pontus-Don-Volga route, to the Caspian Sea with the consent of the Khazar ruler. After the successful raids, the Rūs wanted to return with their booty using the Volga route, but the Muslim guard of the Khazar Qagan fell upon them and defeated the Rūs. The remaining 5000 men fled northward along the Volga (translations from Minorsky 1958): “They left their ships and proceeded by land. Some of them were killed by the Burtas, others fell [into the hands of] the Burghar Muslims who [also] killed them.” According to this narrative, the Volga Bulgars would convert to Islam as early as 913/14. Masʿūdı ̄ earlier stated: “The Burghar king at the present date, which is 332/943, is a Muslim: he accepted Islam in the days of Muqtadir-billah after 310/922, when he saw a vision in his sleep.” Besides, the expression “Burghar Muslims” reflects two variants in the Arabic manuscripts: ilā bilād-il-burg ̇az ilā-l-muslimı ̄n “to the land of Bulgar, to the Muslims,” and ilā bilād-il-burg ̇az il-muslimı ̄n “to the land of the Muslim Bulgars.” Marquart suspected that the adjective Muslim should be a marginal gloss that either Masʿūdı ̄ or rather later scribes may have interpolated into the text. It can be concluded that the conversion of the Volga Bulgar ruler Almiš may have occurred a few decades (10–30  years) before the official Islamization in 922. Ibn Faḍlān noted that the king of the Volga Bulgars converted to Islam earlier with his court and tribe (Bulgar). There was another group called Baranjar which accepted Islam: “We saw a kin group among them numbering 5000 members, counting men and women, and they had all converted to Islam. They were known by the name of al-­ Baranjar. They had built themselves a wooden mosque to pray in, but did not know how to say the prayers. So, I taught the whole group how it should be done. One man called Talut converted to Islam through my agency and I called him ‘Abd Allah. He said to me: ‘I would like you to call me by your name, Muhammad.’ I did what he asked. I also converted his wife, mother and children and they all took the name Muhammad! I taught him how to say: ‘Praise be to God!’ and: ‘Say, He is God, the One.’ His joy at knowing these two verses was greater than if he had been made king of the Ṣaqāliba.” However, Ibn Faḍlān himself called attention to the

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tribes of Suvar and Askal not accepting Islam at the time of his visit in 922, which indicates that the conversion was partial. Ibn Faḍlān gave other interesting descriptions of the conversion among the Oghuz Turks: “The first of their kings and chiefs that we met was Inal the Younger. He had converted to Islam. It was said to him: ‘If you become Muslim, you will no longer be our leader.’ So, he renounced Islam.” Then the embassy visited the ruler of the Oghuz: “When night fell, I went with the interpreter to visit Atrak, who was sitting in his tent. We had with us Nadhir al-Harami’s letter, in which he urged Atrak to embrace Islam. He sent him 50 dinars, among which there were many musayyabi dinars, three mithqāls of musk, some pieces of well-tanned leather, two pieces of cloth from Marv, from which we cut out two tunics for him, leather slippers, a brocade robe and five silk garments. We gave him his present and a veil and a ring for his wife. I then read him the letter. He said through the interpreter: ‘I do not want to say anything to you until your return. I will write to the caliph to tell him what I have decided to do.’” Later most of the Oghuz accepted Islam. The Islamization of the Bulgars before 922 was initiated by the Samanid and Khwarazmian courts. Ibn Faḍlān met the Khwarazm Shah Muhammad ibn ʿIraq, who drew the attention of the embassy to the dangers of the journey to the Volga Bulgars and he called attention to the trick of the Volga Bulgar ambassador Tekin, who deceived the Caliph as: “The noble amir—that is, the amir of Khorasan—would have more right to have the prayers read in the name of the Commander of the Faithful in that country, if he thought it advisable.” It refers to an earlier connection between the ruler of the Volga Bulgars and the Samanid court. Ibn Faḍlān reported that the Volga Bulgar king’s muʾadhdhin duplicated the call for prayer (iqāma). The double call was characteristic of the teachings of the Hanafi, one of the four Sunni schools of religious law. Ibn Faḍlān tried to transfer the king to the Shafi doctrine, which was widespread in the court of Baghdad. In that case, the call is to be said only once. The Samanids were supporters of the Hanafi school, which supports the former statement that the Islamization was initialized from Transoxiana. The dominance of the Hanafi school was also mentioned by Abū Ḥ āmid al-Gharnat ̣ı ̄ (twelfth century), describing the town of Saksin on the lower Volga: “In the centre of the town lives an amir of the Bulgars, who has a great mosque in which to say the Friday prayers, and round about live the different tribes of Bulgars. A people called the Suvar, also very numerous, pray in yet another mosque. On feast days they set up many pulpits and

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each amir prays in front of many different nations. Each different group has its own judges, religious scholars and preachers. They all follow the law school of Abu Hanifa, except for the descendants of the Maghribis, who follow that of Malik, and a few foreigners who are Shafi.’” There is another indirect reference to the dominance of the Hanafi school in the work of Yāqūt. He met Hungarians in Aleppo and asked for information from them: “When I was in the city of Aleppo, I ran across a group of men called Bashghird. Their hair and faces were very brown, and they were studying to become jurisconsults in the Hanafi school of law. Seeking to know something of their country and condition, I questioned one of them, and he told me: …I asked him how they came to be Muslims, living in the middle of an unbelieving country. He said: ‘I have heard a number of our older people say that a long time ago seven men from Bulgar came to our country and dwelt among us. They pointed out our errors to us and led us to the true path of the religion of Islam, and so God guided us, and thanks be to God, we all accepted Islam and God opened our hearts to the faith.’” The Muslim community in the Hungarian Kingdom was of Volga Bulgar origin, which corroborates the dominance of the Hanafi school among the Volga Bulgars. At the time of the visit of Ibn Faḍlān, the Muslim burial rites could be accomplished in a special case: “If a Muslim dies there among them and if a woman from Khwarazm is present, then they wash the body after the Muslim fashion, load it on to a wagon and walk before it with a banner until they come to the place where they bury him. When they arrive, they take him from the wagon and lay him on the ground. Then a line is traced round him and they move him away and dig his grave within the line, hollowing out a lateral niche for the body. Then they bury him.” The data of Ibn Faḍlān clearly indicate that the conversion of the Volga Bulgars was initiated from Transoxiana and Khwarazm before 922. Their decisive role is reflected in the fact that the Volga Bulgars’ imitative coins followed the Samanid pattern and in the middle of the tenth century the official Volga Bulgar coins minted in Bulgar and Suvar had the same sample, as suggested by Kovalev. A question must be raised about the causes of the conversion of the Volga Bulgars. Adopting a world (monotheistic) religion was always a political decision with far-reaching historical and cultural consequences. Conversion was motivated by various factors from the sides of both the religious centre and the community embracing a new religion.

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The Samanids played a special role in the history of Eurasia, Transoxiana and Khorasan. They did not have a natural barrier between the steppe belt and the agricultural zone, in contrast with the eastern regions where the steppe is separated by high mountains and the Great Wall of China from the agricultural societies, and the western territories, which the Caspian– Caucasus–Black Sea block divides, protecting the southern regions from the steppe nomads. In the second half of the ninth century, the central power of the Abbasid caliphate gradually declined, and three caliphates appeared in the first half of the tenth century. Even within the Abbasid Caliphate new dynasties became powerful. In Transoxiana and Khorasan, the Samanids consolidated their power, and this emirate became practically independent from Baghdad. The Samanid dynasty had to face the threats of nomadic incursions from the Semirechie and Kazak steppe. In addition to equipping an adequate number of troops and carrying out campaigns, such as the conquest of Taraz, the capital of the Karluks, in 893, the Samanid innovation was to convert the neighbouring nomadic peoples in order to make them allies and to secure the border of the emirate. Ibn Faḍlān recorded some efforts to convert the Oghuz chiefs in the Kazak steppe. The first success was the conversion of Almiš, the ruler of the Volga Bulgars, but the Oghuz and Karluk chiefs were also converted in the second half of the tenth century. The Turkic-speaking Muslim guards of the Samanids revolted and migrated to the territory of Afghanistan and founded a new dynasty, the Ghaznavids, there, which became a famous cultural centre and they began to attack India, which was the starting point of spreading Islam towards India. The Karluks and Oghuz formed their own Muslim dynasties, i.e. the Karakhanids and Saljuks. The Islamization of the neighbouring Turkic-speaking tribes had another side. They became part of the Islamic world, and they had the right to enter the Islamic territories. The Karakhanids defeated the Samanids and occupied Transoxiana; the Saljuks first occupied Khorasan then moving westward invaded Baghdad in 1055. So, the consequences of the Islamization of the Turkic-speaking peoples brought a new phase in the history of Islamic East. The conversion of the Volga Bulgar was the first step in this process, which had a deep impact on world history. Beyond the political considerations, trade must be another motivating factor. After the Umayyad-Khazar wars in the first half of the eighth century, the Abbasids established trade relations with the Khazars, as a result of which there was a flourishing trade through the Caucasus and along the Volga starting from c. 800. The Khazar Qaganate became a commercial

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empire and played an intermediary role in trade between the Islamic world and north-eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The furs, slaves, honey, wax and amber came from the north and the Muslim merchants paid for them in silver dirhams. The dirham hoards in Western Eurasia between c. 700 and c. 1100 were catalogued by Noonan and Kovalev. More than 80% of the 1656 dirham hoards, including almost half a million (486,956) dirhams of Afro-Eurasia, were found in north-eastern Europe. During the first phase, i.e. the ninth century, 20% of the dirhams arrived in Eastern Europe via the Caucasus–Volga-Don waterways from the mints of central Islamic lands. Exact 80% of the dirhams can be dated to the tenth century and they were struck in the territory of the Samanids. At the end of the ninth century, the first silver crises appeared. The westward migration of the Pechenegs brought a turning point in the history of Eastern Europe in the 890s. The great power position of the Khazars was shattered due to the loss of the territory west of the Don, and at the same time the trade route along the lower Volga was temporarily closed. By 914, these coins could be supplied from the Samanid Empire via the route from the southern coast of the Caspian Sea to the Volga. However, the Samanids lost their Caspian provinces in 914, so then the main trade route to Eastern Europe passed through Khwarazm and the present Kazak steppe to the Volga-Kama region, which Ibn Faḍlān followed during his journey to the king of the Volga Bulgars. The Volga-Kama region became the strategic centre of the trade route network connecting Eastern Europe with Transoxiana. The Samanids facilitated the conversion of the Volga Bulgars not only from political motivation, i.e. pacifying the neighbouring nomads, but with the aim of securing their trade relations with Eastern Europe. There was a turning point in the ninth to tenth centuries in the history of the trade network of Afro-Eurasia. The former two hubs of the Silk Road (second century BC to second century AD and sixth century to eighth century) connected the East with the West, whereas in the ninth to tenth centuries the characteristic trade routes were directed from the south to the north. The change in the trade routes brought Eastern Europe to a completely new situation. The Khazar Qaganate became a commercial empire in the ninth century, and two other new state formations appeared in the tenth century, Kievan Rus’ and Volga Bulgaria, partly due to this prosperous trade. The two strategic trade routes, the Volga and the caravan route from Khwarazm via Kazak steppe to the Volga-Kama estuary, met in Volga Bulgaria and the spread of Islam seemed logical. Similarly, the Rus’ centre moved from the north to Kiev in the tenth century, which

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lies on the trade route connecting Byzantium with Scandinavia, and this resulted in the adoption of Christianity from Constantinople. The role played by long-distance trade in nomadic empire-building and in the adoption of a world religion by the steppe peoples has been studied in detail. In Eastern Europe, the Jewish merchants had a basic influence in the Khazar court and they must have influenced the adoption of the Mosaic faith among some of the Khazars. The land of the Volga Bulgars was a trade centre between the Islamic world and Eastern Europe in the tenth to thirteenth centuries. Muslim maps, such as those of Ibn Ḥ awqal, al-Kāshgharı ̄ and al-Idrı ̄sı ̄, reflect the network of a river system called Etil, whose central part is the territory of the Volga Bulgars, and this connected Central Asia, Siberia, north-eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the eastern part of the Islamic world and Byzantium. This network was complemented by land routes. The Volga Bulgar territory was really a strategic point in this trade network, where the Volga, Kama and Belaya Rivers joined together. Ibn Faḍlān travelled to the Bulgars on the main caravan route from Khwarazm through the steppes and then to the Volga-Kama. In the territory of the Oghuz he reported: “On the following day, we met a Turk. He was an ugly man, wretched looking, small and stunted in appearance, really ignoble. We had just been caught by a violent cloudburst. ‘Stop!’ he cried. The whole caravan halted. It was made up of some 3000 horses and 5000 men.” It shows the volume of trade on the land route. Masʿūdı ̄, 20 years after Ibn Faḍlān’s journey, remarked on this commercial route: “Caravans continually pass back and forth between the Bulgars and Khwarazm, which is a dependency of the kingdom of Khorasan. Because the route passes through the encampments of other Turkish nomads, they are constrained to place themselves under their protection.” As for the variety of the commercial goods, Muqaddası ̄ noted: “From Khwarazm: sable [sammur] grey squirrel [sinjāb] ermine [*qāqūn] mink [fanak] fox marten [dallah] beaver [*khazbūst] spotted hare [kharkūsh] goatskins [*bazbūst] wax arrows birch wood [tūz] tall fur caps [qalānı ̄s] isinglas [gharā samak, fish glue] fish teeth [probably walrus and narwhal tusks] castoreum oil [khazmı ̄yān] amber tanned horse hides [*kı ̄makht] honey hazelnuts falcons [ayuz] swords armour maple wood [khalanj] Saqaliba slaves sheep cattle. All these come from Bulgar, and they also bring grapes and much oil.” Ibn Faḍlān visited the chief market of the Volga Bulgars in the vicinity of the Volga-Kama confluence: “When we caught up with the king, we found him encamped by a body of water called Khallaja. It consists of

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three lakes, two large and one small, but there is nothing that can plumb their depths. A farsakh separates this place from the great river called Etil that flows from their country to the land of the Khazars. On this river is the site of a great market which is held frequently and where all kinds of precious merchandise are to be had.” There was an influential commercial group among the Volga Bulgars as Ibn Faḍlān noted: “There are many merchants among them who go to the lands of the Turks and bring back sheep, and to a land called Wisu, from which they bring the skins of sable and black foxes.” The boom in trade made it possible for the ruling elite to gain a huge income. Ibn Faḍlān recorded that the Volga Bulgar ruler taxed the trade: “When a boat arrives in the land of the Saqaliba from Khazar territory, the king rides out and checks what is in each boat and levies a tithe on everything. When it is the Rus’ or people of other races, who come with slaves, the king has the right to take for himself one head in ten.” Ibn Faḍlān indicated in a conversation with the Volga Bulgar king: “Your kingdom is vast, you have great wealth, the taxes you raise are considerable…” and even the ruler admitted his wealth: “If I had wanted to build a fortress with my own money, silver or gold, it would not have been impossible for me.” It was in the interest of the Volga Bulgar king to expand trade as a source of his wealth. In fact, the king took tithes from all trade goods, and the increasing trade relations with the Muslim world could therefore be a decisive criterion for the acceptance of Islam, which was facilitated by the growing local Muslim commercial community. The conversion to a monotheistic religion creates an opportunity to strengthen central power by adapting new institutional systems and ideologies. The Jayhanı ̄-tradition recorded that the Bulgars were divided into three units (tribes?): Barṣūlā, Askal and Bulkār. The latter was perhaps a tribal name and at the same time the denomination of the entire confederation. On the arrival of Ibn Faḍlān in 922, the king of the Bulgars had authority over four kings representing other tribes. The king and tribal leader of the Askal can be identified from the report of Ibn Faḍlān. The arrival of the Caliph’s embassy at the court of Almiš can be considered as a diplomatic success which greatly enhanced his political prestige. The story about the proper use of the titles in the khutba—quoted above—was also a sign to support the legitimacy of his rule as a client of the Caliph. His intent was reflected in the letter of Almiš sent to the caliph asking him to “build him a mosque and erect a minbar (pulpit) so that he could have the prayers said in his name in his lands and in all parts of his kingdom.”

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In 922, there were pagan groups among the Volga Bulgars who were forced to embrace Islam by Almiš using the prestige of his religious position. Ibn Faḍlān himself was a witness of such a case: “The king set off from the stretch of water called Khallaja to a river called Jawshı ̄r, where he stayed for two months. Then he wanted to leave and sent a messenger to a people called Suvar, commanding them to march with him, but they refused and divided into two groups, one headed by his son-in-law. His name was Wı ̄rg.h, and he ruled over them. The king sent them the following message, saying: ‘God, All-mighty and All-powerful, has granted me the blessing of Islam and the rule of the Commander of the Faithful. I am his slave. This people have recognized my authority, and if someone opposes me, I shall meet him with the sword.’ The other group was headed by a king of a tribe, named king Askal. He obeyed the ruler, but had not entered the faith of Islam. When the king sent them this message, they were afraid of what he might do and all set out with him for the river Jawshı ̄r.” In spite of the possibility of centralization, Ibn Faḍlān remarked that the Suvar did not accept the rule of the Bulgar king. Later Ibn Ḥ awqal, one of the authors of the Balkhı ̄-tradition, reported: “Bulghār is the name of a region and a city. They [Bulgars] are Muslim and there is a congregational mosque in the city. Near to them is another city, called Suwār, there is also a congregational mosque in it. Someone who used to preach there informed me that the number of people in these two cities amounts to around 10,000.” The official dirhams of the Volga Bulgars were struck between 949 and 987 in Bulghār and Suwār, which reflects a competition between the two centers over the hegemony in the Volga-­ Kama region. It is worth mentioning that the Muslim maps of al-Kāshgharı ̄ (1074) and al-Idrı ̄sı ̄ (1154) show these two cities, whereas Ibn Hawqal’s map appears only as the country or as an ethnonym in the late tenth century. In the middle of the twelfth century, Abū Ḥ āmid al-Gharnaṭı ̄ mentioned the colony of the Bulgars and that of the Suvar in the city of Saksin on the lower Volga as two different peoples, as quoted above. Most of the sources called the territory of the Volga-Kama region the habitat of the (Volga) Bulgars, but there was political rivalry between the two cities for supremacy in the tenth to twelfth centuries. The rulers of both cities used Islam to legitimize their power over their confederations. The Volga Bulgar ruler was in some kind of dependency by the Khazar Qagan. This is evident from the title of the ruler, yiltawar, corresponding to the Turkic eltäbär, which was typical for the subservient ruler of a powerful tribal confederation. Ibn Faḍlān reported two key features of the

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signs of subjugation: “The king of the Saqaliba is required to pay a tax to the king of the Khazars. He gives a sable skin for each household in his kingdom. … The son of the king of the Saqaliba is a hostage to the king of the Khazars. This last, having learned that the king of the Saqaliba had a beautiful daughter, asked for her in marriage. But the king of the Saqaliba made excuses and refused. The king of the Khazars sent men and had her carried off by force. Now, he was a Jew and she was a Muslim. She died there with him and he demanded another daughter in marriage. As soon as this request reached the king of the Saqaliba, he hastened to marry his daughter to king Askal, who was subordinate to him, for fear that the king of the Khazars should carry her off by force as he had her sister.” As the Khazar Qagan converted to Judaism no later than the middle of the ninth century, the adoption of Islam of a subservient ruler had its political connotations. When nomadic rulers converted to a world religion, they always took political viewpoints into consideration. It is well-known that the nomadic rulers were pragmatic towards existing religious communities. In the empire of the Khazar Qagan, both Muslim and Christian communities were able to live in peace and practice their religion, despite the Qagan and his entourage being of the Jewish faith. However, the conversion of the Volga Bulgars’ ruler to Islam as a subject of the Khazar Qagan was a symbolic act expressing his aspiration for independence. Ibn Faḍlān mentioned several times that Almiš had asked for the caliph’s money and experts to build his castle against the Khazar Qagan. Almiš was aware of the political reality. In spite of the weakening of the Khazar Empire due to the Pechenegs’ westward migration and the shifting of commercial routes, the political dependence remained; at the same time, officially the king of the Volga Bulgars became the subject of the caliph and the Volga Bulgars belonged to the Muslim world. Of course, the ruler of Volga Bulgaria was aware of the real political situation, as reported by Ibn Faḍlān: “Then he said to the interpreter: ‘Say to him: Do you think that if the caliph—may God prolong his days!—sent an army against me, he could prevail over me?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Or over the amir of Khorasan?’, he continued. ‘No.’ ‘Is that not because of the great distance that separates us and the number of infidel tribes between his lands and mine?’ ‘Clearly!’, I said. Then he said to the interpreter: ‘Tell him this: By God, although I live in a remote place, as you see, I still fear my Master, the Commander of the Faithful. I fear that he will learn something about me that will displease him, that he will call down God’s wrath upon me and destroy my country without even leaving his kingdom, despite the great distance between us.’” Thus, the

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conversion signified a cultural and religious dependence on the caliphate, rather than immediate political subjugation. The real independence for the Volga Bulgars came in the middle of the tenth century with the appearance of official dirhams and the consequence of the campaign of the Rus’ prince, Sviatoslav, crushing the Khazar Qaganate in the 960s. Abū Ḥ āmid al-Gharnaṭı ̄ recorded a local tradition on the conversion in Bulghār in the first half of the twelfth century and gave his source exactly: “The word Bulgar means ‘wise man’. And the reason is as follows: A Muslim merchant came to this country on business. He was a jurisconsult and learned in medicine. The wife of the king and the king himself were stricken with a very serious illness. They were treated with all the remedies known to them, but the sickness only increased, until they feared that they would die. Then the Muslim merchant said to them: ‘If I were to cure you and you were to recover your health, would you accept my faith?’ ‘Yes,’ they replied. So, he gave them medicines and cured them, and they, and all their people, embraced Islam. Then the king of the Khazars came to attack them with a great force and said to them: ‘Why have you embraced this religion without my permission?’ But the Muslim said to them: ‘Do not fear. Say: “God is great!”’ They said: ‘God is great! God is great! God is great! Praise be to God. Bless, oh my God, Muhammad and the family of Muhammad!’ Then they fought with the said king and defeated his army, so that the king offered them peace and embraced their religion. Then the Khazar king said: ‘I saw enormous men, mounted on whitish horses, slaughtering my host and putting it to flight.’ And the faqih confirmed this, saying: ‘These are the troops of God—may He be honoured and exalted!’ Since among them a wise man is called biler, that land was called ‘Biler’, which means ‘a sage’. The Arabs adapted it to their own tongue, so that it became ‘Bulghar’. I have read it thus in the History of Bulgar set down in the qadi al-Bulghari’s own hand. He was one of the followers of Abû al-Ma‘alı ̄ al-Juwaynı ̄—may God have mercy upon him!” This legend was formed from different elements having different contents of truth. The Khazar campaign against the Muslim Bulgars may have been based on real tensions between the Khazar and Volga Bulgar courts, while the victory of the Muslims is a much more literary tradition echoing the primacy of the jihad principle. The healing of the king and his wife is also a well-known element of the conversion legends. The Muslim merchant is not only trained in Muslim law but also in medicine. It is worth noting that Almiš asked for medicine from the court of the caliph, according to

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Ibn Faḍlān. This element of the legend may have reflected the knowledge of the high quality of Muslim medicine. The translation of the Arabic word scholar is biler. It is a later version of the traditional ethnonym Bulgar. In the dominant language of the Volga Bulgars, the following shift of changes can be reconstructed Bulgar >Bular>Bïlar>Biler, as suggested by Ligeti. The common Turkic languages preserved the original Bulgar form. So, it is not the Arabic form, but the original remained in the Muslim sources. The version biler has a Turkic etymology: The Turkic verb bil- “to know” plus the suffix –r, which can be found in most Turkic languages including the Chuvash, which can be regarded as the only survival of the dominant three dialects of Volga Bulgaria. The Volga Bulgar biler and the Arabic word ʿālim, an active participium from the verb ʿalima “to know,” have the same meaning. The Volga Bulgar vernacular biler can be attested in the beginning of the twelfth century, and the identification of the common word with the ethnonym is a typical folk etymology invented by the local ulema knowing the vernacular and Arabic. The explanation of the Bulgar form is obviously false, it is not the Arabic form, but the common Turkic version that remained in the Muslim literary tradition and in common Turkic languages. The existence of the ethnonym Bulgar itself was related to the adoption of Islam. The two different versions of the ethnonym have been preserved in toponyms: The Russian Bolgary is from the Turkic Bulgar, whereas the Russian Bilyarsk reflects the Volga Turkic Biler. In 943, Masʿūdı ̄ reported: “At the present moment, the king of the Bulgars is a Muslim, converted as the result of a dream during the caliphate of Muqtadir, sometime after the year 310/922. One of his sons has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and when he passed through Baghdad the caliph gave him a standard, a black robe of honour and a gift of money. These people have a congregational mosque.” In this description, the dream seems to be a legendary element. As Islam became a source of power legitimacy for the ulema and the state in the Volga region, the legendary elements of the Islamization came to the fore. The rise of Islam brought significant changes, reflected in urbanization, religious rituals and associated buildings, and everyday life. Izmailov gave an overview on Islamic objects, relics and monuments in the territory of the Volga Bulgars. During the excavation of the greatest city of the Volga Bulgars in the vicinity of Bilyarsk village, which can be called Biler, a wooden and white

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stone mosque was discovered in the centre of the city. Halikov and Sharifullin studied the complex and Aydarov and Zabirova published the reconstruction of the base and the buildings of the mosque in 1979. The wooden mosque can be dated to the middle of the tenth century and its size is 44/48 m × 48 m. The wooden mosque was extended and a new building was added. It was made of white stone and a separate minaret was built next to it. The size of the white stone mosque is 42 m × 26 m. It may have been built at the turn of the tenth to the eleventh centuries. There are eight brick structures in the territory of the Volga Bulgars. Three can be found in Biler, two in Murom and one in Suvar, in the Khulash and in Krasno-Syundyukovo I settlement. They were built inside the cities (Bilyar, Suvar, Khulash, Krasno-Syundyukovo) and next to the city walls (Bilyar, Murom). They may have been parts of building complexes serving as caravanserais. These brick buildings must have been used as public baths, following the layout of the floor plans revealed by the excavations. The study of these buildings refers to signs of a water supply and heating system and painted walls. These baths can be divided into two types: simple (one chamber) and complex (multiple chamber). The spread of Islam is reflected in the objects found during archaeological excavations. There are items with Arabic inscriptions from Islamic countries of Central Asia and the Middle and Near East, as well as utensils. Mukhametshin and Khakimzyanov published the metallic objects with inscriptions excavated in Bolgary, including a lid of an ink pot, mirrors and bracelets. Kazakov studied the objects from Izmer, one of the richest excavations of a non-fortified settlement near to the Volga-Kama confluence, and discovered several objects with Arabic inscriptions. Halikova wrote a monograph on Muslim necropolises in the territory of the Volga Bulgars. By the second half of the tenth century Muslim burial rites became dominant, and from the beginning of the eleventh century to the second half of the thirteenth century, these rites were exclusive. The depth of burial was 1 metre. The deceased was placed in the grave with his head facing west, and the face directed to the south, toward Mecca. The right arm was in a straight position next to the body, while the left one was bent towards the pelvis. The legs were extended or half-bent. There are no grave objects and the deceased was put in a coffin in half of the burials. In conclusion, the Volga Bulgars adopted Islam some decades before 922. It was initiated from Transoxiana and Khwarazm, and the Hanafi rite

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was accepted. There were two basic external factors facilitating the embrace of Islam: The Samanid policy, which aimed and sought to make allies and pacify the neighbouring nomads; and parallel with this was the flourishing trade between the Samanids and Eastern Europe in the tenth century, which created a Volga Bulgar commercial elite with an Islamic orientation. Besides the interests of local merchants, Islam was a stabilizing factor in building a stable administration and a central power. The embrace of Islam was a sign to express the demand for more independence from the Khazar Qagan. The adoption of Islam was reflected in the building of mosques and baths in the cities, the use of metal and other objects with Arabic inscriptions, and Muslim necropolises among the archaeological material in Volga Bulgaria.

Bibliography A. Written Sources

Ibn Faḍlān Arabic Text

̵ Togan, Z. V., Ibn Fadlān’s Reisebericht, Leipzig, 1939. Dahhān, S., Risālat Ibn Faḍlān, Damascus: al-Jāmi‘ al-‘Ilmı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄, 1959, 1978.2 ́ Zródła arabskie do dziejów słowiańszczyzny, III.  Hrsg. A.  Kmietowicz, F. Kmietowicz, and T. Lewicki, Wrocław-Warsawa-Kraków, 1985.

English Translations McKeithen, James E., “The Risalah of Ibn Fadlan: An Annotated Translation with Introduction”, PhD-dissertation, Indiana University, 1979. Frye, Richard N., Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia: A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghdad to the Volga River, Princeton: Marcus Weiner Publishers, 2005. Lunde, Paul and Caroline Stone (trans.), Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North, London: Penguin Classics, 2011a, 1–58. Two Arabic Travel Books: Abu ̄ Zayd al-Sı ̄rāfı ̄, Accounts of China and India, edited and translated by Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Ibn Faḍlān Mission to the Volga, edited and translated by James E.  Montgomery, New  York-London, 2014, 163–309. BGA, I–VIII, 1870–1894 – Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, ed. M. J. de Goeje. I–VIII.  Lugduni-Batavorum, 1870–1894: Al-Istakhri, I, 1870; Ibn Haukal, II, 1878; Opus geographicorum auctore Ibn Haukal. BGA, II.2 Ed.

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J.  H. Kramers. Lugduni-Batavorum, 1939; al-Moqaddasi, III, 1877; III2, 1906; Indices, Glossarium et Addenda et Emendanda ad Part. I–III, IV, 1879; Ibn Fakih, V, 1885; Ibn Khordadhbeh. Kodama ibn Djacfar, VI, 1889; Ibn Rosteh. Al-Jakubi, VII, 1894; al-Masudi, VIII, 1894.

Ibn Ḥ awqal BGA II2 French translation: Ibn Hauqal: Configuration de la terre (Kitab surat al-ard). Introduction et traduction, Avec index par J. H. Kramers, G. Wiet. Beyrouth-­ Paris, 1964. al-Muqaddası ̄

BGA III al-Mascūdı ̄: Murūj al-dhahab wa-maca ̄din al-jawhar, Revised edition and translation by Pellat, C. I–VII, Beirut, 1965–79. English translation of the relevant passage: Minorsky, V., A History of Sharvān and Darband in the 10th to 11th Centuries, Cambridge, 1958a, 146–148.

Abū Ḥ āmid al-Gharnatı̣ ̄ Abū Hāmid el Granadino y su Relacion de viaje por tierras eurasiaticas, Por. C. E. Dubler, Madrid, 1953. Lunde, Paul and Caroline Stone (trans.), Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North, London: Penguin Classics, 2011b, 59–90.

B. Coins Kovalev, R., “What Do ‘Official’ Volga Bulġār Coins Suggest about the Political History of the Middle Volga Region during the Second Half of the 10th Century?” Central Eurasia in the Middle Ages. Studies in Honour of Peter B.  Golden, eds. I.  Zimonyi and O.  Karatay [Turcologica 104], Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016, 193–209. Rispling, G., “The Volga Bulgarian Imitative Coinage of al-Amir Yaltawar (‘Barman’) and Mikail b. Jafar”, Commentationes de Nummis Saeculorum IX-XI.  Sigtuna Papers. Proceedings of the Sigtuna Symposium on Viking-Age Coinage 1–4 June 1989, eds. K.  Jonsson and B.  Malmer, London, 1989, 275–282.

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Vasmer, R., “Beiträge zur mohamedanischen Münzkunde, II. Über die Münzen der Wolga-Bulgaren”, Numismatische Zeitschrift, No. 58 (1925). Гоглов, С. А. and Големихов, А. В., “O монетном чекане Волжской Булгарии Х в.”, Русь, Литва, Орда в памятниках нумизматики и сфрагистики, Том 3, 2017, 40–63. Фасмер, Р.Р., “О монетах волжских болгар Х века”, ИОАИЭ, Т. XXXIII, вып.1, 1926. Янина, С.А., “Новые данные о монетном чекане Волжской Болгарии Х в.”, МИА, № 111 (1962) (Труды Куйбышев. археол. экспедиции, Т. IV).

C. Archaeology Айдаров, С. С. and Забирова, Ф. М., “О реконструкции и консервации комплекса мечети”, Новое в археологии Поволжья, Отв. ред. А.Х. Халиков, Казань: ИЯЛИ КФАН СССР, 1979, 46–61. Измайлов, И. Л., “Археология и ислам в Среднем Поволжье в X–первой трети XIII в.: опыт комплексного анализа”, Поволжская археология, 16 (2016), 68–92. Мухаметшин, Д. Г. and Хакимзянов, Ф. С., “Надписи на металлических изделиях”, Город Болгар. Ремесло металлургов, кузнецов, литейщиков, Отв. ред. Г. А. Федоров-Давыдов, Казань: ИЯЛИ АН РТ, 1996, 293–304. Халиков, А. Х. and Шарифуллин, Р. Ф., “Исследование комплекса мечети”, Новое в археологии Поволжья, Отв. ред. А.Х. Халиков, Казань: ИЯЛИ КФАН СССР, 1979, 21–45. Халикова, Е. А., Мусульманские некрополи Волжской Булгарии X—начала XIII в., Казань: Изд-во КГУ, 1986.

D. Trade Christian, D., “Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History”, Journal of World History, 11 (1) (2000), 1–26. Kovalev, R.  K., “The Role of Khazaria and Volga Bulǧâria in Trade Relations Between the Near East and European Russia During the Tenth Through the Early Eleventh Centuries (The Numismatic Evidence)”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 18 (2011), 43–155. Noonan, Th. S., “Volga Bulghāria’s Tenth-century Trade with Samanid Central Asia”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 11 (2000), 140–218. Vaissière, É. de la, “Trans-Asian Trade, or the Silk Road Deconstructed (Antiquity, Middle Ages)”, in The Cambridge History of Capitalism. Volume I. The Rise of Capitalism: From Ancient Origins to 1848, eds. L. Neal and J. G. Williamson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 101–124. Валеев, Р. М., Торговля в Поволжье и Приуралье в IX–начале XV веков, Казань, 2011.

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E. Islamization Deweese, D., Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Mako, G., “The Islamization of the Volga Bulghars: A Question Reconsidered”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 18 (2011), 199–223. Zimonyi, I., “Volga Bulghars and Islam“, Bamberger Zentralasienstudien Konferenzakten ESCAS IV Bamberg 8–12 Oktober 1991, Hrsg. I. Baldauf and M. Friederich, Berlin, 1994, 235–240. История татар, Том II. Волжская Булгария и Великая Степь, Казань: Изд-во ‘РухИЛ’, 2006.

F. Bulgar – Biler Frank, Allen J., Islamic Historiography and “Bulghar” Identity among the Tatars and Bashkirs of Russia, Leiden-Boston, 1998. Hrbek, I., “Eine Volksetymologie des Namens Bulġar”, in Charisteria Orientalia praecipue ad Persiam pertinentia [= Festschrift J.  Rypka], Praha, 1956, 113–119. Ligeti, L., A Magyar nyelv török kapcsolatai a honfoglalás elot̋ t és az Árpád-korban. Budapest, 1986. Minorsky, V., A History of Sharvan̄ and Darband in the 10th–11th Centuries, Cambridge, 1958b. Бартольд, В. В., Двенадцать лекций по истории турецких народов Средней Азии, Сочинения, Т. V, Москва: Наука, 1965.

CHAPTER 11

Islamization of the Turks: A Process of Mental Change Osman Karatay

In accordance with the usage of the term “Turk”, there are three compact issues of Islamization, which are also divergent in terms of geography: the conversion of the Volga Bulgars, through which Islam established itself in the Volga-Ural region; the conversion of the Karakhanids that made the basis of the Central Asian Islam in general; and the conversion of the Oghuz in the westernmost parts of Central Asia, which is the source of the later “Turkish” Islam in the Middle East and the Balkans. The first two cases are given in separate chapters in this book. Thus, this chapter will deal with the third conversion that produced the current Turkish Muslim population, as a separate but not distinct case from the “Turkic” Islamization in general. However, we need to revisit the Central Asian borders of the Islamic expansion in its earliest phases, since the region where the Oghuz tribal union emerged later was the first area where Arabs encountered Turks, although those Turks were not among the earliest population accepting Islam.

O. Karatay (*) Ege University, Izmir, Turkey © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_11

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Although ethnic borders in the west of Central Asia seem to be very simple at first glance, the very complicated developments just before the Arab advance from 642 on led to a Turkic presence even in the south of what is today Afghanistan. South of the Aral Lake—the Sir Darya line was populated by the Iranian-speaking Khwarazmians and Sogdians; the latter spread eastward to the Farghana Valley, including some regions north of the upper Sir Darya. But the White Hun/Ephtalite Empire established its hegemony over the region to the north of the Oxus (Amu Darya) beginning in the mid-fourth century and fought with Sassanid Iran for the control of Tokharistan, what is roughly today, Northern Afghanistan. When the Ephtalites were eventually destroyed by the Kök Türks in the year 557, their lands were shared between Iran and the Kök Türks, the Amu Darya being the border. Thus, Hun elements in Tokharistan came under the Sassanid suzerainty with varying terms of dependence. However, the Kök Türks continued their advance in later years and conquered Tokharistan, too. This led to the appearance of new Turkic groups in the region, in addition to the Hun remnants. Thanks to the alliance with Byzantium in 627, the Kök Türks conquered Azerbaijan or the historical Caucasian Albania in the South-eastern Caucasus region, including modern Tbilisi. But the internal crisis of the Kök Türks in 630 helped the Sassanids to recover their losses both in Azerbaijan and Afghanistan; however, only for a few years. Islam emerged in the city of Mecca in the west of Arabia in 610. When the Prophet Muhammad died in 632, almost all of the Arabian Peninsula had accepted Islam (although apostasies were not rare), which was then organized in a state formation. After some initial clashes with the Persians, Arabs heavily defeated them in the Battle of Qadisiyyah (636) and two years later conquered their capital of Madain on the Tigris. The fugitive Sassanid shah Yazdgard gathered a new army to face the advancing Arabs, but his troops were almost annihilated in 642 in the Battle of Nihavand. Then it was not difficult for the Arabs to gain defenceless Iranian settlements, reaching the easternmost (Khorasan) towns in 644. That year marks the last attempt of the shah, who appealed to the Turks and Sogdians for help against the Arabs. Curiously, the allied troops did not wage a serious war and returned to their countries, leaving the last Sassanid ruler to his destiny, which was ended by a miller killing him. The Arabs called the lands behind the Oxus (Transoxiana) by the same name as the Ancient Greeks, Ma wara al-Nahr (lit. “What is behind the river”). Fertile lands, especially to the north of the Upper Oxus, provided

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the habitation for a crowded population with a developed urbanization. However, after the decline of the Kök Türks, those towns, each having its own traditional dynasties and elites, remained as independent city-states with weak ties to each other. With this fractured political structure, they were ready to be invaded by the Arabs, as depicted by Barthold, or were natural targets in Golden’s terms. There was no practical difference between the north and south of the Oxus in terms of Arab encounters with the Turks. Furthermore, the last Türk qagan was killed in 659, ending the semi-independent status of the Transoxiana city-states, and a nominal dependence of the latter on China had no virtual effect. Thus, when the young Khorasan governor of the Arabs, Ubaydallah bin Ziyad crossed the river in 673 to march on Baykend, a rich town associated with Bukhara, not even the queen of Bukhara could help it. When Bukhara came under attack after that, the aid of the other cities, mainly Samarkand, was ineffective. The military operations of the Arabs were only to gain tribute, and not a real conquest. When Bukhara did not pay the tribute, Said bin Uthman, the succeeding governor of Khorasan, marched again in 676, easily defeated the Bukharan and allied forces and, after renewing the terms, continued into Samarkand. The great city fell to the Arabs, and the usual agreement of a tribute was signed. As the cities did not pay their taxes, the succeeding Khorasan governor Salm bin Ziyad, brother of the mentioned Ubaydullah, attacked Samarkand again in 681, killing the ruler of the city in the battle. But internal strife between the Arabs stopped further movements. The Byzantine author Menandros of the late sixth century narrates that Kök Türk envoys to Constantinople in 568 informed the Byzantine emperor that the Huns/Ephtalites who had been subdued by the Kök Türks lived in those days in (Transoxiana) towns, while those in tents were mostly fugitives to Europe, who established the Avar qaganate there. However, those “sedentarized” Huns should not have been a great proportion of the population, compared to the Sogdian natives of the region. Thus, except for Afghanistan and some remnants of the Ephtalite and Kök Türk periods in Transoxiana, the Arabic invasion mostly affected the local non-Turkic population. According to Togan, Turks left the two regions before the advancing Arabs, but I’m not aware of any source for this. Instead, it would be more proper to envisage that the Arabs dealt with the local Iranic population ruled mostly by Turkic elites. Despite the genealogies of the Transoxiana rulers not being certain, north of Afghanistan was surely governed by Kök Türk successors bearing the title Yabghu. A

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certain Nizek [Nı ̄zak/Nēzak?] Tarkhan, who was likely a Hun in descent, was the most famous personality of Afghanistan in those days. He did not help the last Sassanid shah against the Arabs and then fell under the hegemony of the latter. He and his successors preserved their post for a long time, until the year 707. The earliest Islamic sources available to us about the Arab conquests are from the late ninth (Baladhurî) and early tenth centuries (Tabarî), and they are not certain about the ethnic identities of some personalities and even peoples. For instance, Balkh in Afghanistan is defined as the capital city of the Turks, while Turks are not defined among the settlers of the region. According to Ibn al-Athîr, the ruler of Samarkand with the title “Tarkhun” was a Turk, while the population was Sogdian. Tabarî says: “The Sogdian nation and the Farghana people attacked. ʿAbd al-Rahman bin Muslim al-Bahilî was among the troops. The Turks waged war with him.” In another sentence, he says: “Qutaibah concluded a peace agreement with the Turkic malik (‘king’) Tarkhun. It was for the reason that they had seen what happened to the Bukharan Turks and were afraid of him. This Tarkhun was the Sogdian malik.” As for human geography, sources clearly separate the Turk, Sogdian and Farghana peoples, as did Ya‘qubî, but when they speak about events, they are not sure who was who. It is clearly due to the “fresh” Kök Türk heritage in the region. Apart from the rulers and magnates, and perhaps tiny populations of Turkic origin, the encounters of Arabs with the Turks proper from the nearby steppe were concerned with the appeals of the Transoxiana city-­ states for Turkic military aid from the north. Interference by the Turks remained ineffective, it seems, since there was no state in the steppe, at least nominally from 659 on, and the Turks were living in a tribal order, or rightly in disorder due to the ongoing internal strife. They could not gather large troops. The most important case was the reply to the call of Kabaj Khatun, queen of Bukhara, but it was very late and also ineffective. All accounts in that way are ambiguous, because it is not certain who those Turks were. Maybe they were also representatives of other city-states of the region. Sometimes Turks made fun of the Sogdians for the latter were defeated by tiny Arabic troops, as in the case of the renowned castle Termez, which was conquered and held for nine years by an Arab rebel and adventurer having only 100 men. Chinese authorities also criticized the Sogdians and Persians for their failures; if we trust Islamic sources like Tabarî and Ibn al-Athîr.

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The western half of the Kök Türk domain (what is today roughly Western Turkestan) was once organized under the On Ok (Ten Tribes) union, but after 630 they were divided into two five-tribe groups and started a constant civil war. No qagan was able to establish authority over both of the groups at the same time, and in 659 the last qagan was killed. Only towards the end of the seventh century, did the Türgish, one of the ten tribes, start to rise by subduing the others, thus providing an appreciable stability in the region. Their ruler was proclaimed to be a qagan. However, they were continuously suppressed firstly by the Chinese and then by the Eastern Kök Türks. The state of the latter comprising today’s Mongolia and its surroundings was totally destroyed by the Chinese in 630; however, it was resurrected in 681 and expanded its territories towards the west. They harshly defeated the Türgish in 698 and eventually subdued them in 709. Therefore, the latter were always busy with the Kök Türk threat and could not deal with the Transoxiana affairs. It is meaningful in this sense that when the Arab invasion was enlivened by the famous Qutaibah starting in 705, the Sogdian cities could not get any help from the adjacent Turks. Rather, for instance, when Qutaibah attacked Shash (modern Tashkent) in 714, they and the neighbouring statelets sent envoys for help to the Chinese emperor, who “did not answer them”. It was only after 715 that things started to radically change, however not permanently. The warlike Qapgan Qagan of the Eastern Kök Türks died, and his successor Bilge Qagan established good relations with the Türgish, marrying his daughter to the new Türgish qagan Su-lu, who also ensured security on the Chinese front by diplomatic and military means. On the Arabian front, Qutaibah was killed by the Caliphal forces in 715 after he rebelled. Qutaibah had established Arabian hegemony over the Transoxiana cities, including the far distant ones like Shash, Isfijab, Ustrushana, etc., but had not entered the steppe. Before him, nearby cities like Bukhara and Samarkand were tied to the Arab Caliphate with tribute relations. Indeed, he had reconquered those cities, too. After him, Arabs changed their Khorasan governors, who were responsible for Central Asian affairs, almost every year, and none of them became successful in establishing a stable administration. Taking advantage of this situation, the Türgish qagan Su-lu started in 717 to attack the Arab-controlled cities, with the help and call of the local population, and repelled the Arabs to a great degree from Transoxiana and Tokharistan, except for the strongholds of Bukhara and Samarkand. In spite of the clear laziness of the local population to join him, the qagan had the upper hand for about two

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decades, and was always victorious over the Arabs, who called him “Abû Muzâḥim” (the Father of Rivalry). Once he was defeated by a surprising Arab attack in 737, however it did not shake his position. Arabs would only get rid of him in 738, when the qagan was killed by his own supreme commander. After that the Türgish union was dismembered and a new stateless era began in Central Asia. Likewise, the Arab Caliphate ruled by the Umayyad Dynasty also fell into chaos with simultaneous and great uprisings everywhere, which marked the end of the dynasty in 750. The Abbasids replaced them; however, it would take much time to take control of the vast empire. The Chinese were not slow to make use of the political vacuum for their own purposes. The Sogdian cities either appealed for Chinese vassalage or were invaded by the armies of the Western Governorship of China. However, the Chinese proved to be worse than the Arabs, and local public opinion turned against them. Thus, in spite of the ongoing chaotic situation in Arabic lands, it was not difficult for the Khorasan rulers of the Abbasids, who were indeed heroes of the revolution in the name of Abû Muslim, appointed as governor of the region, to take control of the Transoxiana cities. An Arab army sent by him even met a Chinese army in the east of the region, near Talas, and became victorious, thanks to the help of the Karluks (751). The latter had been expelled in 746 from the Eastern Kök Türk region by the Uyghurs, who had made an end to the Kök Türk state in 745 and established their own empire. The Karluks are related to the future Karakhanid state, about which there is a separate chapter in this book. China, on the other hand, faced the greatest uprising in its history, that of An-lu-shan, which started in 756 and lasted about six years. Thus, it could not return to Central Asia or even Eastern Turkestan from then on, until the modern ages. Therefore, a new period started in Central Asian history. The Abbasids did not make further attempts to expand their territories and, instead, focused on keeping their strongholds, and the stateless Turks of the steppe exploited the relatively peaceful circumstances in the context of the traditional nomadic-sedentary relations. There was no menace from the sedentary Muslim south and there was no polity, even a notable tribal union among the western Turks of Central Asia at the beginning. This period lasted for about two centuries (c. 750 to c. 940) and enabled the Turks to increase their population thanks to the peaceful life in and around the steppe. Towards the end of this period, some new ethno-political formations were completed and there emerged new peoples not previously

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known, based however on the existing population inherited from the Kök Türk ages. A great many of the Türgish remnants from the north of Transoxiana moved slightly to the west. There, in the region to the east of Lake Aral and the River Sir Darya, they joined the local Turkic population. They simply called themselves Oghuz < Ok-uz “Tribes”. The number of Oghuz increased with the joining of some South Siberian Turkic elements in the long term. Two ethno-political processes coincided with their joining, just on their northern boundaries. Three tribes with the common name Kangar enlarged their league by absorbing five more tribes, and thus the Pecheneg union appeared to the north of the Aral. The rising demographic pressures from both sides led the Oghuz and Pecheneg to have constant struggles over the pastures, which also contributed to the consolidation of their group identities. By the end of the ninth century, they were already two separate peoples of the same ethno-linguistic stock, but with different political traditions. Seven tribes in the north of the Central Eurasian plain were united under the Kimek qaganate. The beginning of this formation is not known, but the polity certainly existed in the ninth century. Later, in the course of time, the Kipchak, one of the constituent tribes, became more and more renowned, and their name extended to almost all of the Turkic peoples in South Siberia and Northern Kazakh steppes. Thus, within one and a half centuries, a new and crowded Turkic people were born of the scattered tribal remnants of the earlier ages. Kipchaks became one of the most influential and prominent peoples of the late Middle Ages, being active not only in Central Eurasia but also in the Middle East, primarily Egypt, South Asia (India), and Eastern and Central Europe. The rise of the Kipchaks meant an increase of demographic pressure on the Oghuz and Pechenegs. Kipchak elements were pressing on their borders. In normal conditions, the additional demographic production of Central Asia was exported to Europe along the way north of the Caspian Sea, but now an exceptional power had closed that gate. Khazaria was a successor state of the Kök Türks centred on the North Caucasus and lower Volga-Don area. Its life-time almost coincides with the stateless three centuries of Central Asia (c. 630–966). The Khazar Empire was founded in the aftermath of the collapse of the Western Kök Türk Empire (post 630), and it proved to be a stable and formidable structure, in contrast to the very frail and fragmentary character of the Kök Türk state formations in general. It was perhaps thanks to the earlier adaptation to the advantages

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of sedentary life by some of the Khazars. Surely, Arabic onslaughts should also have contributed much to the consolidation of “political” Khazaria. Interestingly, Khazars had encounters with Muslims/Arabs on almost the same days as the Central Asian Turks, and the war period ended in the same year, in 737. In contrast to the Central Asians, who did not have a stable state and waged war with the Arabs only between 717 and 737 in the true sense, the Khazars fought them more than their Central Asian cognates, for about 95 years with some interruptions. The Arabs defeated them eventually in 737, but their commander Marwan, who would be the last caliph of the Umayyads (746–750), concluded a permanent peace act, while appreciating the great difficulty of controlling north of the Caucasus by military means. From then on, peace prevailed in the Caucasus, too. The upper stratum of Khazaria converted to Judaism, and the multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire continued to get stronger during the eighth and ninth centuries. It became one of the “global” actors of international politics. There was no serious threat around; Central Asia was stateless and disunited, the Rus’ had not yet risen, and the Onogurs, the future Hungarians were compliant subjects of the Khazar Empire. The Judaization of Khazaria was in a sense a challenge to the then two world powers and world monotheistic religions: Eastern Rome and the Caliphal Empires. The ninth century also marked the rise of some ethno-political formations on the European side of Khazaria. The Bulgars in the mid-Volga region, a vassal state of Khazaria, gained power and proved to have centrifugal tendencies. The Onogurs in what is now Eastern Ukraine turned out to be a great military entity thanks to their increasing population during four peaceful centuries (from c. 463 on). And lastly, the Varangians of Swedish origin, whose tribal name was Rus’, came in the mid-ninth century and later conquered East Slavic tribes on the Kiev-Novgorod line, who were paying tribute to the Khazars. Thus, a new and dynamic power combining the warfare of the Scandinavians and the human source of the Eastern Slavs was rising. Therefore, things changed too much during the “peaceful centuries” in both Central and Western Eurasia. Doubtless, Khazaria felt too much pressure from its eastern neighbours, the Pechenegs. Therefore, the Oghuz and Khazars were natural allies against the Pechenegs. Supported also by the Kimek-Kipchaks and perhaps the Karluks according to some sources, the Oghuz-Khazar alliance buffered and eventually routed the Pechenegs (892). The bulk of the latter passed to Europe through the northern borders of Khazaria and expelled the Hungarians from the Don

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basin to Central Europe in cooperation with the Danube Bulgars. The remaining Pechenegs were included in the Oghuz union and became one of the 24 Oghuz tribes mentioned in classical texts. Thus, at the end of the ninth century, there was no longer a Pecheneg political entity in Central Asia, and the steppe part of Western Turkestan, roughly what is today Kazakhstan, was partitioned by the Oghuz, Kipchaks and Karluks, as the then most prominent Turkic unions/peoples. The Oghuz territories were adjacent to the Islamic sedentary regions of Khwarazm and Gurgân (roughly southwest of the current Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran). They were closest to the Muslims. Except for tiny clashes on the borderlands and some expeditions of the Arabs (indeed we have only one account recorded by Ibn al-Athir, which is the earliest mention of the Oghuz dating to the 820s), the Oghuz in those days do not seem to have tried to enter the regions to their south, as the mighty Caliphal empire with immense lands did not promise much hope, such as gifting new lebensraums to the Oghuz. Thus, they were always busy with the surrounding steppe regions. The conquest of the Pecheneg lands and the exportation of a great population from there were only a temporary and partial solution. The Oghuz filled that region (north of the Aral-Khazar line) and became neighbours of the Khazars. Then it became habitual for the Oghuz raiders to cross the river Volga to the west and to sack Khazar lands. Thus, although they were once allies against the Pechenegs, and despite Khazaria often recruiting mercenaries from the Oghuz to use on other fronts, the Oghuz and Khazars were usually on hostile terms. Khazarian sources of the tenth century depict the former as one of their enemies. However, this was not a sustainable status quo and it lasted only for two generations, covering the first half of the tenth century. Interestingly, the eventual fate of Khazaria was determined by the Oghuz, except for the long-term developments all evading the might of Khazaria; and the fate of the Oghuz was formed in accordance with their relations with Khazaria. When Khazaria sought the help of Oghuz against the Alans in the Caucasus, the Oghuz responded by sending their supreme commander Dukak the Iron-Bow. He was or then became a Khazar proponent in his country. But the general atmosphere among the magnates of the Oghuz was against Khazaria. People needed new lands and resources, and only Khazaria, weakening day by day especially due to the rise of new ethnic and political entities, but still preserving great wealth, among the surrounding countries promised those facilities. Therefore, although he was

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a capable military man, it was difficult for Dukak Beg to maintain his position to defend Khazaria. Anti-Khazarian elements among the Oghuz clearly had the upper hand and they continued their annual predatory attacks on their western neighbour. In the 960s, a young and brave man called Saljuk, a son of the then deceased Dukak Beg, was appointed as commander-in-chief of the Oghuz armies. Likely around 965 they received an attractive offer from the Kievan Rus’. Except for the 836 attack which ended in the destruction of the old Khazarian fortification on the Don (instead of which Sarkel would be established in 840–841), the Rus’ did not directly target the Khazarian realm. It was just a pre-Kievan act. From the mid-ninth century on, the Rus’ or the Varangian adventurers were strictly established in Kiev and continuously expanded their territories over the surrounding Slavic tribes. The Khazars either provoked the Rus’ to attack Byzantium, or let them pass through the Volga to the Caspian Sea and attack Muslim lands in Azerbaijan on a few occasions. Now the warlike ruler of Kiev, Sviatoslav (d. 972), offered the Oghuz a common attack on Khazaria. Saljuk Beg proved to be of his father’s way and rejected that project. But the ruler of the Oghuz, with the title Yabghu, and most of the begs were on anti-­ Khazar terms and accepted the Rus’ proposal, which perhaps also included the Volga Bulgars as the third ally. Saljuk was deposed and, furthermore, became a traitor in his country. In this way, the Rus’ from the west and the Oghuz from the east orchestrated an attack on Khazaria and destroyed the once great power within a few weeks in 966, and the remaining parts of Khazaria were totally swept away in the aftermath. Although they conquered the lands to the north of the Caspian Sea, the Oghuz could not exploit the new facilities. Their tribesmen settling in those lands were expelled by the Kipchaks coming from the east. The pushed Oghuz elements migrated first to the Ukraine, and were shared between the Pechenegs and Rus’. However, the Kipchaks continued their advance and expelled both the Pechenegs and Oghuz from there to the Balkans. The Pechenegs accumulated on the Danube delta and the Oghuz crossed the Roman border initially to invade the Balkan provinces beginning in 1064, and then to seek Byzantine citizenship. Remnants of both Turkic peoples in the now-Ukraine took refuge with the Rus’ and were assimilated there in the course of time. Therefore, the western direction was closed by the Kipchaks for the Oghuz remaining in Turkestan. They were now buffered between the Kipchaks in the north and the Islamic lands in the south and had no exit.

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The deposed Oghuz leader Saljuk had to leave his country together with his adherents. He had proven his strict Khazar tendency by giving his five sons Israelite names. Sources say nothing about his acceptance of Judaism, but the names of his sons at least show his hard stance as much as his Khazar fondness. He migrated to the city of Jand, just to the east of Lake Aral, which belonged to the Oghuz and had Muslim settlers mostly of Sogdian or Khwarazm origin. He accepted Islam there, and his people followed him. Being confident of his power, he rejected the authority of Yabghu and prevented the local people from paying taxes to the “infidel” Yabghu. This act signified the beginning of a great process that deeply changed the course of world history. Almost all radical developments during the second millennium AD (the Crusades, the end of Byzantium/the East Roman Empire, the rise of the Ottomans, geographical discoveries, etc.) are related in some degree to the decision of this fugitive Oghuz leader in a modest city of traders that is now extinct. The Oghuz were the closest Turks to the Islamic lands, and as the bulk of the Türgish were later included in the Oghuz entity, they had a good memory of previous relations with the Muslims. The earliest account of the Oghuz by an eye-witness is from the year 921, and other literary or transmitted accounts earlier than this do not give any detail about their stance and situation before Islam. Interestingly, there are eye-witness accounts of Islamic sources on the farthest Turkic lands, the Uyghurs then in Mongolia in the early ninth century. The 921 account was written by the famous traveller-diplomat Ahmad ibn Fadlan. We will deal with his report, but luckily, we have useful texts from the Türgish period (730s). Those can and should be studied in relation to the pre-Islamic Oghuz perception of the Arabs and Islam. Even before this, we need to have a glance at the Islamization process of Iran, Afghanistan and Mawara al-Nahr. Zarrı ̄nkūb writes that, despite the sudden collapse of Iran and the almost total lack of resistance in the inner cities, conversions of Persians to Islam in those early days were very rare. The social position of the Zoroastrian and other clerics, who were left free by the Arab conquerors, might have had a certain influence on keeping the old faith. Another reason may be defined as the expectation of the Persians that the Arab hegemony would be temporary. However, the Arabs proved to be a permanent power there, and after many generations or even centuries they did not leave Iran, and continued to dominate. Compared to Khorasan and Transoxiana, fewer Arabic populations were transferred to Iran proper,

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but it is difficult to envisage whether this contributed positively or negatively to the Islamization process. An ethnic tension with the newcomer invading elements would lead to a reaction to their identity and thus to their values among the indigenous folk. In Central Asia, Arab migrants did not serve in the spread of Islam, as a solid example, but only caused the rise of hatred. Thus, massive Islamization in those regions came well after that in Iran. But neither in Iran nor in the east was it completed by the end of the ninth century. After the total loss of hope for independence, it seems, Iranian-speaking populations of both regions started to accept Islam massively in an accelerated way. Perhaps the established “fatalism” in pre-Islamic Iran, suggested by some scholars such as Zarrı ̄nkūb, contributed to the process. Also, the fact that Iran was not devastated by the Arabs and was in relatively peaceful conditions compared to Transoxiana might also have been a stimulus in the Persians’ rapprochement to and acceptance of Islam. Thus, it seems that Iran experienced not a sudden, but a quick Islamization through the eighth and ninth centuries. To what degree the Islamization of Transoxiana is related to the Arabic population settled there is a difficult question to answer. But it certainly helped, as before stated, to defend the country against the Türgish reconquest in such early dates as the 720s. Some sections of the local inhabitants continuously accepted the new religion, but this was also not without crisis. Umayyad governors of the region were more interested in collecting taxes (jizyah), and the rise in the number of Muslims meant a decline in tax revenues. Therefore, the new local Muslims had to try to convince the Arabic authorities of their conversion. False conversions, in this context, were naturally not rare. On the other hand, brilliant cities of the region started to become renowned Islamic centres from the beginning of the ninth century. The full establishment of Islam seems to have been completed in the region during the ninth century, which was especially visible under the reign of the caliph Ma’mûn (813–833), in parallel with the “self-governing” process represented by local origin governors, like the Tahirids and then Samanids, who were appointed by the Caliphal centre, and who turned out to be hereditary. Thus, the steppe Turks were from then on collocutors of the local Iranic peoples, and not the Arabs in the majority of cases. This would be the crucial point in determining the version of Islam accepted by the Turks in the next century. On the other hand, other religions, mainly Manichaeism, were now represented by minor multitudes of adherents even in the eleventh century, and a

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significant part of the local converted population seems to have secretly performed the old faiths. Instead, the Turks established direct relations from the beginning of the “new age” with the Caliphal capital and other Middle East Arabic centres as a result of a distinctive feature of the steppe lifestyle. The nomadic economy was by no means self-sufficient and they were dependent on the sedentary economies through three main ways: trade, plunder and labour force export. If commercial facilities were not available or satisfactory, especially in times of drought, they tended to apply the second alternative in a compulsory way. Predatory raids of the nomadic entities normally affected the borderlands of the sedentary neighbours, and not the inland regions with few exceptions. Working in those inland centres, mainly in the capitals, was more profitable than plundering. The commercial colonies of the nomads were recorded in many cases in China or Eastern Rome, and perhaps in Iran too, and a bulk of those traders preferred to settle permanently in those cities. The characteristic feature of the steppe labour force was, however, their warlike abilities. Nomads presented themselves to or were invited as mercenaries in the armies of the near or distant countries, regardless of the courses of “international relations”, and they were the elite components of the guard troops of the medieval capital cities. This worked in the Caliphate, too. Turkic mercenaries known as “ghulâm” and then “mamlûk” were not only in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities but also mainly in Egypt and Syria in great numbers, from the early generations of the Abbasids on. During the ninth century, they were controlling everything in Baghdad, and their only rivals were other Turkic military factions. These mercenary troops were in their tens of thousands, more than an efficient nomadic army. And it was not a precondition for them to accept Islam as a rule, although the process inevitably went on their Islamization in some ways. Not only arsenals, but also towns were established for them in Iraq. The most famous of these was the “Turkic” city of Samarra, which also became the Caliphal seat for a while in the ninth century, in the north of Baghdad. Many scholars tend to overestimate the significance of the Ghulâms in the Islamization process of the Turks, and even start the process with their acquaintance with Islam. This approach is by no means true, I think. The case is connected with the conversion of individuals who had permanently left their motherland and established new lives in remote countries. They were simply “diasporas”, cutting their ties with their ethnosphere, or

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homeland in the Eurasian steppe willy-nilly (some of them had been captured and enslaved). It was very rare that they returned to their original abodes after “retirement”. On the other hand, if we want to study the making of an image of Arabs, or Islam, among the Turks through this institution, we should keep in mind that there was nothing peculiar in this case in the long run and in the big picture. In the first half of the tenth century, the Byzantine court held 17,000 of such Central Asian guards, for instance. Perhaps armies on hire should be exempted in this sense. They were invited by some other power centres as allies or only as mercenaries, were paid after they executed their duties and then returned to their countries. The relation of Saljuk Beg as narrated above with Khazaria was of this kind, and the same happened in the Karakhanid-Samanid relations too. Thus, we should separate the hired troops from the commissioned mercenaries. In the former case, any influence taken in the settled country was transmitted to the steppe environments, while the latter were simply exported products of the nomadic world and few would return to their homes. The results of some of the activities of the Ghulâms rather than the presence of the Ghulâm institution seem to have been more influential in changing the Turkic perception of Islam. The Abbasid caliph Jaʻfar ibn Muhammad, known as Al-Mutawakkil (847–861), was enthroned mostly thanks to the support of Turkic commanders and statesmen. However, he then tried to escape from Turkic control. He even transferred the capital to Damascus, seeing that it had a larger Arabic population compared to the cosmopolitan Baghdad, but had to return due to the opposition of the Turkic military. Although he was a strong personality and was popular among the people, his contention with the Turks brought about the end of his life in 861. He was killed by one of his sons in collaboration with a Turkic faction. It was the first case where a caliph was killed by the palace guards, but it was also only the true beginning of the story. The Turks did not like the new caliph, Al-Muntasir, and after only five months, they killed him too. His successor, Al-Mustaʻîn (862–866), believed he could escape from the Turks by relying on Arabic and other troops, but some 50,000 Turks proved they had control over the Caliphal heartland by besieging and capturing Baghdad, and they dethroned the caliph, who was executed by his successor. Nor could the new caliph, Al-Muʻtazz, escape the same destiny. A group of Turkic rebels, complaining that their wages had not been paid, seized the young caliph, and tortured and killed

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him in 869. His successor, Al-Muhtadî, planned to get rid of the Turks by killing the foremost persons in intrigues, but an army composed of the Turks seized him; and he was killed in 870. Thus, five successive caliphs were killed by the Turks within ten years. After that, things settled, but the Turkic elements continued to keep control over the central lands of the Caliphate. It is difficult to speak of a pure Turkic ethnic consciousness in those days, since various Turkic commanders or governors might have been rivals in and around Baghdad and Samarra. However, as for the Ghulâm mass or majority, they acted altogether under their commanders, and for an overall picture of the developments let us draw a picture of Turkic mercenaries coming from still non-Muslim Turkic lands who controlled everything in the empire and decided who would be enthroned and who would be dethroned. It was surely galling and disappointing for the Arabic face of the empire; however, we need to focus on the possible influences of those developments in the Eurasian steppes. Now, the long-lasting and relatively peaceful terms contributed to grasping the existing perception of the “other” between the nomadic versus sedentary and Turkic versus Islamic lands, perhaps from “enmity” to such a comprehension as “we altogether”. That the Iranic populations of Khwarazm and Transoxiana, who had no considerable historical problems with the Turks and had long been under Turkic hegemony, accepted Islam eventually en masse should also have helped the Turks to approach towards Islam in sentiment. The Turks encountered the “Islamic other” not only in the markets of the border cities of Muslim Central Asia, but also in their homes. Caravans from Transoxiana going as far as remote Turkic lands like that of the Volga Bulgars in the north, the Kyrgyz in the northeast (South Siberia) and the Uyghurs in the east (then in Mongolia) passed through Turkic lands in Central Asia. They certainly transported not only goods and commodities, but also beliefs and ideas, as Golden depicts. Thus, almost all Turkic peoples became familiar with the Muslims face to face thanks to the caravans. Ibn Fadlan depicts in live views such scenes among the Oghuz, some of whom were interested in and others had already accepted Islam in the 920s. When the upper strata of the steppe society heard about the developments in the capital of the Islamic Empire in the 870s, they should have perceived that the Caliphal state was no longer a threat to their presence and independence. There remained no reason to worry about an Arabic invasion or interference in the steppe region; instead, the Muslim lands

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became an easy component and co-operator of the steppe economy. Circumstances turned around, compared to the period between the years 650 and 750, and the Turks now became a threat to the Arabs, even at the heart of their vast empire. Such a radical case as some Turkic elements starting to rule over the Caliphal lands surely made a deep impact on changing the negative image of Islam among the Turks. We cannot, however, speak of a linear development. Being more familiar with or closer to the Muslims did not usually mean a more positive perception. Thus, the earliest Islamization happened in a remote country, in Volga Bulgaria, while the Oghuz were among the latest in the first wave of Islamization. We can compare it to the case of the Chinggisid successor states. (The rulers of) the Golden Horde in Eastern Europe were the first to convert to Islam. The Chaghataids in Central Asia accepted Islam well after the Golden Horde. And the Ilkhanids in Iran and Iraq were the latest to do it. Fear was certainly not a motivation before the Mongolian rulers in accepting Islam, but the chronology of conversions in the second half of the thirteenth century should have also represented some other reasons and concerns, beyond the personal acts and preferences of the concerning rulers. For Berke Khan of the Golden Horde, who accepted Islam in 1261, there was no rival or “other” Islamic people or force in Eastern Europe (the relatively tiny Volga Bulgaria had been crushed in 1236 as the first target of the great western expedition of the Mongols), but he should have had plausible concerns for gaining the support of the Muslim populations of the other Chinggisid formations and also for benefiting from an alliance with the mighty Mamlûk State of Egypt. Clearly, accepting the values of the subdued masses meant accepting defeat before them for the dominant and victorious nomadic elites, and this was not acceptable. The same happened in the first Islamization process among the Turks. Volga Bulgaria was the first to convert to Islam, completed at the “state level” in the first years of the tenth century, as shown by numismatic as well as written evidence. Islamization, however, arrived there at the bottom, and it seems to me that the ruling elites were the last to adopt the new faith (as shown by some Muslim cemeteries going back as far as the late eighth century, which may be related to the migration of Islamized “Balanjar” elements in the mid-eighth century from the south of Khazaria). Thus, the political usefulness of and expectancies from accepting Islam in the Bulgar case are hard to envisage. Such an attempt of the Bulgar ruler came only 20 years later, in 920, but solely to seek symbolic financial support from the Caliph. He was sure that the very distant “amir” of the

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Muslims could not help him against Khazaria, which was on relatively good terms with Muslims in those days. It is also difficult to say that Islamization of the Bulgars was a reaction to the Judaic Khazaria, although the Bulgar ruler Almiš underlined their anti-Khazar attitudes leading them to embrace Islam; however, this was in a diplomatic speech to the Arabic delegate, since the process went on in Bulgar as a “common people case” and not as a state policy determined by the ruling strata, in my opinion. The wide-spread scholarly view, however, prefers to focus on state-level political developments in the process of Islamization of those lands. Surely, the establishment of Islam in Volga Bulgaria was not so easy and without crisis. The anonymous Gesta Hungarorum relates that a horde of “Ismaelites” migrated just after the land conquest (c. 900s) from the Volga Bulgaria to Hungary, as then where it is today. That exodus should be a result of the oppression by the Bulgar state over the increasing Muslim population. Thus, the primary role of political motivations of the Bulgar conversion does not seem to be authentic. Perhaps we should comment on those motivations in some other ways. The state could not prevent the spread of Islam among the subjects, and chose at the end to knuckle down before the will of the common people in order to keep the unity of the “nation”, especially regarding the Khazar pressure over the country. It cannot be found strange, on the other hand, that the Volga Bulgars needed an alliance against Khazaria, and therefore all the ways before them went to Islam. Meanwhile, although the Bulgar ruler stated in the presence of the Caliphal envoys in 921 that he was very afraid of the might of the Caliph, they should have been aware of the internal developments starting in the 860s in the Caliphal centre. Despite the state authority being renewed in Baghdad after that, the Islamic state had shown its fragile and weak face and was no longer a great threat to the surrounding peoples, compared to the image of the earlier generations. Just as, there were three non-Muslim Turkic peoples between Volga Bulgaria and Islamic Empire when the former accepted Islam: the mighty Oghuz, the Pecheneg remnants subjected by the Oghuz and some Bashkir elements. On the European side, Khazaria was located between Volga Bulgaria and the Caliphal state. So, it seems that the Bulgar Islamization was in its essence the result of a voluntary preference among the common people. It is hard to think that the Oghuz were not aware of the Bulgar conversion in the early tenth century. It would seem, however, that they were

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wrong about that conversion as seen in the writings of an eye-witness. When the Caliphal embassy to Bulgar was interrogated by the Oghuz authorities in 921, the latter were concerned about whether they were going to Khazaria, the great enemy of the Oghuz. When the passengers convinced them that they were going to Bulgaria, and not to Khazaria, there was no longer a problem. The embassy did not therefore experience the same attitude on their return, since there is no account of it, and since the scribe of the embassy Ahmad ibn Fadlan wrote his report after coming to Baghdad (if they did not return via Khazaria, since the last part of the report contains accounts of the Khazars, which might, at least partially be eye-witness statements; but the last chapters have not survived). So, the acceptance of Islam by any person or people around was not a dramatic development in the common opinion of the Oghuz. Their primary enemy was Khazaria in the first half of the tenth century, and their concerns focused on that front, albeit the Oghuz troops served in Khazaria as veterans in several cases. Likewise, the contemporary Khazar records also describe the Oghuz as being among their permanent enemies. Can it be due to this primacy that Yınal the Little, the second man of the Oghuz and heir to the throne of the Yabghu, who had accepted Islam (likely in 910s), but was warned only that he would not be able to rule if he did not abandon Islam, but Saljuk Beg, who acted as a pro-Khazarian commandant, was condemned as a traitor and had to run off? Yınal preferred apostasy and continued to keep his rank. It seems the Oghuz were very careful in state affairs with the inclusion of a “foreign religion”, thus the Caliphal embassy to Volga Bulgaria was harshly treated, and even threatened with death. Otherwise, their state had Muslim subjects and regions, and some Oghuz individuals could tend to Islam without hesitation and fear. Interestingly, in those days Khazaria seemed to be more liberal towards Islam than the Oghuz. Istakhrî of the tenth century notes that a man of the dynastic origin, who had the right to be a qagan, the supreme ruler, was deprived of that right because he had accepted Islam. He did not have to renounce his faith, at least. But Muslims could be viziers and army chiefs in Khazaria. However, there was a great corpus of Muslim soldiers protecting the Jewish qagan, and a quarter of the Khazar capital was inhabited by Muslims, mostly of Khwarazmian origin. Those conditions were created much later, certainly, during the peaceful period of two centuries. However, that never meant that there were Muslim citizen-­ controlled state affairs there. Here, too, we may surmise a presence of a kind of fear and concern. The Caliphal centre and its Caucasus or

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Azerbaijan representatives proved that, especially after the 760s, they would not attack Khazaria any more, whereas new powers were emerging in the world of the North, as before stated, and the qagan had to essentially defend his country against them. Thus, the Muslim troops of Khazaria fought “infidels”, and never Muslims, according to an account shared by several Islamic geographers of that age. Saljuk might have observed the situation in Khazaria and gained some sympathy for Muslims when he was serving the qaganate as the commander of the hired Oghuz forces. He likely operated in the north of the Caucasus together with the Muslim soldiers against the then Christian Alans. There might be further background, too, for his closeness to Islam. He had a political choice or preference before him, when he took refuge in Jand. He had a horde, at least his tribesmen (of the Kınık tribe), with him on that adventure. In order to get the support of the local people and likely also to send a message to the Islamic domain just behind the border, he announced he was a Muslim, and his companions did not leave him alone. We may surmise that he did it after long debates with his own men, and after reaching a consensus, as approved by sources, since we hear of no turbulence among his people due to that decision. He claimed then to be a protector of the local Muslims, whom he prevented from paying tax to the “infidel” Oghuz administration. It was indeed a kind of independence. I’d like to point out the fact that by becoming a Muslim, he did not feel the necessity to be a subject of the supreme Islamic authority, in contrast to the perceptions of the earlier ages. That is, he did not take refuge in the Islamic lands; he acted as an independent ruler and leader, and set up a new Islamic political entity. This was concerned, in my opinion, with the perception settled after the 860s. There were several Islamic “authorities”, local powers acting independently, in those days, mainly the leaders of the Samanids and Karakhanids in the mid-tenth century, and the Ghaznavid Empire was in the making in the last decades of the same century. The presence of independent Muslim Turkic polities in the surroundings should have relativized the issue of Islamization in the eyes of Saljuk and his comrades. On the other hand, as a Muslim he felt free to infiltrate the lands ruled by Muslims, Khorasan and Transoxiana to look for new lands for his people. This was due to the fact that, as later developments show, the number of his followers increased with new participation from the Oghuz lands, rather than due to the pressures from the Yabghu-led Oghuz. The latter were busy in the late 960s on the Khazar front and this certainly helped

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Saljuk in his actions in the south, but when the north way was closed by the Kipchaks, the Oghuz remained without means. A conflict with Saljuk would bring no benefit to solve the long-run question of acquiring new lands for the rising population, and furthermore, it would mean a war with all Muslims, now including not only the old Muslim populations of Khorasan, Khwarazm and Transoxiana, but also the fresh Muslim Turks under the frame of the mighty Karakhanid Empire just to the east of the Oghuz lands. Therefore, more and more multitudes of the Oghuz started to leave their terrains and to join the Saljuk horde, which gained fertile lands to settle in the south. It was an unofficial condition to accept Islam on the road. It is not a matter of this paper to discuss how and why the Oghuz accepting Islam came to be called “Turkmen”, but we should keep in mind that they started to bear the name Turkmen in Islamic lands, and the name Oghuz remained in the past within a few generations. This was a dilemma for the Yabghu Oghuz state; their power was fading away and the Saljukids were getting stronger. Furthermore, as they were losing their power, they also lost their resistance to the Kipchaks, who continued their pressure over the Yabghu Oghuz and eventually repelled almost all of them from the east of the Sir Darya River. Thus, the entire Oghuz population had to follow, in a sense, the way of the Saljuks. A horde of the Oghuz under the leadership of first Mikâil and then Israil, sons of Saljuk, was settled near Bukhara by the invitation of the Samanid state c. 985, or perhaps their fait accompli settlement there was accepted willy-nilly by the Samanids, whose state would end a few years later. However, Transoxiana was not ready and eager to accommodate so many Oghuz incomers in general. The region was in its golden age. After the brilliant Samanid renaissance, during which the population and wealth of the region dramatically increased, it was conquered in 992 by the newly Muslim Karakhanids without much trouble. Thus, the steppe and the city were unified under the same state structure for the first time since the decline of the Kök Türks in 630. It is interesting in this context that the official name of the Karakhanid Empire (that name was given by the historians of the modern ages) was the “Türk Qaganate”. It was natural then that the fertile and lovely Transoxiana attracted the hearts of the new lords. Samarkand would be the new capital of the empire. They could not seize Bukhara in the first trial from the Samanids who had recruited Saljukid aid and routed the Karakhanids. But the capital also fell to the latter only five years later, in 997. Likewise, Khorasan was seized from the Samanids by the Ghaznavids, allies of the Karakhanids. It was the rulers of

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these Karakhanids and Ghaznavids that worried about the increasing Oghuz population within their borders as they did not want to share the conquered Samanid lands with them. After a temporary settlement around Bukhara, the Saljukids had to leave Transoxiana under Karakhanid pressure, which included the capture and imprisonment of the then Saljukid leader Israil Arslan. Saljuk likely died just after the year 1000. Indeed, nothing changed for the Oghuz after the Saljukid experience. Furthermore, they lost their original lands to the Kipchaks. Now they were homeless wanderers in the Khwarazm and Khorasan deserts and had only two alternatives before them: going towards either India or Iran. They had missed the Indian opportunity perhaps only with one generation of difference. The Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud (997–1030) was then the most renowned personality in the entire Islamic world. His state, with its centre in the city of Ghazna in South Afghanistan, encompassed almost the entirety of Pakistan in today’s terms, and great parts of India and Iran. The Oghuz were in the borders of Khorasan following the unwilling and hesitant permission of the sultan, who was mostly busy in India, but also managed, meanwhile, to capture the Oghuz leader Israil Arslan. The Oghuz rulers could not overcome his name and fame, and started to make investigations further west beyond Iran. They “discovered” Anatolia and Azerbaijan at such an early date as 1016. It was very interesting that a small troop of discoverers under Çağrı Beg passed easily through the foreign lands of Khorasan, Iran and (South) Azerbaijan, and attacked Armenian territories in that year. By the way, independent Turkmen groups infiltrating as small entities had already filled Iran proper in those days. We see that Anatolia was the third alternative before the Saljukids, who were ruled by the brothers Tuğrul (1029–1063) and Çağrı, sons of Mikâil, the greatest son of Saljuk. After the demise of the famous Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud, they found an easy rival in the personality of his successor Masʻud (1030–1041) and defeated him in a few instances. But those victories only allowed them to establish their hegemony in Khorasan and in the rest towards the west. They could not go towards South Afghanistan and further on. Thus, a great population of the Oghuz, known as Turkmens from then on, was on the west way and within or before the borders of Iran, as the second alternative. After the collapse of the Ghaznavid force, there remained no power to defend Iran. It was less a military expedition and more a journey for the Turkmen groups to advance further. Centrally organized groups were

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moving in accordance with the strategies of the Saljukid rulers. Thus, Tuğrul entered Baghdad in 1051 claiming to be the protector of the Caliph and took his daughter as his wife. His armies had already captured the entire Azerbaijan land from the local Muslim amirs and started marauding through the Armenian and Georgian territories. After discovering the region and testing the forces of those states, the greater armies of the Saljukids started to act in the South Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia. It is not a great idea to suggest that the Oghuz masses pouring into the Middle East were mostly accepting Islam nominally at the beginning. Regarding the nomadic character of the population, perhaps a significant part of them did not even hear about Islam. The name patterns of the Saljukids are also very different from those of the Bulgars, Karakhanids and Ghaznavids. Among the latter, becoming a Muslim meant adopting an Arabic name at the very beginning, while the Saljukid family preserved their Turkic names together with their Israelite second names during the earlier two generations, and later even if they had an Arabic name, they used Turkic names after their coronation. The Oghuz in general seem to have followed that pattern of using Turkic names. This is not, of course, an indicator of adherence to Islam. No historical source interrogates the sincerity of Saljuk or any of his followers in that matter. Saljuk had rebelled against the “infidel” Oghuz; Tuğrul became the protector of the Caliph; and his nephew and successor Alparslan (1063–1072) was making “jihad”. But I need to express two facts: historical sources available to us were written later in the Saljukid domain and under the Saljukid rule. On the other hand, in contrast to the other Turks (Karakhanids and Ghaznavids) who felt it was obligatory to prove their faith before the Muslim majority in the conquered lands, the Oghuz took Khorasan and Eastern Iran directly from the Ghaznavids and did not need to ask the local people about anything. They saw the very weakness of the Arabic and Persian regions; indeed, there was no power in those days that might resist the Turkic advance within the Islamic lands, including Egypt. Thus, the Oghuz had the upper hand and did not need to behave politically towards the inhabitants of the conquered territories. This does not mean they plundered everywhere, although their coexistence with the sedentary population was by no means without problems. Perhaps a kind of pride and self-confidence of the Oghuz was reflected in the name-giving patterns, which also reveal the certain fact that Islamization was not yet over. It is even doubtful whether the groups pouring into Palestine were

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Muslims or not at the beginning. The same is true for many groups entering Anatolia in those days. The real Islamization of the Oghuz, who changed their name to “Turkmen” after converting to Islam, and were known in the Middle East with the upper name of “Turk” seems to have happened only after they met the Christian populations of the Southern Caucasus and Anatolia. Alparslan likely did not think and plan to wrest Anatolia from Byzantium, a mission that could not be realized by the Arabs for four centuries, and was busy between the triangle of Georgia, Syria and Khorasan. Independent groups of Turks or sometimes organized forces of Saljukids were often leaking into Anatolia mostly to attack the eastern regions. After even the central parts of Anatolia started to feel the effects of the Turkic raids, the Byzantine emperor Romanos Diogenes decided to solve the question radically by invading Iran and deporting the Turks from there. He launched a great expedition with a huge army including many allies. But the imperial army was defeated by the smaller but more mobile and dynamic army of Alparslan in 1071 at the battle of Manzikert to the north of Lake Van. Armenian troops left the Romans during the battle, and the Oghuz and Pecheneg mercenaries brought from the Balkans changed sides to their cognates. It was an annihilation of the Byzantine war capacity, and Anatolia remained defenceless. Thus, in spite of the Saljukid sultan being busy in other fronts, and he was killed in the next year in Afghanistan by a captured commander, many independent tribal groups and “cossack” formations, fugitives, rebel members of the dynasty and many others poured into Anatolia and conquered almost the entire peninsula within a few years. In 1076 they were in the historical city of Nicea, which became the capital of a local Saljukid state founded by a rebel cousin of Alparslan. The Anatolian Saljukid capital city was just about 150  km distant from Constantinople. The beauty of the new conquered lands attracted many other Turks from the east and therefore Anatolia was filled with a great population. Not only Byzantine efforts, but even the (earliest three) Crusaders were ineffective in dismantling them from the old Roman territories. From then on, many sources started to call the land “Tourkia”. Although there are many accounts of the newly arriving Turks being baptized by the Armenian or East Roman (Orthodox) Church, the dominant religious identity for them was Islam for more than one century when they came to Anatolia, mostly being a nominal case, and the local Christian populations were naturally defined as the “other”. That the Oghuz Islam

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started among a dismembered and likely damned branch of the Oghuz, and that the others joined them in the course of time should be the essential cause of this fragmentary sight, in addition to the fact that it was inevitable for a nomadic society to complete its basic religious transformation within such a short time, indeed in a couple of generations. From another point of view, nowhere is the transformation complete, and people continue to keep elements of their previous, or older, beliefs, naturally in legitimized forms. The relevant scholarship agrees with the idea that countless mystic leaders and dervishes coming or sent from the region of Turkestan (mostly from the Karakhanid state) were the real catalysts of the Turkish Islamization in Anatolia, since they knew the language in both a linguistic and psychological sense, in contrast to the Arabs and Persians. Influxes of Turks from Central Asia to Iran, Azerbaijan and Anatolia continued from the 1070s to c. 1218 as a preference among several alternatives, but from the latter date on, which marks the start of the Mongol invasions in Central Asia, great masses came under obligatory conditions to escape from the Chinggisid anger. A comparatively tiny part of the Turkmens remained in Central Asia, now represented by the people of Turkmenistan and also by the remarkable minorities of Afghanistan and Northeast Iran. Thus, that catastrophe in Central Asia contributed to the eventual Turkification of the entirety of Anatolia, since previously the coastal regions belonged mostly to the Byzantines or to the city-states of Italy, but now even those regions were filled by Turkish populations, especially by those escaping from the Mongols, who came and settled in Central Anatolia as well. So, this is the history told in brief of what we may now call the “Turkish Islamization”. Their forefathers, the Oghuz tribal union, were the closest to the Muslim lands in Central Asia, but some political developments and also concerns caused them to stay away from joining in the Islamic milieu, and only after the Islamization of other surrounding Turkic peoples and after the emergence of some political requisites, a separatist branch of them started the conversion to Islam, and the remaining multitude constituting the real union and state, followed them in the succeeding course of events. Both the start and continuation of the process were related to a great degree to the “climatic change” in the perception that the Turks had realized the fact that Islam was no longer a threat to their political independence, in contrast to the reality of the previous ages, and that, conversely, they were even more powerful in seizing and ruling over the Islamic lands.

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Thus, as Barthold underlines, after Islamization, they found the opportunity to get those lands by very easy and cheap means, while in the pre-­ Islamic ages, even very mighty steppe empires of the Turks were unable to permanently cross the borders of Iran.

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CHAPTER 12

The Establishment of Islam in Central Asia: Geo-Cultural Patterns and Geographical Realities Erkan Göksu

When we talk about Islam in Central Asia, in fact we are talking about it spreading mostly among different Turkic-speaking peoples. The Turks first encountered the Muslim Arabs, thus Islam, in the mid-seventh century. However, a massive Islamisation among the Turks happened only in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and even later for some Turkic peoples. That is, it was a consequence of a long process of religious conversion that happened under specific conditions. There were critical moments and breakpoints, which became significant within the phenomenal integrity of the religious conversion, of this chain of developments occurring within the triangle of religion, individual and environment/culture. Those also mean the various phases of the conversion process. It is very difficult to find out the phases of the process of the Turkic conversion to Islam, which lasted for many centuries. And it is even a challenge to identify the critical

E. Göksu (*) Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_12

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moments or break points separating the various phases in terms of the development of the process and to locate them within the Islamisation of Central Asia and amongst the Turks, in particular. It is possible, however, to evaluate the conversion under these titles with an overall content to approach those phases.

The Situation Before the Conversion The process ending in the Turks’ acceptance of Islam starts with the “pre-­ process conditions”. This phase, considered to be the first step of a religious conversion case, contains the beliefs and thought system and political, social, cultural and economic conditions of the individual or society before the contact with the new religion. It is because the process of the perception and understanding of the new religion is inevitably shaped by comparing it with the existing/old religion, belief or opinion. Moreover, the political, social, cultural and economic conditions of the individual or society are determinant factors during the comparison. The pre-process conditions, or the “ambit” or “context” in the words of Lewis Rambo, are connected, in almost all psycho-social studies in this field, with a crisis phase, in which the individual or society faces the problems arising in connection with the old system of beliefs and thoughts. The crisis might have appeared after particular cases, natural or forceful, leading the individual or society to doubt the old beliefs. The essential point at this moment is the maturation of the psychological or sociological circumstances that will bring about the individual or society changing the religion. As for the Turkic case, we can say briefly of the pre-process conditions: Islam was introduced by the Prophet Muhammad in 610, as is known, in Mecca. Due to suppression of different kinds, Muslims migrated from there to the city of Madinah in 622, and there started a process of state building. Within the succeeding decade, a great part of the Arabian Peninsula was already under the domination of the Islamic state. After a century had passed, its borders contained the entirety of North Africa and the Middle East, the Iberian Peninsula, South Caucasus and southern parts of Central Asia. In those days, Turkic-speaking peoples were living in a wide area stretching from Mongolia to Central Europe, in various ethnic and state formations. Central Asia was in the post-Kök Türk age, with the dominance there of the Uyghurs (744–840), while the Khazars held the north of the Caucasus and east of the Black Sea area; at the same time, the Avars

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controlled the Hungarian plain. Those Turkic peoples, although scattered and spread in such a way, albeit keeping their numerous common features descending from their common, Steppe Eurasian roots, also gained some different features due to the circumstances presented by various lands in which they settled, in terms of historical, cultural, economic and civilisational accumulations. Some Turkic peoples had their own polities, and others were included in the body of other state formations. A great many of them continued their established styles of nomadism, while some groups became sedentary and adopted local habits in the lands they settled, thus being differentiated from the other Turkic-speaking groups. The most crucial difference was in the field of confession. We may mention the validity of the widespread Tengri belief among the Turks, but there were already many groups adopting some other religions, mainly Buddhism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, (Nestorian) Christianity and Judaism. There were even some Turks belonging to polytheistic beliefs. In such circumstances, the Turks in Western Central Asia and Caucasus met the newly rising Islam. The presence of various religions among the Turkic speakers shows that they were not alien to the concept of changing their beliefs before accepting Islam. This also provided the conditions for the members of different religions to cohabit the same land. It should be underlined at this point that neither the rulers of the Turkic states nor their subjects interfered in the religious choices of other people. In reality, the political and military motivations of the pre-Islamic Turks did not contain such a desire as to spread their religion, and they did not practice religion-based policies in their internal affairs. Religion was simply a matter of personal liberty in general and any discrimination or interference was not habitual. However, they were normally very careful of the potential threats that might rise from any religion or belief. For example, Bilge Qagan (715–734) permitted Buddhist priests to establish a temple in the Kök Türk lands and to perform their religious activities, but he did not support the spread of that religion among his people on the warning of his chief councillor Tonyukuk, who had said that it might cause cultural deterioration among the people, which might end in the loss of their traditional virtues. The main factor paving the way for this religious freedom among the Turks may have been their contacts with several peoples having various beliefs and cultures. Just as, religious conversions are mostly seen among those having the most contacts, perhaps as a prerequisite of their nature, not all of them converted to other beliefs with which they became familiar.

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Therefore, it would not be sufficient to explain the Turkic conversion to Islam solely by contacts. Very few of the Old Turks accepted Buddhism and Manichaeism in the east, while less of them embraced Christianity or Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Sassanian Persians in the West. In the known restricted cases, the conversions were mostly a matter of the upper strata, or a part of them, and did not interest the majority of the common people. This case also recalls the political, military and economic reasons. Some researchers, pointing to the fact that the change is mostly concerned with sedentarisation, hold the view that the Old Turkic religion was kept among the nomads, and for those adopting the settled life, that religion was too simple and inappropriate, and they thus needed more complex (and complicated) belief systems, tending towards the “settled” religions that they encountered. If this approach is true, the basic motivator of the converting individual would then be the feeling of “deprivation”. People changed their religions after a process of interrogation in accordance with their old beliefs. We should add to this the perception of the dominant religion in the settled country, and especially the social, cultural, economic and even political pressures imposed upon the newcomers. These sentences in the Kök Türk inscriptions can be observed in those terms: “If you intend to settle at the Chogay Mountains and on the Tögültün plain in the south, O Turkish people, you will die! If you stay in the land of Ötüken, and send caravans from there, you will have no trouble. If you stay at the Ötüken Mountains, you will live forever dominating the tribes!” (translation from T. Tekin).

Timing Another influential factor on the religious conversion process is the time that a certain individual or society meets the new religion. Even though the two sides have mutual relations for a long time, the situation and circumstances in which the new religion is introduced are important especially for the subject group. For instance, the behaviour and reactions of certain people when it is at the apex of its might and when it is in total decadence would never be the same. If we adopt this approach, it is possible to start with the relations between Arabs and Turks in the pre-Islamic days. But those preliminary contacts were not of the kind to cause significant interactions, mainly due to the great geographical distance between their countries. Moreover, Sassanid Iran (226–651) was located between them as one of the great

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powers of those ages, and not permitting any direct contact between Turks and Arabs. But partly the commercial relations and partly the acquaintance of the Turks and Arabs in the Sassanid service, on an individual level, let the two societies learn a little bit about each other. These restricted contacts were enough, however, for oral traditions to emerge about the peculiarities and heroism of the Turks among the Arabs, especially in their pre-Islamic poetry. The Turkic image of the Arabs that took shape in the pre-Islamic days continued in the early period of Islam as well. Some narrations about the Turks by the Muslim Arabs and furthermore some traditions (hadith) attributed to the Prophet prove this fact. Almost all of those traditions and narrations are about the military abilities of the Turks and advise the Arabs to always be in good conditions and never to clash with them. There are some weak narrations that the Prophet spent the night in a Turkic tent (yurt) during the Uhud (624) or Trench battle (627). Indeed, there were no close relations on a societal level between the two peoples either before Islam or in its early years. Besides, a bulk of those traditions were recorded after the Turks accepted Islam and gained high ranks within the Islamic state. Therefore, those traditions and narrations did not rely on real accounts after personal encounters, but were products of the aforesaid Turkic image, sometimes containing exaggerations, to which the usual Kök Türk victories over the Persians had contributed very much. However, those narrations are significant for they show the great respect of the Islamic society towards the Turks, and perhaps some expectancy from them. Under the first caliph Abû Bakr (632–634), who administered the state after the Prophet died, there was no serious contact between the Turks and Arabs. The Sassanid Empire was still alive then, and Islamic troops were very distant from the boundaries of Turkic countries. Under the succeeding two caliphs, Omar (634–644) and especially Uthman (644–656), the first serious contacts were provided. Those were the first encounters in a real sense. These first encounters in the Caucasus and Central Asia increased under the Umayyads (661–750). Especially after the governor of Khorasan Ubaydallah bin Ziyad passed the Amu Darya River and entered Transoxiana in 674/675, the Turks living there and constituting the main entity started to meet with Islam. There was a political vacuum in the region after the collapse of the Kök Türk authority after 630. There were 36 political units, even 56 according to some other views, among the Turks. Transoxiana

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was under the local rulers of mostly city states. Besides, the Khazars were holding North Azerbaijan and Dagestan; the Turks of Sul had settled in Jurjan; and remnants of the Ephtalites and Kalachs were in Sistan. Nizek Tarhan was the ruler of Bagdis in Afghanistan and a yabghu of Karluk origin was the ruler of Tokharistan in the north of Afghanistan. They started to act independently after the collapse of the Kök Türk and Sassanid empires. Simply, the encounter of the Turks with Islam coincided with the political turmoil and vacuum of authority in the region, as well as social and economic crisis. Various Turkic peoples in various regions were increasing their interaction with foreign religions, as stated above. In the same days, the Turks in Transoxiana and North Caucasus met Islam as a newly rising religion. Therefore, some researchers, pointing to the fact that the encounter of the Turks with foreign religions, including Islam, happened between the sixth and ninth centuries, relate this case to the disappearance of the Kök Türk might which had gathered a great part of the Turks under an imperial formation, thus around a “national” religion, and also to their transition from the nomadic to the sedentary life.

The Encounter: The Earliest Contacts As stated above, the earliest encounter of the Turks with Islam was in the days of the caliph Omar, when Islamic armies entered Iran and eventually annihilated the Sassanid Empire with the battle of Nihavand (642), thus conquering all of its lands. The last shahan-shah Yazdgard fled to Khorasan. The Islamic army under the command of Ahnaf bin Qays also entered Khorasan in pursuit of the shah. Ahnaf conquered the cities of the region like Herat, Marv, Nishabur, Sarahs, Marv al-Rud and Balkh in a short time and reached the banks of the Amu Darya. The lands beyond it were under the rule of “malik of Turks”. He informed the caliph about it and wanted permission to cross the river, but the latter did not permit this. Meanwhile, the Turkic qagan Tou-lu (Dulu) came after the invocation of Yazdgard; however, the Turkic and Arabic armies did not wage war. The qagan returned home, as did Ahnaf after making some administrative regulations in the conquered lands. Under the third caliph Uthman, the army under Abdallah bin Amir again reached the banks of the Amu Darya (651–652), and another army of the Arabs seized the South Caucasus except for Western Georgia. Troops were garrisoned in various places in Azerbaijan. The conquest of

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the Sassanid lands was completed in 651. But internal strife began among the Muslims in those days and influenced the expansion as well. Uthman was killed in 656. Nor was the situation recovered under the fourth caliph Ali, because the chaos continued to increase. The Caucasus was the other front where Arabic forces were in conflict with the Turks led by the Khazar qagans under the caliphs Omar and Uthman. After the conquest of Azerbaijan, the Muslim Arabs met the Khazars, who had newly established a strong state. Omar commissioned Suraqa bin Amr to conquer Darband. Pioneer troops under the command of ‘Abd al-Rahman bin Rabi‘a made an agreement with Shahrbaraz, the last Sassanid governor of the Darband castle. The latter agreed to join the Muslims (642–643). Suraqa died in the same year and Abd’al-Rahman became the commander. He raided Khazar territory beyond Darband (645–646). Later, ‘Abd al-Rahman was killed in a skirmish near the Khazar town of Balanjar and the Muslims were defeated (652–653). Due to the turmoil in the Islamic state, the advance of the Muslims also stopped on that front. Thus, in this first phase, Muslim armies only contacted a restricted group of Turkic-speaking peoples, and the military character of the advance caused a negative impression on the Turks towards this new religion. Because of this, the first encounter remained solely as contact. A great part of the Turkic world had not yet heard about Islam in a proper sense, and it would take a long time for them to meet the newly introduced religion.

Meeting: Action and Reaction The first encounters of the Turks with Islam did not result in a clear influence, and as it was then represented by the Arabs, Islam had no material or spiritual promise for the Turks. At least, sources do not inform us about any interest in those learning about Islam, and the bulk of the Turks were outside the process. This situation did not last for a long time, however. After internal politics were settled and the chaos was removed, the Arabs started a new wave of conquests with greater armies, which also targeted Turkestan. Thus, the Turks living in the targeted regions started to encounter Islam more and more. According to studies on religious conversions, the most important factor shaping the process of conversion was the way of presenting the religion in the meeting phase. The way was regarded as more important than

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the content of the religious idea; not “what is introduced”, but “how it is introduced” was the determining case. Thus, the patterns of behaviour and manners of the propagators were crucial. The first encounter of the Turks should also be evaluated in those terms. It was the Umayyads who conducted the first military operations into the Turkic lands. They extended the conquests beyond the Amu Darya, that is, to Transoxiana and Turkestan, and they were thus the first “inviters” for the Turks. However, the Turks were meeting Islam through the Arab armies advancing in Transoxiana and seizing their cities like Samarkand and Bukhara. To understand the nature of the first meeting stage of the Turkic conversion to Islam, it is necessary to first understand the manners of the Umayyad dynasty. The Umayyad family belonged to the tribe of Quraysh, which had an esteemed position in Arabic society and was the leading tribe of the pre-­ Islamic Arabs. Abû Sufyan was the head of the Umayyad family. He was also the Amir of Mecca and had influence over all Arabs. The rise of Islam disturbed the position of Abû Sufyan and the Umayyads. The Prophet Muhammad, on the other hand, belonged to the Hashimite branch of the Quraysh, which was in contention with the Umayyads. For that reason, most of the latter severely opposed Islam both in its Mecca and Madinah periods, except for Uthman, who would be the third caliph, and for some others. The Umayyad majority accepted Islam only after the conquest of Mecca by the Muslims in 630. The Prophet died two years later, and the old tribal approach surfaced again during the debates on who would govern the now state-like entity. Tribalism was on the scene especially under the caliphates of the Umayyad Uthman and Hashimid Ali and turned into a bloody conflict. Eventually, Mu‘awiyah, the son of Abû Sufyan, seized the power from Ali and the Umayyad age started. The Umayyads were very cruel and unjust towards the Hashimites and especially the family of the Prophet, and anybody who did not accept their power. This tribalism, accepted as one of the characteristic features of the Arabs, was reflected upon the non-Arab peoples of the newly conquered lands and gained a new and broader dimension. The previous inter-Arabic tribalism based on the discrimination between the Umayyads and the others, now in the new lands, turned into discrimination between the Arabs and the others. Non-Arabic peoples were regarded as slaves (Mawali), even though they accepted Islam. They were deprived of many rights and were always discriminated against and insulted. Therefore, the Umayyad conquests were not an Islamic movement in a true sense, but an Arabic

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invasion. Those policies started in the days of the first Umayyad caliph Mu‘awiyah and were systematised. Khorasan and Transoxiana were not out of the scope of those policies. For the Turks in Central Asia, who met with Islam based on the policies of the Umayyads and as their religion, it was natural not to be interested in it and even to resist it, and the process stopped at that phase. That period of an “unpleasant meeting” ended only with the fall of the Umayyads and their policies after the Abbasid revolution. Under the Abbasids (750–1258), who abandoned the old Umayyad policies and adopted new approaches that enabled the Turks to learn about Islam in different conditions, the process of the Turkic conversion to Islam entered a new phase with positive aspects. The first massive reactions to the harsh and discriminatory policies of the Umayyads appeared in Iran, where the woeful “Mawali” population was dominant, and then Khorasan and Transoxiana followed. But those reactions did not develop a noteworthy and massive movement until the last years of the Umayyads, since the latter had an unbeatable political and military power. The Mawali were fewer in number compared to the Arabs in the first years of the conquests and were weaker in the state mechanism as well as in the fields of economy, science and thought. They supported all movements against the Umayyad administration, but their anti-Arab approaches could not find possibilities to express themselves. However, with the extension of the conquered lands, the number of non-Arab Muslims whom the Arabs qualified as Mawali started to increase and they appeared more and more in the political, military, scientific and art fields. Especially Persians were noteworthy in that sense. In a moment, their number had exceeded the Arabs commissioned or settled in their lands. But the Arabic claims of being a superior nation continued as always, and even the rise of the Mawali Muslims caused a reaction among the Arabs, leading them to increase the tone of those policies. The Mawali, who were constantly strengthened both in number and influence, after accepting those Arab practices for a while, started to express their reactions, which became highly visible first in Iran and then in Khorasan and Transoxiana. Led by the Persians, this reaction first expressed itself in literature and science. They referred to the Islamic terminology and by defining the Arabic attitudes as “racism”, regarded it as incompatible with Islam, and claimed that their “nations” were not inferior to the Arabs. For instance, the Persian poet Ismael b. Yasar recited a poem in the presence of the Umayyad caliph Hisham bin ‘Abd al-Malik

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(724–743) and exalted his nation. It was recorded as one of the first reactions to the humiliations of the Arabs. This literary and intellectual movement led by the Persian origin Mawali referred especially to the Koranic verse “Oh human beings, we created you from a male and a female, and divided you into branches and tribes so that you know each other” (verse 13 of the Hujurat surah). It also recalled some other verses and the Prophet’s traditions by saying that the Arabic policies towards non-Arabs were not compatible with the essence of Islam. Consequently, the Mawali increased their voice and there appeared an egalitarian movement against the Arabs, who believed that they were the most superior “nation” of humanity and all the others were of the second class. This movement took its name, Shu‘ubiyyah from the word shu‘ub “branch” occurring in the aforesaid verse. This name and its conceptual content emerged in the Abbasid days; however, its intellectual bases had been built during the Umayyads. Shu‘ubiyyah, which can be described briefly as the reaction of the non-­ Arabs to the Arabs’ claim of being superior, remained as an intellectual movement at the beginning, despite the terror employed by the Arabic ‘asabiyyah “bigotry, fanaticism, party spirit, tribal solidarity”. They supported every movement against the Umayyads on an intellectual level but did not move to systematic opposition and rebellion or even to rivalry with the Arabs. The first factual movement against the Umayyads appeared in Khorasan, where the unpleasant Mawali mass was influential. This movement led by the Persians also attracted the Turks of the region, who had accepted Islam in this or that way. The opposition grew quickly with the clear support of the non-Muslim populations of Persia and Khorasan and became a serious threat to Umayyad power. In those days, the Abbasid family, which claimed the caliphal throne, also increased their opposition. Thus, the anti-Umayyad movement emerging among the Mawali was in their interest, and they looked for the ways to make use of that situation. They also intensified their activities in Khorasan and started an uprising through a secret organisation. A great part of the cadre preparing for the rebellion was composed of the anti-­ Umayyad Arabs, and not Turks or Persians. The most important person among them was, however, Abû Muslim, who might have been of Turkic origin. Besides, some other Turks like Muhammad bin Sul, Tarkhun bin al-Zai and Tarkhun al-Jammâl were also among the leaders of the revolution.

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Abû Muslim, who started his activities in 745 in Khorasan, paved the way for two years and started the rebellion by raising a black flag, which was a symbol of the Abbasids. At the beginning of 748 he seized Marv, which was then the capital of Khorasan, and marched upon Nishabur after defeating the last Umayyad governor of Khorasan, Nasr bin Sayyar. After totally controlling the region, the revolutionary troops moved to the west in two groups. They defeated the Umayyad armies sent to meet them in Iraq, and continued to march onto Syria, and the Umayyad capital of Damascus. The last caliph Marwan II (744–750) and almost all of his family members and their followers were killed (750). Abû al-Abbas al-Saffah (750–754) of the Abbasid family was proclaimed as the new caliph in Kufah, South Iraq. This was the end of the Umayyad dynasty and the beginning of the Abbasid age. The replacement of the Umayyads was not only a coup d’état and change of dynasty, but also a mental change. It marked a breaking point especially in term of relations with the Mawali. The first and most significant indicator of this change was the attitude of the Abbasids to the non-­ Muslim subjects and the Mawali. They left behind the old policies of discrimination typical of the Umayyads and it was really revolutionary. The capital was moved to the newly established Baghdad in two stages. This ended the period of the Syria-centred administration. Then, the old practices discriminating between the Arabs and non-Arabs in the state service and army were abandoned. The bulk of the elements bringing the Abbasids to power were of Persian and Turkic stock; therefore, the revolution was regarded by some people as the superiority of the Mawali over the Arabs. State ranks were filled by Mawali elements, especially from the eastern provinces in a short time. Even the special forces of the caliphs were composed of the Mawali to a great degree. Persians were influential in administrative issues, while Turks were concentrated in the military. Another important change was in the conquest policies. Military operations continuing at all borders during the Umayyad period were stopped by the Abbasids. Except for the annual and usual wars with Byzantium in Anatolia, there were no great expeditions from then on, including the Turkic countries, of course. The end of warfare meant the end of mutual enmity and doubts. Consequently, relations between the Turks and Arabs acquired a more moderate atmosphere from 750 on. It was the first time that there was born the necessary occasions for a general interaction between them.

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Even though cooperation during the Abbasid revolution was an important stage in ameliorating the Turko-Arabic relations, it was not certain whether the cooperation would continue or whether friendship with a small group of Turks among the Mawali would encompass the common population of the Turks. Would the Turks living in independent tribal formations throughout the vast steppe, mainly the nearby Türgish, be included in the new order established by the Abbasids? At that moment, positive developments would lead the two peoples to get closer in a massive sense, and negative cases would only resurrect the old enmities and conflicts. An event in those days determined the course of history. It was the Talas battle between the Arabs and Chinese (751). The Türgish tribal union or state was not successful in preventing the advance of the Arabs in Transoxiana and Western Turkestan during the Umayyad period. Therefore, the ikhshid (king) of Farghana, the yabghu of Tokharistan and the rulers of Bukhara and Samarkand applied for help from the Chinese. China was under the T’ang dynasty in those days. The emperor Hsüan-tsung charged General Kao Hsien-chih, the governor of Kucha with that task. The general seized the city of Tokmak in today’s Kyrgyzstan in 748, which was based at a strategic point controlling the way to Western Turkestan. He executed the ruler of Tashkent for some reasons, and his son called for the help of other Turks in order to stop the Chinese advance and to take revenge for his father. Karluks and some other Turkic groups living around the Issyk Lake replied to him positively. There was, however, no unity among the Turkic chiefs, and it was not possible for the recruited forces to challenge the Chinese army. For that reason, they contacted the Abbasid authorities who were making new administrative regulations in Khorasan and Transoxiana, and wanted help directly from Abû Muslim, the famous leader of the Abbasid revolution. Abû Muslim accepted this and sent an army under the command of Ziyad bin Salih to help the Central Asian Turks. The allied forces met the Chinese army near Atlah on the river Talas (Taraz). The battle in July 751 lasted for five days. On the last day, the Karluk detachments came from the north and attacked the Chinese from the back. The imperial T’ang forces were heavily crushed and very few troops escaped, including the general himself. “The withdrawal was in such turmoil that the general and his commanders had to use their sticks in order to find a path among the retreating troops. The Chinese captives taken to Samarkand by the victorious Arabs established the paper industry, which was in the monopoly of the Chinese until then; thus, transferred to the Islamic world, this industry caused a

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great development in the Islamic world. The catastrophe that Kao Hsien-­ chih faced was the sign of ending the Chinese power in the western lands.” The Chinese could no longer be influential in Transoxiana after the battle of Talas. The westward expansion policies of China were given up, on the one hand, and a new era started for the Turks and Arabs who were allied against a common cause, on the other hand. Talas was also the first great war and victory of the Abbasids. Even though some tiny disagreements and clashes existed forever, peace became dominant in a general sense in the relations between the Turks and Arabs. The Karluks, the determining factor of the Talas battle, founded their state in 766 in the north of the Tengri (Tien-shan) ranges. That state would later turn into the Karakhanid Empire (840–1212). The alliance in the Talas battle was an important case in the Turko-­ Arabic relations, but it was not the reason making the Turks accept Islam en masse. It was, however, an indicator of the fact that the Abbasid moderate approach to the Mawali would have its reflections on the other side, too. While the Turks asked for the help of China against the Arabs, now they did this vice versa. The Arabic pressures were the reason to get closer to China, and now the moderate Arabic policies turned their minds to the contrary. It can be said that the new order of the Abbasids was approved by the Central Asian Turks. A new period, called by some authors the “phase of service”, was starting.

Meeting: Communication and Interaction With the abandonment of the wrong policies of the Umayyads during the encounter period (665–750), which had caused only hatred towards them, the Turks started to establish reasonable relations with the Arabs and even to take their place in the new Abbasid order. During this process, which lasted approximately from the mid-eighth to the end of the ninth centuries, the Mawali of Turkic origin found a place in the state administration, especially in the military, and that was the most significant factor attracting them. Especially under the caliph Mu’tasim (833–842), they gained great influence and power in the Abbasid state. This is indeed a psycho-social case observed in religious conversion studies. The leading accelerating factor that makes individuals or peoples, who had contact with and learned about a religion, decide on conversion is their acceptance by the members of the foreign religion. This situation, emerging after contact with the members of that religion, might be one of

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the crucial reasons, and even the sufficient reason, for conversion. Therefore, it is quite expectable that the Turks’ adoption of the new Abbasid order would have had a positive result on the process. Although the fact that the Turks were accepted by the Abbasids and given important roles and places within the state mechanism accelerated the Islamisation of the Turks at both the individual and social levels, those constituted, indeed, only a part of the Turks, who were destined to be Mawali. Sometimes warlords and their companions joined the Arabs and sometimes people came individually and applied to the veteran units of the Abbasids, and even in most cases, those captivated and enslaved peoples were bought and taken to the governors and even to the caliphs directly. Some of them were sent to the caliphal centre as “tax revenue”. We need to clarify the legal position of those Turkic Mawali. As before stated, the word is indeed the plural form of the Arabic word for “slave”. It also designated “the liberated slave”. In that meaning, the Mawali was not an ordinary slave, but one who had been liberated, and was, however, keeping his friendship with his lord under an unwritten legal act. This act made the Mawali non-biological kin of the lord. Besides, some slaves were permitted or assigned to do some special tasks in accordance with their abilities. These me’zun (permitted) slaves freely conducted some affairs of their lords like commercial, administrative and military issues. It is certain that the bulk of the Turkic Mawali under the Abbasids were recruited from among the captives. There are even records for the earlier periods, which state that some Turks were captured in the days of Ubaydallah bin Ziyad (late seventh century) or Qutaibah (705–715) and were then charged to the Arabic armies. Mas‘udi says that those Turks in the caliphal special forces were bought from their lords, and Maqdisi gives the number of 100–200 thousand dinars for the Turkic Mawali. According to another record, the 2000 Oghuz captives sent by the Khorasan governor Abdallah b. Tahir to the caliph Mahdî were in place of the Khorasan tribute amounting to 600,000 dinars. According to the same sources, the Turkic Mawali in the army had a special status, that was different from the other Mawali. They were only responsible for military issues, and not for domestic service, and there were many high-level state officials and commanders among them. They were paid salaries in accordance with their duties. Therefore, we may describe a significant part of those Turkic Mawali as being “liberated”, and some of them as “permitted”. It is by no means true that such mighty commanders as Muhammad bin Sul, Tarkhun

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bin al-Zai, Tarkhun al-Jammâl, Afshin, Ashnas, and Khaqan Urtuj were ordinary slaves in the “service sector”. It is impossible to estimate the numbers and the ratio to the general population of those Turks, who represented almost all Turkic tribes and unions. There are no reliable sources and records for this. On the other hand, the exaggerated numbers in medieval sources are significant in terms of showing a qualification and general picture of the phenomenon. One of the quantitative accounts belongs to the days of Omar, the second caliph. According to a census conducted after the conquest of Iraq, the number of those who were to pay jizyah was 500,000 according to Abû Yusuf and 550,000 in Baladhuri’s book. A liberated slave with the nickname Abû al-­ Said in the time of the Umayyad caliph Omar bin Abd al-Aziz (717–720) said to the caliph that only in Khorasan, “20,000 Mawali fought without any salary, and men in the same number paid jizyah despite the fact that they became Muslims.” Under the latest Umayyad governor of Khorasan, Nasr bin Sayyar (738–748), jizyah was abolished for 30,000 Muslims in the region, and 80,000 further non-Muslims were charged to pay that tax. Even though various sources give different numbers, during the rule of Mu’tasim, when the number of Turks in the caliphal service reached its peak, there were 20 to 25,000 Turks in state service; with their families, the number reached about 70,000. It is clear, on the other hand, that the number of Turks living in Khorasan and Transoxiana was much higher. Looking at the numbers in the tenth century, when the Turks accepted Islam in large groups, those entering the Abbasid service and thought to have accepted Islam constitute only an insignificant part of the general population. According to some sources, 200,000 people from the Karluks, Yaghma, Chigil and Tukhsi, and 10,000 persons from the Oghuz (100,000  in some sources) converted to Islam in that century. Taking every household as containing five persons, the overall number exceeds one million, and this number does not include all of the Turks, or even the entire Oghuz or Karluk populations. Those data are open to debate in the sense of quantity, but they are sufficient to show that those entering the Abbasid service were only a tiny part of the Turkic population. This case exposes the fact that the “meeting phase” of the Turkic conversion process does not only include the developments around the Mawali Turks. If the Turkic folk living in the Sir Darya basin and beyond are added to this, the case can be better understood.

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The general mass of the Turks was scattered in a vast area and naturally had different political, administrative, geographical, social and economic structures. As individual and social religious conversion cases have sui generis specialities and followed different paths, the Turkic Islamisation also has some particular features. This situation makes it difficult to find out the places and positions of various Turkic groups within the process and to observe their developments. In spite of this, at least relying on the accounts, we can say that the bulk of the Turkic groups were included in the process. Although their degree of contact differed, most of them met or heard about Islam during the Umayyad invasions that extended to the boundaries of China and started to learn more about it from the mid-­ eighth century on, when the Abbasids came to power. The negative impression gained in the time of the Umayyads influenced not only those facing the Arabs, but also the population behind them, and the positive replacement of the image was a matter not only for those in contact with the Abbasid regime, but also for the general mass. The Turkic Mawali were included in the new order in that period, and the others recognised that order in a long-enduring process; at the end, they also became a part of that order. At least, the relations that were almost solely composed of wars and enmities left their places to social, cultural and economic relations, and this helped set up more moderate interactions. This new order, following the stage of an “unpleasant meeting”, influenced both the negative image of the Arab in the Turkic mind and thus the prejudice towards Islam, which they learned from the Umayyads. Islam was in the Umayyad swords at the beginning and in the person of the peaceful governors and allied forces later during the Abbasids. In the cities and their commercial and cultural centres, which were battlefields in the days of the Umayyads, they could now travel in peace and were witnessing religious conversations or missionary activities of Muslim traders or Sufis. There were Islamic institutions established in the main centres. The Turks knew more about Islam through those institutions and became more and more interested in it. Local dynasties emerging in Khorasan and Transoxiana in the ninth century under the auspices of the Abbasid rule also contributed much to the process. The Samanids (819–1005) were the most significant among them. Ruling over a wide area around Transoxiana, they institutionalised the Islamic civilisation in the ninth and tenth centuries. Their Islamisation policies shaped not only political and military activities, but also cultural and economic tendencies, and became influential to a degree not seen

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under the Umayyads or Abbasids. A great majority of the people living under their domination accepted Islam. They also established the frameworks of the institutional structures that would be a model for the successor states. The Samanids were the real builders of the Islamic civilisation that blossomed in the ninth and tenth centuries in Transoxiana and Khorasan. These were also the formative centuries of the Turkic version of Islamic civilisation.

The Factors Supporting, Facilitating and Accelerating Different individuals or societies may encounter negative factors, as well as positive ones, in any stage of the process. Some of them stem from the manners of the propagators or members of the new religion, and some factors are directly related to the political, psycho-social, cultural and economic circumstances of the individual or society. In the advanced years of the Abbasid order, the Turks mostly faced positive factors, which led to the acceleration of conversions. Not as individuals, but in groups, they converted to the new faith as time went on. They were doing it of their own free will; there was no pressure to accept Islam. It was because the sufficient or valid reasons for a conversion already existed, and the supporting and accelerating factors started to take hold. Those factors can be evaluated with the two theories of “deprivation” and “social network”, which are observed to be connected with each other in the studies on the psycho-social bases of the conversion phenomenon. According to the former, a certain individual or society thinks or feels that he or they are deprived of something psychological or physical. In this case, they are ready to receive the messages of an ideological group, religion or sect. At this moment the theory of the social network starts to work. All kinds of relations and communications between the group members and would-be members have a great influence on transmitting the belief. The individual or society feeling deprivation in any matter may believe that he or they will be rid of that situation thanks to the new belief taken from those with which they have social ties and familiarity, and the relations may evolve to a socialisation within the new religious community. On the other hand, individuals or societies that do not have any kind of feeling of deprivation may also get those feelings as a consequence of the social network after their contacts with a new religious group, that is, after

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comparing their old religion and their social, psychological and physical situation with the new religion and its members. Therefore, regardless of whether it emerged before or after the contact, that feeling may be qualified as the source of the accelerating factors of religious conversion. In any case, a social network is necessary to make a comparison between the old and the new and, furthermore, to prefer the new instead of the old. The accelerating influences of the social network and the feeling of deprivation are visible only when the individual or society finds the possibilities that may serve to get rid of that feeling. The new religion should promise to relieve economic, social, political, military, moral and spiritual problems or the defects that are felt to exist. Considering the individual and social differences within the whole process of the Turkic conversion to Islam, the case is too complicated and cannot be reduced to a single canal, event, factor or development, in terms of which accelerating factors became influential in which cases and developments. It is possible to explain the conversion for the Mawali with military, political and economic factors to a great degree, but for the general mass we can see almost all of the elements that are observed in religious conversions. From economic reasons and commercial relations to religious conviction, and to the activities of political, sectarian and mystic groups, from cohabitation to marital relations, and, of course, from the sincere adoption of the new faith after much consideration to the expectancies of benefits from the new religion, we can speak of countless reasons. No single reason or factor was influential for the entire subject population, and doubtless a certain individual or group faced more than one factor. Islam Becomes the Dominant Religion As stated above, the new Abbasid order influenced the Turkic view of Islam that was previously negative under the Umayyads. This was related to the change of patterns in relations. The most significant development in this term was that the border cities turned from battlefields into the spaces of peaceful interaction and even cohabitation. Muslims were dominant in those cities not only politically and militarily, but also in commercial, social and cultural areas. Muslim propagators were everywhere together with traders, and religious buildings were being built almost in all quarters. Thus, firstly in Khorasan and then in Transoxiana and its surroundings, Islam became the primary belief of the local people. The

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“others” in and around them had to interact with Islam in a way, which in most cases resulted in their conversion to Islam. The reason for this increase was not any conflict or pressure, but environmental factors emerging after Islam became the dominant belief. As a part of the new order, the Turks would naturally be interested in this religion. The interaction between the Turks and Muslims motivated environmental factors that were the supporting elements within the psycho-social development of the religious conversion process. On the other hand, it was certain that the dominant position of Islam functioned as social pressure over the Turks, because they were now living in and around a society designed in accordance with the Islamic lifestyle. Integration with the new order also increased their interest in Islam. Their interaction with this religion turned in the course of time into a kind of affiliation sentiment and when that sentiment became strong enough, it turned into a religious identity. Economic Factors One of the supporting or accelerating factors in the Turkic conversion process was surely economic. This can be classified as “economic deprivation” that leads the individual to change his/her belief, after crucial or sufficient reasons have appeared. This was because the warfare during the Umayyads caused economic difficulties for the people in the region. The taxes imposed on the non-Muslim habitants and the Arabs taking control of economic sources through agriculture and trade had shaken the native population’s economic life. This situation led some Umayyad high officials to some policies that can be described as presenting some economic opportunities to the natives. For instance, Qutaibah paid a fee to those coming for the Friday prayer (Jum‘a) and recruited indigenous soldiers by giving them a share of the booty. The caliph Omar bin Abd al-Aziz abolished the tribute taken from the region. These acts were surely influential over the local people. But the number of people accepting Islam under the Umayyads thanks to those rarely practised improvements was very few, since those policies were exceptional and short-lived, and the Turkic mass especially was not interested in them to a visible degree. This situation of economic deprivation started to change under the Abbasid order. The Abbasid authorities started with the taxation issue, which was at the centre of the Umayyad Mawali politics. The latter were anxious to decrease the revenues after the people accepted

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Islam and thus were not very willing to spread Islam. They even continued taking jizyah from those becoming Muslim. Some governors tried to change that practice but were not successful in the long run. The Abbasids’ abolishment of the jizyah taken from the Mawali was indeed a significant change. The economic relief was one of the factors lessening the local resistance to Islam. In other words, the Abbasids launched a supporting and accelerating factor that could lead the local people to accept Islam by removing the “economic deprivation” caused by the tributes. As a matter of fact, many people, Turks and other nationalities, accepted Islam in order to get rid of paying the jizyah, regardless of whether they had an interest in Islam. Thus, their economic burden was decreased by becoming de facto a Muslim subject of the Abbasids. Another practice of the Abbasids to remove the “economic deprivation” of those who were in contact with Islam was to charge the local people, mostly the Mawali, in the state cadre. The Abbasids indeed had their own political, administrative and military purposes, but as a result there was a source of revenue both for the Mawali and non-Muslim subjects. They were given salaries or “fiefs”. In this way, Turkic chiefs included in the system together with their men gained higher positions in a short time, and altogether they had a much improved economic life. Other Turkic magnates and their folks observed this case and were motivated to do the same. Even the salaries of the lowest state officials were enough in the regional conditions to provide for them at a good economic level. Besides the permanent jobs, some people were taken into the service in temporary conditions in accordance with the needs, mostly as mercenaries, and sometimes volunteers. The latter took a share of the booty, while the mercenaries were paid for their services. This also led them to integrate psychologically with the dominant religion and became an accelerating factor orienting the regional people towards Islam. Among those entering the Abbasid service permanently or temporarily there were both sedentary and nomadic peoples. The latter were more sceptical of Islam. We can say that the share of booty was a good reason for them to get closer to the Muslims, and not to Islam, in the earlier stages. Predation was an economic source for the nomads, and it was associated with the Muslim ghaza. The nomadic economy relied mainly, if not solely, on the herds, and the most important task of the nomadic people was to find good and sufficient pastures. When they failed to find them, or when a drought or pandemic disease hit the herds, they faced a vital

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problem. In order to escape famine, they organised predatory expeditions to the neighbouring tribes, but especially to the sedentary areas where food sources were better. For the nomadic life, it was not a guilty or moral defect. This manner in the Turkic steppes was also valid among the pre-Islamic Arabs. Islam introduced some regulations on predatory activities, and therefore the notions of ghaza and jihad appeared. Islamic conquests were to bear those aims. The allocation of booty was also regulated in a justified way. But this theoretical framework was not carried out in all cases. Even though Islam ordered that no injustice and cruelty should occur in warfare, not all Muslims obeyed this rule. Thus, the content of military activities gained the tone of predatory expeditions aiming only at taking booty, despite nominally being called jihad. The military operations conducted in Khorasan, Transoxiana and the Turkic lands beyond, which were usually called conquests by the actors, but were indeed for booty, provided the Arabs with a huge economic source, and it was likely the principal reason of those long-lasting policies. Regardless of the way it was obtained, one-­ fifth of the booty was taken by the state and the rest was shared between the warriors attending. The targeted lands were shocked not only politically and militarily, but also economically. The loss of souls and sources coincided. The booty was attractive not only for the Arabs, but also for the local people who found a way to enter the system. Those joining the Muslim forces or accepting Islam were able to save their properties and to make additional profits through the predatory operations, which were conducted under the name of ghaza. This was surely not the only reason for the Turkic Islamisation, as suggested by some scholars, and also not a valid factor for the whole process and for the entire Turkic population. It can be evaluated as a reflex of the Turkic masses, who could not organise themselves against the Arabs and which, thus, fell into great difficulties. The Türgish qagan Su-lu, who did not experience such a feeling of deprivation, did not have that reflex before the envoys of the caliph Hisham, while the people of Bukhara, who were defeated by the military and political structure established by Qutaibah, preferred to participate in his army. As seen, economic factors are among the supporting, facilitating or accelerating reasons in the Turkic conversion process. But this reason should not be generalised and extended to all Turkic peoples. On the other hand, disregarding all economic factors is also not an appropriate approach. Those reasons were only part of the crucial factors of this very

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complicated conversion process, and they do not deserve too much significance. Commercial Relations Commercial relations are one of the most underlined factors in the Turkic Islamisation process. The Turkic world spread in large areas and then had a wide and efficient commercial network, which comprehended and connected many other peoples near and far. Those commercial activities also functioned as a social and cultural network. In an age when facilities of interaction between various peoples, cultures and religions were very restricted compared to our time, those commercial activities provided a very significant means of communication and interaction in all senses. The main role in this process surely belonged to the traders. Travelling along trans-Eurasian routes and combining them with the Middle East, those traders also carried their cultures wherever they went. Cultural interaction was paramount, especially in important trade centres where long-enduring bazaars and fairs attracted many traders and clients. The traders exhibited not only their goods but also their cultural identities, for which there were also some interested people. Commercial relations between the Turks and Arabs go back to pre-­ Islamic days. With the expansion of the Islamic empire, Muslims took control of a great part of the Silk Road and some other commercial lines. Thus, the lands beyond the borders of Islam were integrated with the countries under caliphal rule through commercial lines. In this process, Muslim traders travelling in Turkic countries were influential in conveying the message of Islam to the Turks, and Turkic traders coming to Muslim lands were learning about it from direct sources. For instance, as seen in the hagiography of Satuk Buğra Khan, the first Karakhanid ruler accepting Islam, the Samanid ruler Abû Nasr Mansur decided to be a trader in order to spread Islam among non-Muslims. The most noteworthy group among those people who became Muslim after commercial activities in Muslim lands were the Sogdians of the Bukhara and Samarkand regions. For example, there was a trader called Arzakyan from Bukhara, which was an important commercial centre on the Silk Road. He used to send caravans everywhere in the known world. According to a narration, he met the fourth caliph Ali in Basra when he was there on a “business journey” and accepted Islam after listening to him.

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The most intensive trade between the Islamic and Turkic regions was in Transoxiana. Muslim traders were active there in the Umayyad time, too, but the negative image created by the latter restricted the influence of those traders in spreading Islam. After the Abbasid pax became dominant in the Transoxiana cities, the influence of Muslim traders over the local people increased. They established commercial colonies in such important centres as Balkh, Marv, Bukhara, Samarkand and Kashgar, because they attributed great importance to the trade with China and India. Naturally, the Turkic countries that were between them were included in that commercial network. Baykend/Paikent, Bukhara and Samarkand were the most important Transoxiana cities, which became entrepôts of the goods coming from China and India. There were also many traders among the native East Iranian habitants of those cities, and their relations with the Muslim traders increased on that ground and even created a kind of company. This widespread commercial network was also the source of an intensive socio-cultural and religious interaction through the countries included in it. That network also encompassed the nomadic Turks living beyond the caliphal borders. They always needed the products of the sedentary regions and mainly offered products of their animal husbandry in exchange. This brought the nomads, who normally lived in distant territories and who did not have direct contact with the Muslims, to encounter the latter and the civilisational dimensions of Islam in the settled regions, and on the other hand, attracted Muslim traders to the steppes of Central Asia. This encounter was surely not as influential as those between sedentary countries but provided the Turks with some facilities, in any case, to learn about the new religion. Outside Central Asia, the most important Turkic countries where trade became so very significant were Khazaria and Volga Bulgaria. The Khazars and Bulgars were themselves “commercial peoples” and encountered Islam through very intensive economic relations. The Bulgars especially had very restricted political and military relations with the Islamic state, but the trade lines between them and Samanid Transoxiana became the main determinant factor in their conversion to Islam at the beginning of the tenth century. Numerous Muslim coins found in the once Volga Bulgar lands are the best proof of this case. The country was almost full of Samanid coins in the tenth century. Written sources also underline the role of Muslim traders in the Bulgar conversion to Islam. The same was also crucial for the Khazars. After the bloody wars between them and Muslims

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ended, commercial relations replaced the old enmity and Islam started to spread in Khazaria. Muslim trade colonies emerging in various Turkic lands were also influential in familiarising the Turks with this new religion. Those colonies were used as a base by traders and also by propagators. Common investitures were not rare between the Turks and Muslims. The increasing commercial potential of Eurasia then led the Muslim traders to make more and more joint investment with the Turks even in distant countries. Those companies were initially only for commercial purposes, but also provided opportunities for the people to learn about each other in mutual confidence, and it brought about social, cultural and religious interaction. Then, those travelling for religious purposes together with caravans were seen everywhere. Religious Conviction One of the ways for the Turks to learn about and to convert to Islam was the propagation activities by the men of religion around Islamic institutions founded in the newly conquered lands. Invitation letters of Muslim statesmen to local rulers and magnates were also of this kind. Those activities that can be grouped under the title “religious conviction” were indeed the essential component of the conquests. But the Umayyad policies were not to conquer lands in a real sense, and thus, they did not include propagation activities at a normal level. For instance, Bukhara was taken in 674 by Ubaydallah bin Ziyad, but the first mosque was built by Qutaibah in 712, or 38 years later. The latter was the first to start working in order to teach the local people about Islam. His methods are open to debate but are very significant in displaying the fact that the Umayyads paid very little attention to the propagation of the religion. Mosques founded by Qutaibah did not have such influence, of course, to change the course of the process, but were visibly influential in any case to attract the local people to Islam. That influence had increased by that time. Those mosques started to function as the centres of information about Islam. Ribats were little military settlements established just near the towns. Not only troops were stationed there, but later Muslim traders and propagators also started to settle and live in those urban formations, which gained great importance in spreading the religion in the region.

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It is not usually expectable that religious missionary activities conducted through those institutions were not efficient under the Umayyad warfare. Indeed, as already mentioned, the Umayyad rulers had, in general, no intention of gaining local people in the name of Islam. There were some exceptional Umayyad statesmen. For instance, the scholars in the army of Qutaibah like Muhammad b. Wasi, Qadi Yahya b. Yamur and Ḍ aḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim continued their propagation activities along with military expeditions. The caliph Omar bin ‘Abd al-Aziz stopped the military operations in Central Asia, made some taxation regulations, and sent some wise and informed men to the region to teach about Islam. Ḍ aḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim is said to have taught the Koran to 3700 children, 700 of which were girls, in such places as Marv, Bukhara and Samarkand. The governor Ashras b. Abdallah assigned some scholars like Abû Saida to invite the local rulers and people to Islam. But his policies were soon abandoned. There were always some people striving to spread the “state religion”, but their influence was very restricted. Umayyad caliphs and their governors of Khorasan sent envoys and letters of invitation to Islam to the local rulers of Central Asia, and these can be considered as conviction efforts. The first to do this was Omar bin ‘Abd al-Aziz. According to the sources, some of those rulers accepted Islam on that occasion. Besides, the caliph Hisham and some Khorasan governors also sent similar letters. However, their content was about accepting the Umayyad rule, rather than an invitation to Islam. In the Umayyad period, when mutual fear and distrust as well as warfare were prevalent, those efforts of religious conviction and propagation did not reach the masses in Central Asia. Abbasid authorities also sent envoys and letters, and in accordance with the changing socio-political climate and thanks to the activities of the men of religion in the region by supporting those official acts, the Abbasids were more successful in attracting people to Islam. And under the Samanids, those activities reached their peak. Among the propagators working in the Turkic lands, not only those coming from distant Muslim countries, but also those with Turkic origins or those who grew up in Central Asia were active. There are famous and historical personalities among them, pointing to the level of establishment of Islam in the Turkic population.

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The Sufis Another accelerating factor of the process of Turkic Islamisation was the activities of the Sufis, who adopted the mystic interpretation of Islam. Tasawwuf (Islamic mysticism) was an approach accepting ethical purity and people’s direct refuge in God, in contrast to the dogmatic, formal and rationalist tendencies. In the eighth century, when the Muslim world fell into constant and severe internal strife in political, religious, philosophical and legal issues, Tasawwuf emerged as a reaction to those separative developments. The earliest Sufis, namely those adopting the Tasawwuf way, preferred a hermitage by rejecting worldly boons as an individual reaction, but their way was later institutionalised as a systematic interpretation of Islam. Tasawwuf appeared in Iraq and Syria in the mid-eighth century and spread in Khorasan and other regions within a short time, including the newly conquered places. The Sufi dervishes, who acted among the Turks without expecting any benefit and without directives from any authority, seem to have been welcomed by the people and played a significant role in the conversion process. They appeared among the Turks from the eighth century on and increased their activities in the course of time. To one of them, Sufyan Servi, is attributed the sentence “Reciting azan (call for prayer) in Turkistan is better than performing prayer in Mecca.” They rejected sectarian tendencies and offered people an Islamic understanding centred on love and faith. Those Sufi dervishes were mostly in Herat, Nishabur and Marv, but later they spread in the Transoxiana settlements. The most famous ones were Ishak Baba, Ibrahim Edhem (d. 778?), Abdallah b. Mubarek (d. 797), Shakik Balkhi (d. 810) and Hallaj Mansur (d. 922). Ribats, previously established for military purposes, also functioned as the bases of those dervishes. The Islamisation process of the Turks coincided with the appearance of famous Sufis of Turkic origins, besides those coming from other territories. Among others, Muhammad Mashuk Tûsî and Amir Ali Ubu were Turks. The Sufis were known under the names of baba and ata (“father”) among the nomads. They were indeed inheritors of the Old Turkic socio-­ religious traditions held by the qams and bakshys (shamans), with their strange dresses, lunatic lives and popularly narrated miracles, but they were now speaking about Islam in the language of the commons, to which access was difficult for the educated men of religion. The complicated details of the philosophy did not matter for the Sufis; they knew how to

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address the ordinary people. Therefore, the establishment of Islam among the common people was their role to a great degree. Moreover, they thought and spoke in Turkic. As for the twelfth century, Turkic Sufis were everywhere in the Turkic world and well institutionalised, as above said. The most important personality among them was Khodja Ahmad Yasavi, whose influence reached as far as Anatolia and even the Balkans through the disciples he sent. His tomb is now in South Kazakhstan. The cultural environment in which he directly acted was Transoxiana and its surroundings, where the great centres such as Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent were situated, and where the most famous scholars of the Medieval Islamic world lived. Yasavi was a later product of that level of civilisation, whose world view he represented and how he addressed the people. There were no Persian men of literature around him, only Turks; therefore, his fame and style prevented Persianisation from spreading and also contributed to the Turkification process. He did not exclude Old Turkic traditions that did not clash with Islam. He was the popular guide of his time in a wide region stretching from the Altay Mountains to the Mediterranean coasts, and his book Divan Hikmat (“The Collection of Wisdoms”) was one of the most read in those days. Consequently, Sufi dervishes had an important role in the conversion to and establishment of Islam among the Turks. Theirs was a civil movement and well respected by the masses. Now Islamised Turkic states also continued that respect by supporting the Sufis, which increased their power and popularity. Their institutionalisation started to solidify with the establishment of monastery-like buildings (tekke, dergâh) for them. They extended their activities to non-Muslim peoples, especially in the newly conquered areas, and also conveyed Islam to non-Turkic peoples in the course of time. Political and Religious Factions There were some individuals or groups keen on religious issues, who did not accept the official policies and views of the Umayyads and Abbasids, and had to flee to remote places, primarily Khorasan and Transoxiana. They continued their activities in those regions and had a role in introducing Islam to the Turks and other Central Asian peoples. They contributed to the making of Turkic Islam, which was then entirely Sunni; however, it contained as great a love for the family of the Prophet as the Shi‘i. Later

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Shi‘i tendencies arose among the Turks in Iran, Azerbaijan and Anatolia, but Central Asia remained as it was. Conformity and Compatibility Despite several complicating and retarding factors, it can be said that supporting and accelerating factors prevailed in the course of time and the Turks entered a period of sound communication and interaction with the new religion of Islam, and a long period of cohabitation with Muslims made Islam an alternative religion in the eyes of the Turks. Now the Turks started to learn about the belief system and prayers of the Muslims and became a political, social and economic component of the Islamic administration that had firmly established itself in the region of Central Asia. In this stage, it is the conformity and compatibility of the new religion to the lifestyle of the subject society that are at question. This was surely not a reason for conversion but was one of the facilitating factors. We call the popular or “national” belief system among the Old Turks the Tengri belief, but there were various Turkic peoples with various faiths. Those preferring such religions as Buddhism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Judaism were the Turks living in remote areas away from the main Turkic mass and usually settled peoples. The Tengri belief kept its popularity among the nomadic Turks in the wide steppe region of Central Asia. The traditional Turkic religion had a simple philosophy and was integrated with the lifestyle and culture of the nomadic Turks. Those accepting “foreign” religions usually adapted them to their ways, rather than adapting themselves to the religion. That is, the new religion was superficial to a great degree in their lives and was therefore easily abandoned when they encountered another religion. Those who did not abandon it were assimilated in the new cultural milieu presented by that religion. It was for this reason that those religions were not deeply influential among the Turks in the long run. When the Turks started to learn about and accept Islam in the Abbasid period, they realised that some features of this religion were compatible with the traditional Turkic religion. According to Michael the Syrian, a Christian author of the twelfth century, for instance, the reason was “the Turks believed in one God as did the Arabs”. The belief in an afterlife, eternity of the spirit, paradise and hell, sacrifice and the notion of jihad of the Muslims were not strange to the Old Turks. Besides, some social norms and ethical rules of the Turks were also similar to those of Islam.

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For instance, the acts of adultery, unjust homicide, robbery and homosexuality, which Ibn Fadlan in the beginning of the tenth century observed as great crimes necessitating a severe punishment among the then non-­ Muslim Turks, were also forbidden in Islam. This case should have had a facilitating influence on the Turks’ intimacy of Islam. Furthermore, compared to the other religions, which some Turkic groups encountered and accepted long before the tenth century, tight ties of the general Turkic mass with Islam can be attributed to that compatibility. However, the similarity of some of the postulates in the Old Turkic religion with Islam does not mean that they were the same, and various Turkic peoples in various regions did not have the same conformity and similarity with Islam. There were also great differences between the two religions. Thus, it is not possible to claim that those similarities led the Turks to accept Islam in a short time. So, what was the basic reason that oriented the Turks of Central Asia to Islam rather than the other religions? A probable answer to this question lies in the fact that the traditional Turkic style found more space in Islam than it had in the other religions, besides the mentioned political, military, social and economic factors. The unpleasant first meeting prevented people for a long time from realising that compatibility of the two world views. This compatibility, which appeared in the ways of thought and life and not so much in belief, was shaded by the Umayyad policies, which disturbed the nearby Turks. Yaqut al-Hamawî relates an embassy of the caliph Hisham bin ‘Abd al-Malik (724–743) to the Türgish qagan Su-lu. The caliphal letter and the envoy could not influence Su-lu in a positive way. After listening to the envoy, the qagan showed his army and asked: “There are no physicians, shoemakers or tailors among them. Now, if they accept Islam and start to live accordingly, how can they make their livings?” Conversion to Islam would not cause economic difficulties, of course. Perhaps the qagan produced a pretext for his unwillingness, but it is significant that he refers to the incompatibility of the Turkic lifestyle with Islam, which displays that he had some concerns on that matter. The emergence of a new administrative approach encompassing different peoples and cultures and providing a social, cultural and economic relaxation under the Abbasids ended that case. The Shu‘ubiyyah movement was clearly influential in this process. They eliminated to a great degree the notion of representation of Islam only by the Arabs, thus the latter’s “otherisation” attitudes, and their political thoughts shaped the basis of the Abbasid governance, presenting Islam in a universal way.

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During this process, it seems, the barriers in the Turkic mind separating the Islamic and Turkic world views and lifestyles were abolished. The Turks experienced those changes especially during their service in the Abbasid state mechanism and during their social and economic interaction in the steppe borderlands and started to be included in the Islamic world in this or that way. The Turkic way, on the other hand, was kept in ̇ social life, giving birth to the notion of “Turkic Islam”. As Ihsan Fazlıoğlu has put forward, while the Turks were being Islamised, Islam was Turkified. The Turkic commentary of Islam was born in that course. Islamic scholars of Turkic origin or those living in Turkic countries between the eighth and twelfth centuries blended the Turkic view with Islam and the gaps were removed. The Turkic interpretation, whose philosophical façade was constructed mainly by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (d. 1037) and Al-Farabî (d. 950), the religious issues by Abû Hanifa (d. 767) and Maturidi (d. 944), and the mystic dimensions by Khodja Ahmad Yasavi, helped the newly Muslim Turks to internalise Islam and stimulated the interest of the then non-­ Muslim Turks in this religion. After passing the conformity and compatibility exams in the Turkic mind, Islam became the only alternative religion. This even gave rise to the process of conversion to Islam, and near and far Turkic groups started to enter the new religion in their masses.

Adoption and Acceptance The Turkic conversion process that started slowly in the mid-seventh century and gained speed in the tenth and eleventh centuries continued in the later ages, too. This process has almost all kinds of peculiarities of religious conversion in both the individual and social sense: positive or negative interactions, factors of retardation or acceleration, and countless historical events and developments in the triangle of the individual, society and cultural environment. In this stage of adoption of the new faith and joining its members, the Turks learned about the prayers, belief systems and lifestyles of the Muslims, mostly along with cohabitation or intimacy, and started to feel a belonging to the Islamic world. Belonging to a group would mean accepting their faith and, thus, their religious identity. This process of conversion that lasted about four centuries started with the wars and did not continue forever in enmity. Unfriendly relations later turned to cooperation and conformity, which resulted in a broad network of interaction. While the Turkic mass was learning about Islam, the case of those entering the Abbasid service was a source of positive impression.

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These trust-based circumstances provided a natural course to the process. Increasing interactions always meant increasing numbers of conversions. The new order influenced almost all peoples of Central Asia. Nearly the whole population of Khorasan and Transoxiana accepted Islam in the ninth and tenth centuries. This wave of Islamisation went beyond the Sir Darya under the Samanids and reached the Turkic countries in the steppe. In its early periods, the Islamisation of the Turks was mostly a matter of the settled population; however, soon it also included the nomadic hordes. The bulk of the Turkic mass lived a nomadic way of life. Islamic sources of the tenth century have accounts especially of those nomads between the Sir Darya River and Issyk Lake. Besides the traders and the men of religion accompanying them, the allure of enrichment of the Transoxiana cities after Islamisation should also have influenced the nomadic folk. Muslim elements from Transoxiana continued their jihad and ghazâ activities, reaching inland of Central Asia. The Samanids campaigned as far as the cities of Taraz and Isfijab (Sayram) and were based in the borderlands. There were only 1700 ribats in Isfijab and 1000 in Paikent, according to an account. The total number of ribats in Transoxiana was about 10,000. This number contains some exaggeration but gives an idea about the density of jihad activities. The Muslim geographers of the tenth century talk about the towns in Turkic lands, such as Taraz, Farab, Chigil, Barskhan, Bahlu, Otlûh, Jamûkat, Shelji, Kulan, Mirki, Balasagun, Ordu, Harân, Tunkent, Barkan, Chalchi, Atlih, Jand and Savran as those with a Muslim ruler or people. There are no detailed accounts in the sources about when, where and how a certain Turkic nomadic group accepted Islam, but we have some records. For example, according to Ibn al-Athir, a horde of 200,000 tents of the Turks became Muslim in 960, and they were likely those in the Karakhanid realm like the Karluks, Yaghma, Chigil and Tukhsi. Another development in the tenth century indicating the speed of Turkic Islamisation was the appearance of Muslim Turkic states. The first one was Volga Bulgaria (in the first two decades of the tenth century), which was situated distant from the Muslim lands. According to a narration, its ruler Almiš/Almuš accepted Islam on the occasion of the healing of his sick daughter by a Muslim physician. It is doubtless that he also counted on caliphal support against their enemies, the Khazars, who had converted to Judaism several generations ago. In any case, it was a significant historical event, because Almiš was the first independent (or semi-­ dependent, from Khazaria) Turkic ruler to accept Islam. In those years, a

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significant Muslim population appeared not only in the Volga-Kama region, but also to the south, in Khazaria. In Central Asia, the friendship between the Samanid prince Abû Nasr Mansur and the Karakhanid prince Satuk b. Bazir resulted in the conversion of the latter to Islam, and thus the mighty Karakhanid Empire officially became a Muslim state, after Satuk seized the throne. He had gone to Artuch near Kashgar in Eastern Turkestan to collect the taxes in the name of the ruler, his uncle Arslan II. There he met with the young Samanid prince, who was in exile, as well as the Muslims in the town, who had gathered around the mosque built by Abû Nasr. There he asked and learned about Islam. After that, according to the legend, somebody descending from heaven told him in his dream to become Muslim. He accepted Islam in the morning on that account and adopted the Arabic name ‘Abd al-Karim (c. 940). Then he started conflict with his non-­ Muslim uncle, with the support of some dynastic members and the Muslims of Farghana. By prevailing upon the ruler uncle, he became the sole khan of the country, and it thus emerged as the first Muslim state in Turkestan. After converting to Islam, the Karakhanids started to struggle with the still non-Muslim Turks around them. Together with the Karakhanid borders, Islam also expanded in most of Central Asia. As a natural case, their political and military dominance preceded the religious dominance. The Islamisation of the subjected Turks was primarily the task of state officials, who mobilised men of religion for that purpose. Some of those voluntary missionaries were already there. The majority of the world-famous scholars of Medieval Central Asia lived during and under the Karakhanids. One of the most noteworthy religious activities in those days was the translation of the Koran into Turkic, as well as the appearance of the first Muslim Turkic books. This was also an indicator of the establishment of the Turkic interpretation of Islam. This understanding of Islam, which displayed itself in several areas of life, brought about further acceleration of the Islamisation process. This social process was supported by some political developments, such as the emergence of the Ghaznavid state in Afghanistan (963) and the rise of the Saljukids in Khwarazm and Khorasan in the succeeding decades. The Islamisation of Central Asia was a long process that even encompassed the Mongolic period (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). At the end of the Middle Ages, almost all Turks from the mid-Volga to the Altay ranges, including those living in the South Siberian belt, had already become Muslims. But the Muslim Turkic

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populations in today’s Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and a great part of Kazakhstan descend from those accepting Islam during the aforesaid process concentrated on the tenth century.

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CHAPTER 13

Islam in India: Acceleration Under the Ghaznavids (Tenth to Eleventh Centuries) M. Hanefi Palabıyık

Islam succeeded in keeping its dynamism after the death of Prophet Muhammad, and reached India, in the East, and Spain, in the West, within a century. This expansion consisted of both military invasions and conquests and civil efforts mainly by traders and some devotees. India is an interesting case, however, in terms of exhibiting both ways; peaceful means are essential in remote areas of this great sub-continent, and military striving is a reality of life in its border regions with Islam or Iran, which had also been conquered by the Arabs and had not yet decided in those days to fully convert to Islam. India indeed represented broader areas in classical geography than it does today, encompassing also what are today Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir, in which more than 500 million Muslims live today. The northwest Indian regions and Pakistan will be defined in this study with the

M. H. Palabıyık (*) Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_13

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historical term “Sind”, which mostly experienced the influences of the military expansion of Islam. Contrarily, Islam entered Southern India via peaceful means as a consequence of the participation of the Arabs in the Indian Ocean trade.

The Early Days of Islam on the Indian Subcontinent Early records about Muslim efforts in the region are very complicated. The names of Muslim governors or commanders sent to India and their chronologies are given in different ways by various sources. Thus, it is a challenging task to reconstruct a reliable political history, though there are qualified studies in this area, especially some dissertations written in Turkey in recent years. Dwellers in India had close contacts with the Arabs well before the rise of Islam. The subcontinent being a source of spices and precious stones and mines, as well as exotic plants and animals led it to become a centre of attraction for outsiders. Although there are records stating that Arab trade caravans used to go to India, commercial activities were mostly carried out via maritime routes. The coastal regions of India were eligible for profitable trade thanks to the abundance and cheapness of commercial goods. Thus, Arab traders had established headquarters in many coastal areas when Islam appeared. The most visited places were mainly Daybul near today’s Karachi and the ports of Tanna and Malabar (Kerala). Goods taken from beyond the Bengali Gulf, namely from China, Malaysia and Indonesia, were brought along the coasts to the Persian Gulf, Aden and the Oman shores. Those products were marketed from there to various countries, especially in the Mediterranean basin. Commercial activities helped the commencement of the social life as well. Several Indian words in Arabic, some of which were utilised in the Koran, and some narrations like the Prophet having knowledge about India and liking some Indian goods, and his wife Aisha putting on Indian dresses point to the degree of this interaction. It may even be claimed that the resemblance of the pagan religions that were widespread in the two countries in the pre-Islamic days helped this proximity. At least, religion was seemingly not an obstacle before commercial activities and thus, before social interaction. Early sources relate that some Indian peoples, like the Zuts, had settled in the Arabian Peninsula. Physicians from the Zut tribe were invited to provide a remedy for Aisha mentioned above. The fourth caliph, Ali,

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entrusted the state treasure to the Zuts during the Camel Battle, and his successor Mu‘awiyah, also the founder of the Umayyad Dynasty, settled them in Syria against Byzantium. It seems that many Arabian colonies on Indian shores and Indian colonies in Arabia had appeared as a consequence of long-term trade relations, and they all kept their old religions. Islam was massively established in Arabia during the last years of the Prophet. Arab traders, sailors from Hadramawt and others then started to convey their new faith to wherever they went. It is not impossible to expect that Islam attracted the interest of especially the lower strata of the Indian society at the very beginning with its social messages. The promises of equality and justice for all should have helped Islam find a place in those oversea lands. But the ruling class was also not outside the process, sometimes observing its own interests. The ruler of Calcutta, for instance, was one of the most influential protectors of Arabic trade and encouraged conversions to Islam in order to keep the Muslim traders on his own side and to recruit commercial benefits. It is even claimed that he ordered one person from each fisher family in his zone of sovereignty to adopt Islam. In this connection, such areas as Malabar (Kerala), the Sind shores and Sri Lanka, which were on the commercial routes of the Arabic traders, naturally witnessed the most intensive voluntary Islamisation in those days. Almost all harbour cities visited by Muslims started to have a Muslim community, which established mosques there, and then worked to propagate Islam in a more organised way. The populations of those regions are today dominantly Muslim. Some generations later, Persian traders joined the Arabs, and a considerable number of them settled in India, by marrying local women and thus integrating with the society there. Although it is claimed that the entrance of Islam to Malabar was two centuries later than the Hijrah (622, when the Prophet Muhammad migrated from Mecca to Madinah), the Moplahs, indigenous people of the region, accept it as the year 624. According to a narration, which cannot be proved in the historical sources, a group of Muslims then travelled to Sri Lanka in order to see the footprint of Adam. They first stopped at the Malabar city of Kodungallur (Cranganore) on their route. Chiraman (Perumal), the raja of the city, welcomed them. After long conversations, he decided to accept Islam and go to Mecca. The last raja from the Chira Dynasty that ruled over Malabar, Chiraman (Perumal) journeyed to the south coasts of Arabia, and then he went to Mecca and met with the Prophet. There he adopted the name “Taj al-Din” (Crown of the religion). Then he started the return voyage, but died of an illness in Shihr (a

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coastal region between Oman and Yemen) while in the company of Malik bin Dinar, a companion of the Prophet, and others. Before his death he wrote a letter containing his will to his inheritors in Malabar. Malik reached the capital city of Kodungallur and delivered the letter to the authorities. They welcomed Malik and his companions and gifted some terrains as he wished in the letter. The Muslims settled there and established a mosque. Malik stayed there, and his nephew Malik bin Habib started to travel to such towns as Quilon (Kollam), Hubaee, Murawee, Bangalore, Mangalore, Kanjercote, Zaraftan, Durmuftun, Fundreah and Shaleeat in order to spread Islam and established mosques in those places. Islam thus started to spread among the people. On the other hand, Muslim immigrants married local women and Muslim communities appeared like the Labbe, Napilla and Nevai in the south of India. Their descendants still live in those regions. The bulk and core of the indigenous Muslims of Malabar were of the lower classes of the society, facing the suppression of the Indian caste system. They took refuge in Islam in order to escape from that status. The efforts of the earliest Muslims going to the region were crucial in any case in the establishment of Islam in the south of India, which faced no Muslim military intervention, in contrast to the north of India. The propagation of Islam continued in the later generations, especially in the hands of Muslim religious men coming from various countries. Another narration tells of dispatching a delegate from Serendib (Ceylon, Sri Lanka) to Arabia to learn about the newly appearing Islam. However, when they arrived at Madinah, the Prophet was dead already and Omar was the (second) caliph. They took information about Islam from him. The envoy died on the return journey, and his aide reached the country to inform the folk about Islam. It is quite possible that these narrations going back to very early times are problematic and doubtful, but there is no room to doubt that pre-­ Islamic relations between the Indian coasts and Arabia continued after the emergence of Islam. The presence of Arabic loanwords used there from ancient times onwards is proof of this. Besides, travellers of the ninth century wrote that they saw Muslim communities in those regions, and there are two early Muslim tombs in Malabar—one in Irikkalur dated to H. 50 (670) and the other in Pantalayini set up in H. 166 (782). A copper plate found in Kollam (Quilon), a coastal town of Malabar, bears some Muslim names and the date H. 235 (849). These are proofs of the early presence of Islam on the southwest coasts of India.

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We have the same historical explanations for the island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) too. Early Muslim traders would have first visited India and then the island. There are the same narrations. The Sri Lanka people wanted to learn about Islam and sent an ambassador to Madinah, but he arrived only in the time of the second caliph Omar (634–644), who hosted him, told him about Islam and the Prophet and invited him into the religion. The envoy died on his return in Makran, but his servant succeeded in returning to Sri Lanka. He told all that had happened during the journey, and a person among the audience, who had been in Madinah in the days of the first caliph, Abû Bakr (632–634), approved his words and added more. It seems that Islam entered a small part of India in the first generations and held on there. First, it spread among the local people there, and then the Muslim mass spread its faith to the north and south regions, and even served to land in the Southeast Asian countries. There appeared a people called Moplah or Mappila through the marriages of the Muslim traders with the local women. They constituted the first Muslim population of India. The majority of the Moplahs belonged to the Hanafi sect of the Sunni way. The source of export of this kind of Islam was mostly Yemen. Shi‘ism, brought by the Persian traders, also spread in some settlements. The Moplahs used the Arabic alphabet, but made some changes to the letters. The same is true for their language, too: it was the Arabic of South Arabia, but faced influence from the local languages. Their mosques bear a clear influence of Hindu temple architecture.

The Period of the Khulafah Rashidun In the continental north, developments were much different. Islamic conquests started at such an early date as the time of the caliph Omar (634–644), but in this environment, the caliph refrained from giving consent to the Indian war and ordered the withdrawal of the army. After the collapse of the Sassanid Persia in the 640s before the Arabic armies and after the conquest of the easternmost Iranian provinces of Makran, Kerman and Sijistan, Muslim troops reached and seized Baluchistan and the Sind valley. Thus, India became open to an invasion. When Omar assigned Uthman bin Abi al-Âsî al-Thaqafî as the governor of Bahrain and Oman in 637, he sent some troops to Tanna Island; besides, he commissioned his brother Hakam to Barvas, and his other brother Mughirah bin Abi al-Âsî to the Daybul shores. The latter informed the caliph in a letter about the stubborn and overbearing character of the raja of Sind and asked

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permission for a military expedition. But the caliph did not consent to this and ordered him to withdraw from those inner regions. On the other front, the troops of Hakam, after taking on some reinforcements, continued advancing and reached the western banks of the Sind River in 644. The ruler of Makran had asked for the support of Rasil, the raja of Sind, against the Islamic troops. Their allied forces attacked the Islamic troops, but the latter were ready to meet them and won over the Indian forces. Rasil was taken captive by the Muslims and the entire valley of the Lower Sind was conquered by the Arabs. Hakam informed the caliph about the victory and asked what to do with the booty, especially the elephants. The caliph replied by ordering him not to go beyond Makran and the booty incomes would be shared among the Muslims, especially the participating soldiers. Muslim interest in India continued under the third caliph, Uthman (644–656), as well. Uthman appointed Abdallah bin Amr bin Kuraiz as the governor of Iraq and ordered him to gather information about the India borderlands. Abdallah sent Hakîm bin Jabala al-Abdî to the region and the latter went directly to the caliph, reporting that India was a place with meagre water and unproductive terrains, fruits of poor quality and merciless thieves. Thus, it is said, Uthman did not send anybody to make conquests in India. However, other sources inform us that military activities continued in those days and Rabî bin Ziyâd seized many places in India in 650, by both forceful and peaceful means. Abdallah bin Samûra took Zaranj, Rahj and Kash and provided stability in Tanna Island and those regions. As most of the local people abandoned the invaded places, he settled Arabs in the empty lands. He later conquered Bust and Zâbul in Afghanistan. There are two known expeditions under the fourth caliph, Ali (656–661), to the Sind region by Sâghir bin Zu’r in 659 and Hârith bin Murra al-Abdî in 660. They were both successful and victorious; besides much booty and captives, Muslim armies conquered Kikan (Kalat).

The Umayyad Period Mu‘awiyah bin Abî Sufyan (661–680), the first caliph and founder of the Umayyad Dynasty, sent Muhallab bin Abî Sufrâ in 665 to the Indian borderlands. He went to Bennah and Ahvar (Lahore) and waged a war there. Later, Abdallah bin Sawwar al-Abdî became commandant of the troops on the border, but was defeated in Kikan (Kalat) and lost his life in the battle

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(663). After him, Sinan bin Salama al-Huzalî was assigned to the task, and after severe fights, he established Arabic rule in Makran, now in southeast Iran. Râshid bin Amr al-Judaydî became the governor of the Indian marchland (Makran) in 672 and launched a campaign towards Kikan (Kalat). He seized Kûhbâye and advanced towards the mountainous Munzir and Bahraj, where his troops were ambushed by a great army of local mountaineers and the governor was killed in the battle. The same happened to his predecessor and successor, Sinan bin Salama, who was again appointed to the Makran governorship. He took many settlements by the Kikan (Kalat) boundaries under his control but was killed likewise in an ambush in Bûdhîh. Therefore, Abbad, son of the governor of Iraq Ziyad bin Abihî, marched from his abode in Sijistan to the Indian borderlands. He advanced as far as Kandahar in the east, crushed the local army encountering him and invaded the region. He was assigned as the governor of Kandahar, whose name was changed to Abbâdiyye in his name. After him, Munzir bin Jârud (681) continued military activities and won some battles in Bukan, Kikan (Kalat) and Kusdar, which had been conquered earlier but renounced the peace agreement. His successor, Ibn Harrî al-Bâhilî, continued military efforts to establish control over the seized lands. Saîd bin Aslam al-Kilâbî, who became the governor in 697, conquered the surroundings of Kandabil. He was killed the next year by the Khariji rebels under the leadership of the brothers Mu‘awiyah and Muhammad al-Alâfî, who took control of Makran for seven years. The caliphal authorities succeeded in getting rid of them only after the victory of the new governor Muhammad bin Harun al-Namrî over the sectarian rebels. After that, two succeeding governors tried in vain to seize Daybul, but Muhammad bin Qasim gathered a great army with central reinforcements and conquered the entire Sind in 711 for the first time. The region was annexed to the Umayyad Empire. There is an interesting story behind this conquest, carried out by an 18-year-old governor. The ruler of Sri Lanka had sent a ship with Muslim voyagers to the governor of Iraq. It was seized by pirates off the shores of Sind, and the women were made slaves. The famous governor of Iraq, Hajjaj, wanted the raja of Sind to punish those pirates, but the latter refused to do this on some pretexts. Thus, Hajjaj commissioned his young relative Muhammad bin Qasim to take an expedition to the raja. Muhammad succeeded in not only taking Daybul, where there was a great temple that was important for the Sind people’s spiritual life, but also in defeating the raja in a battle. After Daybul,

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Muhammad advanced as far as Sahban by seizing all of the towns on his road, and there the raja Dâhir encountered him with a great army. The Arabs severely crushed the Indian army and the raja was killed on the battlefield. Therefore, the army was scattered and the country became defenceless. Muhammad invaded the entire domain of the raja and established his rule over the land. Meanwhile, a great mass of the Buddhist population accepted Islam after the achievements of the young governor. If the cities surrendered without resistance, the people were left free in their beliefs and daily lives. Buddhist temples were not destroyed, but the Arabs founded mosques in all of the cities taken by either the military or voluntary way. Since the majority of Sind towns surrendered voluntarily after the heavy defeat of their army, people remained in their places in accordance with the promises of the Arabs. After Sind, Muhammad bin Qasim turned to Multan to the east of the Indus River and defeated their forces in a battle. Those escaping took refuge in their capital protected by walls. Muhammad cut off the water sources and the city had to be surrendered unconditionally. Those who were armed were killed and the goods and jewels gathered in the great temple were confiscated as booty, which was so great that the city of Multan was called Faraj bayt al-dhahab (the joy of the golden house). The governor of Iraq, Hajjaj, the protector of Muhammad, died just after the conquest of Multan (713). Muhammad learned about it on his way to the Rajasthan cities of Rûr, Baylaman (Bhinmal) and Surest, now in India proper, which he seized. He advanced towards Karaj. According to the sources, Jaysiyya, the son of the defeated Sind raja Dâhir, had fled to Kashmir before the Muslims, and Davhar, the ruler of Karaj, a relative of the fugitive Jaysiyya, followed him in the same way without encountering the Muslims. Another narration tells he had been killed. Thus, the leaderless people accepted all of the decisions of Muhammad in advance. He killed or captured those resisting, and took control of the city. It is noteworthy that the conquests of Muhammad coincide with those of Qutaibah, the likewise young governor of Khorasan in the neighbouring Transoxiana and of Tariq bin Ziyad in Spain. However, these young and successful governors/commanders became victims of internal policies. Muhammad and Qutaibah shared the same fate. Both were dismissed and then killed by the officials of the new caliph Suleiman (715–717). Sources claim that Muhammad had become a popular and beloved person in India; his death was harrowing to the local people, who wrote poems in his name and painted him in Karaj.

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After that, a period of incompetent and short-ruling governors followed, in the same way as in Central Asia. In the aftermath of the conquests of Muhammad, especially with the encouragement of the religious caliph Omar bin Abd al-Aziz (717–720), several Indian rulers and magnates, together with their folks, declared their will to accept Islam, and many of them did so. But in the following years, the Arabic governors could not control the situation. Most of the previous Indian rulers returned to their own soil, many of those converting renounced, and Muslims had to abandon Indian regions to a great extent. Later improvements did not change the situation, and the Islamic presence retreated roughly to the west of the Indus River. On the other hand, it is noteworthy to observe that Islam had been established in Sind in a firmer way.

The Abbasid Period The first years of the Abbasids, who brought down the Umayyads (661–750) from the caliphal throne, passed with internal strife aiming at controlling the realm and punishing the proponents of the former regime. Musa bin Ka’b al-Tamîmî succeeded in taking control of Sind in the name of the Abbasids in 752. Under his successors, Shi‘ism found a space to spread among the Sind Muslims. The Abbasid governors also had to deal with that problem. The governorship of Hisham bin Amr al-Taghlibî marked a new start from the year 769 onward. He conquered Multan again and sent troops to Kashmir. On the other hand, he carried out many administrative regulations to provide stability in the region and firmly established the caliphal rule. Sind became an attractive centre in the long term, and some Indian and Sind scholars were sent to the Abbasid court in Baghdad, especially in the time of the caliph Ma’mun (813–833). On the other hand, letters of invitation from the caliph Mahdî (775–785) reached several Indian rulers, many of whom accepted suzerainty of the caliph. Records claim that 15 rajas from Sind and India replied positively to the letter of invitation to Islam, but from the sources, it is not easy to differentiate between accepting Islam and accepting caliphal suzerainty. Later caliphs also continued their communication with Indian rulers, whose influence is seen mostly and clearly in cultural domains. Of the Indian scholars sent to Baghdad, some were given official posts and others were included in the translation commissions in Bayt al-Hikmah (a kind of academy of sciences founded by the Abbasid rulers) to translate Indian books into Arabic. Kalila and Dimna is the most famous of the translated pieces.

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However, internal strife among the Arabic tribes in Sind was a continuous source of trouble. This led to a great uprising of the Zuts in the region, which was suppressed through severe measures. Yemenî (south) and Nizârî (north) Arabic tribes that had settled in the region were constantly fighting each other, and the governors could not reconcile them. Under those circumstances, some military efforts to India proper went to waste. This period lasted to the year 800, when Dâwûd bin Yazîd bin Hâtim was assigned to the governorship of Sind. He provided security during his long-term management until 821. Indeed, a period of stability started with the Abbasid rule in terms of boundaries. Islamic/caliphal rule, as well as a considerable Arabic population, was firmly established in Sind, but the borders did not change to a noteworthy degree. Some commanders endeavoured to lead military enterprises, but cross-border operations were not significant inasmuch as dealing with local uprisings in Sind, especially of the Zuts. Several Indian rulers, on the other hand, continued to recognise the nominal sovereignty of the caliph and made sure of their reigns. It is not strange to observe that the Islamic authorities mostly contented themselves with political subordination in those times, and religious conversions were not on the agenda, although we hear of some rare voluntary conversions, such as that of the raja of Useyfân (Asîfân), located between Kabul, Kashmir and Multan. His people followed him. On the other hand, the ninth century marked the emergence of local dynasties everywhere in the caliphal realm and the collapse of central authority. The same was also true for Sind. Omar bin Abd al-Aziz al-­ Habbârî, whose ancestors came to Sind in 731, increased his power in time, and the caliph al-Mutawakkil (847–862) had to approve him as the ruler of Sind. In the course of time, it became de facto independent and the caliphal central rule remained nominal. The Habbârî dynasty ruled in Sind for about two centuries, until the coming of Mahmud of Ghazna in 1026. That we have no accounts or relics of architectural works after the conquests in the region should to some extent be due to the fact that Arabs did not like the climate there and founded very few settlements. Muslims can perform prayers anywhere that is suitable, and thus there is not much information about early mosques established in India. The mosque built by Muhammad bin Qasim in Neyrûn, Daybul, in 710 is known to be the first temple in Sind. Besides, he built mosques in Budhiya and Rûr, and the governor Hakam bin Avâna had a mosque built in 737 in the Arabic city

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of Mahfûza. His successor Amr bin Muhammad al-Thaqafi founded the city of Mansûra for the Arab immigrants, and built a mosque, which was extended by a later governor, Musa bin Ka‘b, in 756. Hisham bin Amr transformed the Buddhist temple in Kandahar into a mosque. Imran bin Musa al-Barmakî founded the city of Bayza as a military headquarters near Kikan (Kalat) in 835. The Sind region faced many rebellions mostly due to the fact that the governors were very often deposed after a change of caliph, and this instability encouraged the local people against the Arabs. People reacted on every occasion to the mismanagement of the governors. On the other hand, Sind became a place of refuge for those fleeing from the central caliphal authority, and they caused problems in the region. Islam entered the westernmost edge of India and was established through military ways and peaceful relations during the three and half centuries between the first Arabic visits and the Ghaznavid rule. Though it was not an easy and constant process, the local population in the conquered areas was to a great degree eventually converted to Islam. Colonisation of the region by other Muslims was another way of Islamisation of the region. Voluntary conversions through social relations, especially commercial ones, were common. The psycho-social and political issues, which we see among the main reasons for religious conversion, are also evident in the Indian conquests. The most important factor in this regard should be the discontent of the converted Hindus towards their religion, the first of which is the caste system. It can be said that the attraction created by the coming to their feet of a civilisation that may be perceived as different and superior to them was also effective in the Islamisation of Hindus. And this pattern did not change after the collapse of the Arabic might in Asia and the rise of Turkic polities, since North(west)ern India was geopolitically open to the movements stemming from Central Asia.

The Ghaznavid Period The Ghaznavid state is named after its capital city Ghazna, now in southern Afghanistan. A group of Turkic veterans under the command of Alp Tegin serving the Muslim Samanid Dynasty in Transoxiana left the Samanids and moved to and conquered the city of Ghazna (962). This heralded the emergence of a new state. Alp Tegin died in the following year and another outstanding Turkic commander, Sebük Tegin, a son-in-­ law of Alp Tegin, took control from the latter’s son. Until his death in

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997, Sebük Tegin seized a large territory encompassing what are today Afghanistan, parts of Iran and Uzbekistan and almost the entire west side of the Indus River in Pakistan. Their military was reinforced by Turkic elements joining from Central Asia. Thus, the state was Turkic in terms of the ruling strata and military, but almost non-Turkic in the civil population. The Ghaznavid state survived to the year 1187, and since the developments in Central Asia and Iran forced them to remain outside, the Ghazna rulers focused on southern, that is, Indian affairs. This is especially true for the reign of Sultan Mahmud (997–1031), who was not only the greatest ruler of the Ghaznavids but also the most famous king of his age in Asia. The Turko-Islamic states of the classical age were established and also survived on the principles of continuous conquests and sustainable expansion. They were different from non-Islamic or previous ones in that their expansionist trends and patterns were combined with the principle of i‘lâ kalimat Allah “exalting the name of God”. The Ghaznavids seem to have abundantly used or applied this principle in their military activities. It may not even be a mistake to define the Ghaznavids as a “state of ghazâ (holy war)”. We say this, of course, only based on the fact that they chose their way of expansion as the then non-Muslim India. A characteristic feature of the Medieval Islamisation was the tribal-level conversions. Sometimes, when the tribal chief accepted Islam, all of the tribesmen used to follow him. Under the long-term Ghaznavid political dominance, the region witnessed many collective Islamisation cases, especially of the Hindu population. Psycho-social and political factors that are observed among universal conversion patterns are also visible in the same way in the India case. Once again, we need to underline the reaction to the caste system as a stimulator for common people to accept Islam. Promises of Islam as a rising power and civilisation should also have helped to provide an attraction. It was not a rare case that Islamised peoples of India were striving to propagate their new religion to their non-Muslim countrymen.

The Religious Policies of the Ghaznavids The Ghaznavid Sultans were usually religious and well-educated, and this surely led them to endeavour to spread Islam in India. Sultan Mahmud, for instance, memorised the Koran in his childhood during the courses of Abû Nasr Hussainî, the Hanafi qadi (judge), and then he was educated by the father of the Qadi Abû Ali al-Siniyyah in the madrasa, where he learned

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Arabic and Persian. He also studied tafsîr (commentary of the Koran) and hadith (traditions of the Prophet). He was always in the company of educated men; thus, he followed in the way of Sunnah and struggled with heretical views such as that of the Bâtinî. Despite a great part of his life being spent on military expeditions, he used to visit esteemed religious men on every occasion and have conversations with them, by generously giving gifts. This lifestyle led him to work harder to spread Islam, mostly and naturally by military means, and in turn, he again spent the bulk of the booty on Islamic institutions. He had many mosques and madrasas built and also established many charity foundations. It is significant to observe that the Ghaznavid rulers, who were educated in the Sunnah way (belonging to the Hanafi/Maturidi school), were fond of spreading and protecting their sects, and they were relentless towards the non-Sunnah heretic movements. Utbî writes that he was chasing and prosecuting all foreign (non-Sunnah) ideas in the country in order to keep unity in the official Sunni view and to prevent others from deteriorating the religious structure of the empire. This was simply his religious policy: spreading Islam among the Muslims and preventing sectarianism among the Muslims. As for the year 1027, there were four madrasas established in the names of Bayhaqiyah, Saîdiyah, Abû Saîd al-Astarâbâdî and Abû Ishâk al-Isfarâinî to commence the Sunni view in the country. Besides the positive sciences, there were also religious, ethical and social courses, which were thought to be in accordance with the Sunnah way, which was divided into four sects (Hanafi, Shafi, Maliki and Hanbali). Ghaznavid educated men were teaching in all of them. There were also civil madrasas established by religious scholars in Bayhaq, near Nishabur, in which education went on in the same way. When Sultan Mahmud learned that Abû al-Hasan Ali b. Muhammed el-Hannânî was building a madrasa for the heretic Karrâmî group, he called him to the capital of Ghazna and rebuked him in 1023. Hannânî escaped from his rage thanks to the intervention of some esteemed men. This is a significant example in terms of stressing the very religious sensitivity of the Ghaznavids. Furthermore, Utbî defines the expedition of the Muslim Ghur people as “an expedition into a city governed by depravity and infidelity”. The Egyptian Fatimid caliph sent an envoy called Tâhertî to Sultan Mahmud the Ghaznavid in 1012, indeed to invite him to his own sect (of the Shi‘ah). He was working in the lands of the Sultan for his own religious purposes but was detained and then sentenced with the influence of

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Abû Bakr Muhammad, the chief of the Karrâmî fraction, which was then widespread in Khorasan under Ghaznavid rule. The Sultan sent the Abbâsid caliph, to whom Mahmud was nominally bound, a letter in which he said that he tore up the letter and insulted the envoy. When Sultan Mahmud was the ruler of the Ghaznavid Empire, the Abbâsid caliphal state with its centre in Baghdad had already lost its authority and jurisdiction over a great part of the Islamic lands, and moreover, the Buwaihî Dynasty/state of Central Iran with the Shi‘i tendency had taken the Sunni caliph under its control. Mahmud launched an expedition into Iran in 1029 in order to save the caliph and the Sunni population, and conquered the great cities of Rey and Hamadan. There he punished the Bâtinî-Râfizî heretics who bullied the local people and informed the caliph Qadr Billâh (991–1031) about his acts in a letter. He aimed at rescuing the caliph from Shi‘i control. Contrary to the Central Asian Samanids, who were very tolerant of various sectarian ideas, Mahmud was very harsh in keeping Sunni principles; he burned all Shi‘i books in Ray, acting with the auto-title of “protector of the Caliph and the Sunnah”. The Ghaznavids were prominent not only in their expeditions to the non-Muslim populations of India but also with their struggle against the Karmatî factions. A few of the Indian expeditions of Sultan Mahmud were directed at Multan, where Karmatî ideas were well-spread.

The Spread of Islam to India Under the Ghaznavids Mahmud organised 17 expeditions to India in total, with the aim of “jihad” in the claims of the sources. It is possible to say that the previous expeditions by the Muslim Arabs and Persians did not have a permanent influence except for informing about the “existence” of Islam, and the essential establishment of Islam in Northern India started under the Ghaznavids. The efforts and achievements of the two predecessors of Mahmud, namely Alp Tegin and Sebük Tegin, can be classified as a land conquest after they separated from the Samanids. It was Mahmud who carried out the duty in the way of spreading Islam. Sources often underline his intention of “promising himself to launch campaigns to India every year in order to help the Islamic faith and to expel the infidels from there”, which implies the content and direction of his religious policies. He really did this and was praised for “his great efforts to make Islam victorious”. The

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Abbasid Caliph Qadr Billâh sent to Mahmud, together with a letter praising him, a precious and beautiful khil‘at (honorary dress for rulers), and bestowed honorary titles to thank him for his accomplishments. He became a legendary hero during his lifetime even in distant countries, and is still renowned through epic narrations among the common Muslim folks everywhere. A significant factor, although later, which permitted Mahmud to act in India freely, was the friendship agreement between him and the Karakhanids signed in 1025, according to which Amu Darya River became a border between the two empires. Mahmud would fight the “infidels of India” and the Karakhanids would be busy with the Turks who had not yet accepted Islam. Thus, Mahmud warranted the security of the north and acted in the south, free of the worries that might come from the turmoil of Central Asia. After that, he focused more on the establishment of Islam. He built mosques and appointed religious officials from the year 1000 on, when he started his India campaigns. For example, after his third Indian expedition to Bhatia to the east of Multan in 1004, he had many mosques built using the abundant booty, and especially the elephants taken at that time. This also shows his very intention of being perennial in the conquered lands. When the allied forces of India were severely crushed before the forces of Mahmud in 1008, during his sixth campaign, people there were demoralised to a great degree and fear of Mahmud spread everywhere. After that, the affairs of the Ghaznavids were eased more and more. For instance, during the ninth expedition carried out in 1014 to the very distant Nandana (Narâdîn), the castle was conquered after a stringent siege, and all of the people in the region surrendered to the Ghaznavid forces unconditionally. Armed men of Mahmud reached as far as Kashmir during that campaign, and the Sultan set up mosques there, leaving educated religious men. The Ghaznavid rulers patronised numerous scientists, poets and men of literature. Initially, the capital of Ghazna, and then Lahore, became prominent scientific and cultural centres. The Samanid ruler Nuh bin Nasr had a peerless library established in Bukhara. There were important works of astronomy and social sciences produced in Tabaristan. Even the rulers there wrote about astrolabes. When the Ghaznavids conquered those regions, the books were conveyed to the capital city of Ghazna. Similarly, when Kâkavaih Alâ al-Dawlah was defeated by the Ghaznavids and lost his country, his books were taken to Ghazna. Mahmud wrote a letter to Ma’mûn bin Ma’mûn, governor of Khwarazm, saying that he had learned

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about reputed scientists living there, and ordered him to send them to Ghazna, if they will. Among them, besides the world-famous al-Bîrûnî, such scholars as Abû Nasr Mansûr al-Iraqi and Hasan Abû al-Khayr bin Hammâr agreed to go to the imperial court, which also hosted famous men of literature like Firdawsî and Abû al-Feth Bustî. There were numerous religious scholars in the court as well. According to Utbi, the great Koranic commentary written by various scholars on the orders of Khalaf bin Ahmad, governor of Sijistan, was taken over by the Ghaznavids after they conquered the country; however, it was kept in the madrasa of Sabûnî in Nishabur until the Oghuz mutiny in the year 1150. A daughter of Ibrahim, son of Sultan Mas’ud, successor of Mahmud, espoused Imam ʿAbd al-Khaliq al-Juzjânî, and many scholars were born of that lineage under the name Juzjânî. Besides the theology scholars in the Hanafi and Shafi’î line, we also have good knowledge of mysticism and mystics of the Ghaznavid age. The most famous of them all, Abû al-Hasan al-Kharakânî was born in 963 in Kharakân to the north of Bistam and died in 1033 in the same city or in Kars, in modern Turkey, where there is a shrine dedicated to him. Among other famous mystics, we may count the names of Shaikh Abû al-Hasan Ali al-Ghaznavi (d. 1072), Shaikh Abû Ya‘qub Yusuf and Yusuf Hamadanî, who was a master of Khodja Ahmad Yasavi, known today as the greatest men of religion in the entire Turkic world. Some of them were living in military border towns (ribât). For instance, the Ghaznavid mystic Abd al-Razzaq stayed in the Ribât Attâb. The mystic Abû al-Hasan Ali bin Uthman al-Hujvîrî (1000–1072) was also from Ghazna. He lived in the company of Sultan Mahmud for several years, travelled to many countries and died in Lahore. The mystic Abû al-Qâsim Ahmad bin Ishâq bin Mûsâ was from Dandanakan in Afghanistan. Another scholar and mystic of the Ghaznavid age is Abû Sa’îd Abû al-­ Khayr (d. 1048), who was also a poet and sheikh. Yunus bin Tahir al-­ Nasîrî (d. 1020), who became the first person to bear the title “sheikh al-Islam” (an expert of Islamic law) in Balkh and was consulted on legal issues by Sultan Mahmud, wrote a book in Persian with the title Kitâb al-­ Bahcha der Zikr Ashâb Abî Khanîfa. Halîl bin Ahmad al-Sijzî (d. 1089) was the Qâdî al-Qudât (qâdî of the qâdîs, namely the chief of the qâdîs), and people asked for the permission of the sultan in order to establish a madrasa in his name. This was still present in the fourteenth century with the name Madrasa Khalîliya. His disciple Muhammad bin Omar bin Ali al-Najjâr al-Zarîr (d. 1118) also wrote several books and travelled to

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Transoxiana and India. Muhammad bin Abî Muhammad bin Abî al-Qâsim bin Abî al-Kasîr al-Balkhî (d. 1118) was also a sheikh al-Islam and qâdî al-qudât.

Conclusion Consequently, the real spread and establishment of Islam in India occurred during the time of the Ghaznavids. Within their years of sovereignty, from Khorasan to India, numerous madrasas were founded and many scholars contributed to the scholarly life. Mystic leaders and their adherents also tried to spread Islam in the region. Besides the madrasas, a lot of libraries were founded under the Ghaznavids, through which Islam in the Sunnah way was consolidated into what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India. The madrasas established from the time of Sultan Mahmud onward preceded the famous Saljukid schools (the Nizamiyya madrasas) and became a model for them. The city of Ghazna was a scholarly centre especially under Sultan Mahmud, attracting not only scientists and men of literature, but also those devoting themselves to theological issues and especially mysticism. Together they firmly established Islam in the region and became a source of dynamism to carry it further east and south of India. After the Ghaznavids, the Turkic Dynasties of Kipchak origin (their states known mostly as the Delhi Sultanates) continued to rule all over the northern parts of the subcontinent, as far as the Bengali lands, and sometimes some Afghan or local groups took over the administration. Lastly, Babur of the Timurid lineage became lord of India beginning in 1526, and his descendants ruled over a great part of India by the beginning of the British invasion in 1858. However, of the fourteen centuries of India passing in interaction with Islam, the real establishment was under the Ghaznavids, especially Sultan Mahmud (997–1031), and today’s more than 500  million Muslims in this region are a heritage mostly of the Ghaznavids.

Bibliography Abbâs, Perviz, Târîh-i Deyâlime ve Gaznevîyân, 2nd ed., Tahran: Müessese-i ̇ Matbuât-i Ali Ekber-i Ilmî, 1957. Abd’al-Mün’im al-Nemr, Tarih al-Islâm fi’l-Hind, 2nd ed., Beyrut: al-Muassasat al-Jâmiyyah, 1981.

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̇ Aziz, Ahmet M., Siyasi Tarihi ve Müesseseleriyle Delhi Türk Imparatorluğ u, trans. ̇ Tansu Say, Istanbul: Tercüman Gazetesi Yay., S.a. ̇ Aziz, Ahmed, Hindistan’da Islâm Kültürü Çalışmaları, trans. Latif Boyacı, ̇ ̇ Istanbul: Insan Press, 1995. Armutlu, Sadık, “Gazneliler ve Selçuklular Döneminde Edebî Gelenek”, Türkler, eds. H.  Celal Güzel-Kemal and Çiçek-Salim Koca, Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2002, 872–879. ̇ ̇ Arnold, Thomas Walker, Islam’ın Tebliğ Tarihi, trans. Bekir Yıldırım and C. Ilhan ̇ ̇ Polat, Istanbul: Inkılab Press, 2007. Baloch, N. A., “Gaznelilerin Hakimiyeti ve Lahor Krallığı Müessesesi”, trans. Esin Kâhya, Erdem, vol. VII (20) (1991), 549–568. Bayhaki, Ebû’l-Fazl Muhammed b. Hüseyn, Târîh-i Beyhakî, ed. Ali Ekber Feyyâz, Meshhed, 1931. Bayur, Yusuf Hikmet, Hindistan Tarihi I–III, 2nd ed., Ankara: TTK Press, 1987. ̇ Belâzurî, Ahmed b. Yahyâ, Fütûhu’l-Buldân, trans. Mustafa Fayda, Istanbul: Siyer Press, 2013. Bosworth, Clifford E., The Ghaznavids, their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, Edinburgh, 1963. ̇ ̇ Müslümanları: Moplahlar (VII–XIV)”, Prof. Çiftçioğlu, Ismail, “Hindistan’ın Ilk Dr. Mustafa Keskin Armag ̆anı Türk Tarihi ve Kültürü Araştırmaları, Ankara: TAKE Press, 2014, 325–339. ̇ Daudî, Halid Zaferullah, Pakistan ve Hindistan’da Hadis Çalışmaları, Istanbul: ̇ Insan Press, 1995. ̇ Devletşah, Semerkandî, Tezkire-i Devletşâh I–II, trans. Necati Lugal, Istanbul: MEB Press, 1990. Abû Yahya Zayn al-Din b. Ali b. Ahmed al-Muabbarî al-Malibarî, Tuhfet al-­ Mujâhidîn fi Ahvâl al-Burtugâliyyîn, ed. Muhammad Saîd Tarîhî, Beyrût: Muassasat al-Vafâ, 1985. ̇ ̇ Erinç, Sırrı, “Hindistan-Fizikî ve Beşerî Coğrafya”, DIA, XVIII, Istanbul (1998), 69–75. Fasîh Ahmed b. Jalaluddin Muhammed Hâfî, Mujmal-i Fasîhî I–II, ed. Mahmud Ferruh, Meshhed, 1922. ̇ Ferideddin, Attâr, Tezkiretü’l-Evliyâ, trans. Süleyman Uludağ, Istanbul: Erdem Press, 1991. Gardîzî, Ebû Sa’îd ’Abd al-Hayy b. al-Dehhâk b. Mahmûd, Zayn al-Ahbâr, ed. ̇ Abd al-Hayy Habibi, Irân, 1928. ̇ Haig, T. W., “Sind”, Islam Ansiklopedisi, Ankara: MEB Press, 1980, X, 676–678. Halifa b. Hayyât, Abû Amr al-Shaybânî, Tarih Halifa b. Hayyât, ed. Ekrem Ziya al-Omarî, Dâr al-Kalam, Damascus-Beyrut, 1397/1977. ̇ ̇ Hodgson, M. G. S., Islâm’ın Serüveni I–III, trans. Metin Karabaşoğlu, Istanbul: ̇Iz Press, 1993.

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Ibn Funduk, Ebû’l-Hasen Ali b. Zeyd-i Beyhakî, Târih-i Beyhak, ed. A. Behmenyâr, S. l., 1317. Ibn Hallikan, Abû al-Abbâs Shams al-Din Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Abî Bakr, ̇ Vafâyât al-A’yân va Anbâ Abnâ al-Zemân I–VIII, ed. Ihsân Abbâs, Beyrut, 1968. Ibn Kesîr, Abü al-Fidâ Imâd al-Din Ismâil b. Omar, al-Bidâye va al-Nihâye, Dâr Ihyâ al-Türâs al-Arabî, S. l., 1988. Ibn al-Javzî, Abû al-Faraj ‘Abd al-Rahmân b. ‘Ali b. Muhammad, al-Muntazam fî Târîh al-Umem ve al-Mulûk I–XVIII, ed. Muhammad ‘Abd al-Qâdr ‘Atâ and Mustafa ‘Abd al-Qâdr ‘Atâ, Beyrût, 1992. Ibn al-Athîr, Abü al-Hasan Izz al-Din Ali b. Muhammad, al-Kâmil fi al-Târîh, Beyrut: Dâr al-Kitab al-Arabî, 1997. Jurfâdekânî, Abû al-Sharaf Nâsih b. Zafar b. Sa’d, Tarjuma-i Târîh-i Yemînî, trans. and ed. Ali Kavîm, Tehrân, 1915. Juzjânî, Abû ‘Amr Minhâceddin Osman b. Sirâceddin Muhammed, Tabakât-ı Nâsırî I–II, trans. and ed. Abdu’l- Hayy Habîbî, 2nd ed., Kabil, 1963. ̇ ̇ Kafesoğlu, Ibrahim, “Mahmud, Gazneli”, Islam Ansiklopedisi, Ankara: MEB Press, 1970, VII, 173–183. ̇ ̇ Kafesoğlu, Ibrahim, Türk Milli Kültürü, 17th ed., Istanbul: Ötüken Press, 1998. Kartal, Ahmet, “Gazneliler Dönemi Türk Kültürü ve Türk Dili Üzerine Düşünceler”, Türk Dil Kurumu V. Uluslararası Türk Dili Kurultayı Bildirileri (20–26 Eylül 2004), 2004, Ankara, 1685–1724. Kartal, Ahmet, “Karahanlı, Gazneli ve Selçuklu Saraylarındaki Edebî Faaliyetler Üzerine Düşünceler”, Bilig, issue 17 (2001), 55–70. Kûfî, Ali b. Hamid b. Abi Bekr, Feth al-Sind (Chachnâma), ed. Suhayl Zakkar, Beyrut: Dâr al-Fikir, 1992. Kufralı, Kasım, “Gazneli ve Selçuklular Devrinin Tezkir Muhiti”, IV. Türk Tarih Kongresi (Ankara 10–14 Kasım 1948), Ankara, 1952, 261–282. Kulke, Hermann-Dietmor Rothermund, Hindistan Tarihi, trans. Müfit Günay, ̇ Ankara: Imge Press, 2001. ̇ ̇ Kutlu, Sönmez, “Kerrâmîyye”, Diyanet Islam Ansiklopedisi, Istanbul: TDV Press, 2002, XXV, 294–296. Mas’ûdî, Abü al-Hasan Ali b. Husain b. Ali Mas’ûdî, Muruj al-Zahab va Ma’âdin al-Javhar I–IV, ed. Esed Dağir, Tehran: Dârü’l-Hicre, 1988. ̇ ̇ Merçil, Erdoğan, “Mahmûd-ı Gaznevî”, Diyanet Islam Ansiklopedisi, Istanbul: TDV Press, 2003, XXVII, 362–365. Merçil, Erdoğan, “Gazneli Ordusunda Görev Alan Hintliler”, Belleten, vol. LXX (259) (2006), 833–844. Merçil, Erdoğan, “Gazneliler’in Hindistan Siyaseti”, Prof. Dr. Bekir Kütükogl̆ u’na ̇ ̇ Armağan, IÜEF Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi, Istanbul, 1991, 547–561. ̇ Merçil, Erdoğan, “Sebüktegin’in Pendnâmesi”, Islam Tetkikleri Enstitüsü Dergisi, vol. IV (1–2) (1975), 203–233.

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Merçil, Erdoğan, Gazneliler Devleti Tarihi, Ankara: TTK Press, 1989. Nazim, Muhammed, The Life and Times of Sultân Mahmûd of Ghazna, Cambridge, 1931. ̇ ̇ Nizami, K.  A., “Hindistan-Din”, Diyanet Islam Ansiklopedisi, Istanbul: TDV Press, 1998, XVIII, 85–92. ̇ Nizâmu’l-Mülk, Hasen b. Ali b. Ishâk et-Tûsî, Siyâset-Nâme (veya Siyeru’l -Mulûk), trans. M. Altay Köymen, Ankara: TTK Press, 1982. Nizâm al-Dîn-i Ahmad, Tabaqât Akbarî I–II, Calcutta: M. A. I. C. S., 1927. Ocak, Ahmet, “Karmatîlik ve Hindistan’a Yayılması”, Hindistan Türk Tarihi Araştırmaları, Malatya, issue 1 (2001), 33–45. Öztuna, Yılmaz, Başlangıçtan Zamanımıza Kadar Büyük Türkiye Tarihi I, ̇ Istanbul, 1977. Palabıyık, M. Hanefi, “Gazneli Devletinde Ehl-i Sünnet ve Hanefilik”, Devirleri ̇ Aydınlatan Meş’ale Imâm-ı A‘zam Ulusal Sempozyum Tebligl̆ er Kitabı 28–30 Nisan 2015-Eskişehir, eds. Ahmet Kartal and Hilmi Özden, Eskişehir, 2015, 245–257. ̇ Palabıyık, M.  Hanefi, “Gazneliler’de Ilmî Faaliyetler”, Hindistan Türk Tarihi Araştırmaları, Malatya, issue 1 (2001), 47–72. Palabıyık, M. Hanefi, “Gaznelilerin Hindistan Seferleri”, EKEV Akademi Dergisi -Sosyal Bilimler-, Ankara, issue 32 (2007a), 139–152. Palabıyık, M.  Hanefi, “Hindistan Tarihinde ve Hint Kültüründe Müslüman Türkler”, EKEV Akademi Dergisi -Sosyal Bilimler-, issue 33 (2007b), 67–94. ̇ Palabıyık, M. Hanefi, Valilikten Imparatorluğa Gazneliler, Devlet ve Saray Teşkilatı, Ankara: Araştırma Yay., 2002. ̇ ̇ Qureshi, M.  Naeem, “Moplahlar”, Diyanet Islam Ansiklopedisi, Istanbul: TDV Press, 2005, XXX, 279–280. Radtke, Bernd, “Horâsân ve Mâverâünnehîr’de Din Alimleri ve Mutasavvıflar”, (çev. Ergin Ayan), Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, vol. 2 (9) (2009), 358–376. ̇ Reşiduddin, Fazlullâh, Câmi’u’t-Tevârih (c. 2. cüz 4), Sa’y ve Ihtimam: Ahmed Ateş, Ankara: TTK Press, 1957. ̇ Şerafettin, M., “Kerrâmîler”, Darulfünûn Ilahiyat Fakültesi Mecmuası, vol. III, Nisan 1929, issue 11, 1–15. Tabarî, Muhammad b. Jarîr b. Yazîd, Tarih al-Umam va al-Mulûk I–X, 2nd ed., Beyrut: Dârü’t-Turâs, 1967. ̇ Taşçı, Haticetül Kübra, Hindistan Coğrafyasında Islâmiyet’in Yayılması, Rize Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü (Unpublished Master’s Dissertation), Rize, 2010. ̇ ̇ Tirazi, Abdallah Mubashshir, Mavsuat al-Tarih al-Islâmî va al-Hadaret al-Islâmiyye li-Bilad al-Sind va al-Bencab (Bakistan al-Haliyye) fi Ahd al-Arab I–II, Jeddah: Alam al-Ma’rifa, 1983.

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CHAPTER 14

In Partibus Fidelium (Postscript: Conversion as History) Vladimir Gradev

And the question of questions now is: What part of that exploded Past, the ruins and dust of which still darken all the air, will continually gravitate back to us; be reshaped, transformed, readapted, that so, in new figures, under new conditions, it may enrich and nourish us again? —Thomas Carlyle

The history of religions is a restive discipline. And while this is true for every scientific discipline that deserves to be so called, the one that concerns us now is so in a quite peculiar way: its very subject is uncertain! This situation of constant inconvenience stems from its genealogy: having originated in Christian apologetics during the age of great geographical discoveries, the history of religions easily dissolved later into regional anthropologies or sociologies, in accordance with the degree of autonomy granted to “the religious,” i.e. depending on whether it was viewed as a

V. Gradev (*) St Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9_14

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symbolic system of the structures of a given society or as an area gradually distinguished from the economic, cultural and other fields. Even today, it would be easy to witness the confusion of various social scientists when it comes to determining the exact nature of the transition between polytheism and monotheism, such is the degree of problematisation of these very concepts by a series of contextualisations. This confusion is only exacerbated when we realise, for instance, that medieval man did not at all comprehend “religion” in the sense that we understand it today. For him, there was only life according to a given “religion” or, in other words, according to the rule of one or another monastic order. The concept of “Abrahamic religions” could be of use in a comparative history of religions. We have come far from the times when pre-modern or modern scholars and historians tied this issue to the interreligious discourse, when trying to present the “religion” of Abraham as the primary religion of humankind. In reality, they did not have a specific historical aim in reminding the three monotheistic faiths of their common origins embodied in Abraham, but rather the intention to develop a theology of religions by showing that Islam belonged to the biblical heritage and that Muslims also participated in the Truth. The time has come, as this collection of papers also shows, for strictly contextualised research and analysis of structural homologies but also of historical differences. The researchers in this volume of collected studies, as well as others before them and alongside them, make possible the transition of this initially theological topic into the topic of historicity. Such an approach is beginning to bear remarkable fruit, such as, for instance, the growing awareness that there is no “Christianity” on one side and “Islam” on the other, but two “traditions” (rather than “religions”), which have been built against each other in a symbolic struggle that began in the early Middle Ages and continues on to this day. This problem is not alien to one of the main questions in the history of religions that affects its very subject: what exactly do we call “religion,” since it is well known that this term stems from Rome through Christianity? It is the historians who seem to agree that the emergence of monotheism is a breach/interruption of the ancient symbolic systems and that is what Jan Assmann calls “Mosaic distinction.” With the exclusivity of monotheism, the truth enters the religious field. However, reading the studies collected here, I also see in them an implicit critique of Assmann, who focuses rather too much on the question of the formation of monotheism and the inherent potential for violence, ignoring the evolutions of the meaning of concepts such as monotheism and religion during the

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Middle Ages. At the same time, Assmann does not pay due attention to the fact that Judaic exclusivity, which has generally been used internally throughout the rabbinical era, does not have the same consequences in universalist Christianity with no ethnic rooting or in universalist Islam, which has retained its ethnic roots. It is this constant effort to clarify historical contexts that characterises the work of the established scholars of medieval religion and culture participating in this volume, work that has been part of a series of their long-­ term explorations. The intention is clearly to fully develop the potency of the specific studies of the monotheisation processes, which in turn would provide a basis for comparative studies. The latter is probably the only way to clarify and refine the various categories of the history of religions and to break with the pseudo-evidences forged and transmitted by our national cultures and their dominant religion, most often Christianity. A group of colleagues and friends have been following the paths of medieval history for years, intertwining their studies with facts and ideas that seem to be long known and yet always appear new in the light of historical research. The project of these studies is bold, because it is meant to make sense of quaestio vexata in a historical manner, one of these crucial but perhaps never fully solvable questions about the monotheisation of Europe and large parts of Asia as far out as India around the year 1000, generally speaking. In this sense, this book is important insofar as it shows that the cultural, political and intellectual understanding of our contemporary situation cannot ignore the Middle Ages. The result of this journey is contained in this volume, born from the invigorating exchange on the monotheisation of Europe’s “peripheries,” the Turkic peoples and partly India. This is not the first time researchers have embarked on such an endeavour with the clear awareness that there is a risk of the reader getting lost in a content with very diverse contributions, but holding an undeniable allure and appeal: to establish to what extent the stories—all very different from each other—can converge in one common point and create a harmonious relationship between the specific historical phenomenon and process that is being studied and that of others, and thus become a case for dialogue and growth. The leitmotiv of the studies in this volume is the monotheisation of Europe and Asia: mostly the process itself but also the historical memory of it. I am not part of this community of remarkable researchers and erudite scholars, and yet I have to comment on a book dedicated to the monotheisation of Europe and Asia. If anything, I feel “in my shoes” in some

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aspects of the theory of religions, and especially Christianity, in particular. That is why I would not wish to rush unceremoniously into the sanctuary of historical science and leisurely run through it. I am, however, thankful for the invitation from Prof. Stepanov and Prof. Karatay, because I see it as an expression of their desire and ability not to write books solely for the academically positioned colleagues, i.e. for the dusty shelves of studies and libraries, but to ask questions that may be of importance for the understanding of our increasingly globalised times. For me personally, reading the studies collected in this volume was interesting, useful and timely. Traditionally, we associate the processes of Christianisation or, respectively, Islamisation with what we have learned from textbooks on the respective national history. We tend to learn the name of the ruler who has Christianised the particular land, while leaving the further research and interpretations of the specific processes to the historians. To be honest, as an outside observer in this field, initially I felt rather confused in its dense and dark woods, before acquainting myself with the studies collected in this volume, which do not seek “to plant new trees,” but instead to clear out paths in the “woods,” to open up new perspectives. I got a clear idea of the historical processes in their various twists and turns; I also understood exactly which facts scholars have at their disposal, how they select them, what they retain and what they discard. Of course, anyone with a good memory and mind can collect and sift through facts, but the real art is to know where the available facts can take us, and that is exactly what the studies collected here show. Whatever the nature of the facts, historical research is, after all, a construction made up of the multitude of ideas and thoughts, which these facts or, rather, remnants of facts and vague accounts have evoked in the mind of the historian reconstructing the past. Undoubtedly, the historical ethos and method of searching for “what actually happened” is based on adherence to facts, and the studies here remain true to this. They always stay firmly focused on the sources, strive to capture the processes in a historical manner, as far as possible, and present them iuxta propria principia. At the same time, they also direct our gaze to the heavens, because they are dedicated to a time period when religious beliefs and practices determined the whole culture and without their comprehension the facts alone will remain mute. Without facts and without documentary evidence there is no history, of course, but these studies also show that the long, slow movements should not be underestimated, especially when it comes to the processes of

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monotheisation. They also demonstrate (at least that is a lesson which can be learned from these studies) that, from a cultural point of view, it is important not only to find out “how the change really happened” but also how it has been remembered, meaning in the so-called long-term paradigm. At the same time, I see in these articles a necessity and a need—and this is my wish for any future studies—for a simpler, smoother and more direct approach and, in this sense, an “easier” rendition, not only precise and accurate but also understandable and living. Thus, it can be made interesting and accessible even to those like me, who are in the field of humanities, but at the same time beyond the strict craft of the historians. I find it increasingly necessary to promote history in an elevated, high-quality and healthy way, and I think that it is something which cannot be ignored if we want modern people, especially the young ones, to have a live connection with history and the religious and cultural traditions. This, I feel, is the primary task of history, which should neither aim to construct nor deconstruct, but rather to attain a living and fruitful meeting with the past. Without being able to encompass the entire vast arc from Scandinavia to India spanning several centuries during the Middle Ages, especially as regards the subtle dimensions of the establishment of Islam in the East, I will nevertheless give just one example that has stood out to me when reading this collection. In 1040, Radulfus Glaber spoke with exaltation of the recent expansion of Christianity, stating, “the kingdom of God everywhere humbles tyrants by the grace of holy baptism.” The Slavs, the Scandinavians and the Magyars, who only a few decades earlier had spread terror throughout the European continent, had indeed joined Christianity—the Latin and Byzantine one. Soon, only small pagan groups remained in the Finnish and Baltic lands; the Lithuanians, for instance, are among the most recently Christianised Europeans. We can, therefore, agree with the chronicler that the year 1000 (and the first decades of the eleventh century in general) was more or less the boundary after which the pagan no man’s land in the northern and eastern parts of Europe disappeared. These “newly baptised” peoples can be divided into several groups. First are the Scandinavians: having participated in the late eighth century in the Viking invasions, which were both trade and military campaigns, they subsequently settled in the lands they conquered, including Normandy and North and East England. The Danes used the opportunity to establish themselves as a leading power and to create a great kingdom that included

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Norway; it would dominate the North Sea all the way up to Greenland and would put constant pressure on Britain. Meanwhile, the Swedes who roamed the roads between Novgorod and Constantinople under the name Varyags encountered the vast Slavic world. At least since the mid-seventh century, Slavic tribes who were in the process of ethnolinguistic differentiation inhabited the larger part of Eastern Europe up to the Alpine arc and the Adriatic Sea. The westernmost ones of them such as the Slovenes from Carinthia were soon absorbed into the Carolingian Empire. In other places, however, powerful Slavic states established themselves in the mid-­ ninth century. The state of Great Moravia had a short lifespan due to the invasion of the Magyars who came from the Northern Black Sea region and established their own state in the Carpathian Basin and Pannonia in the late ninth to early tenth century. At the time, apart from the Slovenes and their neighbours, the Croats, only the Czechs and the Moravians had converted to Christianity, and not without a certain resistance. For all the other peoples from Northern or Central Europe, this religion was foreign or undesirable, at the very least. For instance, if prior to the ninth century churches were indeed built in the large Scandinavian trade centres such as Birka, Hedeby and Ribe, their purpose was to receive foreign merchants; nothing indicates that the local population visited them en masse. In many cases, it was the foreign merchants who also stood at the source of Islamic preaching in the East, and this is yet another fact that becomes clear from this volume. But it was not just trade. Things were far from being so simple and unambiguous. Monotheisation is a process in which quick, sudden conversions coexist with slow and gradual changes, and all this alongside and together with the long lifespan of pagan beliefs and practices. The spread of Christianity, for instance, continued everywhere for decades and even longer. Thus, Hungarian leaders from Transylvania adopted the Christian faith in its Byzantine form as early as 940, i.e. almost half a century before Saint (King) Stephen I accepted it and enticed the entire Hungarian population with him. Similarly, the official conversion of the rulers on the Scandinavian Peninsula was preceded by a long period of tolerance of the new religion. Conversely, in places where there was no real political unity, as in Sweden, for example, paganism managed to persist until the very end of the eleventh century. And so Christianisation was accompanied for a long time by a genuine diversity of beliefs and practices. Both in the sixth to seventh centuries and during the ninth century and onwards, the newly baptised rulers themselves often hesitated to take harsh measures against

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the old pagan practices, so as not to enter into a direct confrontation with the hostile aristocracy. One such case was the Swedish sovereign who, fearing that the pagans would seize the opportunity to overthrow him, dissuaded the missionaries from destroying the sanctuary at Uppsala. And some, though baptised, also wanted to keep the favour of the old gods. The behaviour of a Hungarian named Géza is indicative in this regard: although a Christian, he continued to make sacrifices to the pagan deities; and to the priest who admonished him, he proudly answered that he was “rich and powerful enough to make offerings to them as well”! Christianisation, as the studies collected here show, is a complex and gradual process, which is not without its twists and turns: in all newly established Christian societies, a reaction emerged sooner or later in the form of pagan resistance. At times, it was so fierce that in Poland, for example, it was necessary to start over practically from scratch under Casimir I the Restorer (d. 1058). Even though the date of a ruler’s baptism is convenient for the historical “record,” it should not make us forget all the twists and turns in a history that is much more tumultuous than it initially appears. What is the significance of foreign influences during the Christianisation process? It is true that the missions aimed at the Western Slavs were successfully carried out by the Bavarian bishoprics. It is also true that Saint King Václav of Bohemia (922–935) had to comply not only with Roman Christianity but also with the pressure from the Saxonian King Henry I. But the German influence was met everywhere with fierce resistance and rivalry that eventually led to the expulsion of the disciples of Constantine (St. Cyril) and Methodius from Great Moravia (885/6) and the successful pushing out of the Byzantine presence from Central Europe by Bavarian missionaries. At the same time, Byzantine Christianity would flourish in Danube Bulgaria after the 860s, and later also in Kievan Rus’, because it managed to create its own original forms with the help of a new liturgical language and a new alphabet, the Cyrillic one, created and imposed by the Bulgarians. Meanwhile, in Hungary, as in Dalmatia, this Christianity remained a side phenomenon and it practically did not penetrate Poland. Faced with the ever-growing German (Holy Roman) Empire and concerned with their own independence, Slavic and Scandinavian rulers came to rely on other powers as well. Thus, the first bishops to arrive in Norway and Denmark came from England. Thanks to the existing cultural closeness between the Scandinavian Peninsula and the British Isles, they

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overcame the German pressure exerted with the help of the bishops from Hamburg-Bremen. Similarly, the conversion of the Poles was not entrusted to the important German church centre of Magdeburg, but was instead carried out as the result of an agreement with the Czech Prince Boleslav, whose daughter Doubravka was married to the Polish Prince Mieszko. The Hungarian case illustrates even better the many different influences to which the emerging Christianity was exposed in these lands. Saint Stephen relied simultaneously on the Archbishop of Prague, Adalbert (Vojtekh), on his Bavarian wife Gisela who was the sister of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Henry II, on the Pope and on the German missions. All this also reveals the peculiarity of the political dynamics that governed the Christianisation of these border areas of the old Pax Romana Christiana. In the Carolingian era, religious unity usually meant joining the Empire: The Christian missionaries expanded the political boundaries while winning over the souls of various peoples. Many factors disprove this strategy at the end of the tenth century. A century earlier, the Papacy decided to support the labour of the Saints Cyril and Methodius and began working on the establishment of local Churches beyond the limes saxonicus, something that Byzantium had been doing from the very beginning. Emperor Otto ІІІ (983–1002), in his quest to restore the Christian Empire and as an heir and representative of a dual imperial legitimacy— the German and Western Roman one and also the Byzantine one, together with Pope Sylvester II (999–1003) laid the foundations of a new organisation of the Western Christian world. In March of the year 1000, he crowned Bolesław Chrobry of Poland in the Byzantine custom, proclaiming him a “brother” in the so-called imperial family of princes. The following year, Saint (King) Stephen of Hungary, being in the heyday of his power as a ruler, received the royal crown of Hungary, as well as the right to create his own metropolitan church. The processes in their peculiar rhythms were also similar in the Scandinavian Peninsula. Thus, the imperial Church, which Charlemagne (d. 814) and his successors had dreamed of, was replaced by a Europe of Christianities, as we would say today. On the periphery of Europe, in the North and especially in the East, powerful territorial Churches emerged, some of which very quickly became “national.” Connected to the Holy See or to Constantinople Patriarchate, they established their own identity through the cult of their

14  IN PARTIBUS FIDELIUM (POSTSCRIPT: CONVERSION AS HISTORY) 

331

own saints and created a strong unity of faith, dynasty and state. In this sense, the Europe of nationalities, such as we know it today, albeit in a secular context, is the child of this Christianisation process. Historians have not found any clear evidence regarding the faith of the first people who converted to monotheism and whether they were “sincere” or not. Today, they are increasingly observing and studying the conversion—and in this volume in particular, the Christianisation or Islamisation of an entire society, which, through its institutions, socialises generations in a new way. In order to explain the accession of certain peoples to Christendom, their descendants have brought to the fore some exceptional figures whose roles in the conversion of their peoples were seen as crucial. Even today, the baptism of the Bulgarian Prince Boris I (863/864), the Polish Prince Mieszko (966), the Russian Prince Vladimir (ca. 988/9), the Hungarian ruler Stephen (István I) (997) and the Norwegian Olav Haraldsson (1015) are presented as exceptionally significant historical episodes. The role of the rulers in the Christianisation and creation and strengthening of the respective states is undeniably important, but it has been subsequently exaggerated in the medieval sources and the modern narratives that are by no means “mirrors” of reality, but rather constructs with legitimising functions. If a historian is indeed a master of his/her craft, he/she is attentive to the significance, experience and role of the individual in history, but never overlooks the commoners, who are organised and driven by the symbolic depths of collective life and revived by specific forces, expressed in the collective psyche and memory. Because collective memory is something in which we all participate and which is subject to the same omissions and distortions as the personal episodic memory. It serves our relationships as members of families, clans, communities and nations. If autobiographical memory is prone to inaccuracies, then these imprecisions practically govern collective memory; they transform it, driven by larger and often “darker” motivations. For better or for worse, we are dependent on collective memory, because without it there would be no love, no friendship, no loyalty, etc. Of course, neither would there be any enmity, hate, jealousy or revenge. It integrates the group with its shared stories; it passes on tradition to us and makes us loyal to our past. And as important as it is, it has never been as stable as we would like it to be—it is always contested. This, however, should not dishearten us! An erroneous collective memory helps us to tie our personal stories into more general ones that we leave behind for future

332 

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generations. There is no single “historical truth” of general validity, because history is an uncertain accumulation of human deeds and knowledge and because it requires both imagination and criticism, but, invariably, also empathy. It is not enough simply to establish the evolution of the process following the decline until the full disappearance of a certain memory. Maybe the time has come to break with the purely linear vision of time in favour of a history that is more complex and more respectful of the living reality, a history that captures the various returns, entanglements, sequences, breaks, latencies… If we consider history as a story of the mechanisms of the collective psyche, we will see that even if something is in decline, it does not disappear, but is in the process of constant transformation. Thanks to two of the monotheistic religions, the ninth to eleventh centuries saw the first of this kind of transformation and re-adaptation of a vast space stretching from the extremities of Europe to the interior of Asia. Will we take notes from this earlier cycle of partial globalisation for our total globalisation today? The authors of this volume do not aim to find the answers to such a question. Their words simply encourage and stimulate further thought and imagination.

Index1

A Aarhus, 66 Abbad, 307 Abbâdiyye, 307 Abbasid, 224, 242, 249, 250, 273–284, 287, 289, 291–294, 309–311, 315 son of Bashtu, 166n1 Abdallah bin Amir, 270 Abd’al-Rahman bin Rabi’a, 271 Abdullah bin Amr bin Kuraiz, 306 Abdallah bin Mubarek, 290 Abdullah bin Savvar al-Abdî, 306 Abdullah bin Semûre, 306 Abdullah bin Tahir, 278 Abodritae, 116 Abraham, 179, 183 prophet, 324 Abrahamic religions, 324 Abû al-Abbas al-Saffah, 275 Abû al-Feth Bustî, 316 Abû al-Hasan Ali al-Ghaznavi, 316

Abû al-Hasan Ali bin Muhammed el-Hannânî, 313 Abû al-Hasan Ali bin Uthman al-Hujvîrî, 316 Abû al-Hasan al-Kharakânî, 316 Abû Khanifa, 294 Abû Muslim, 242, 274–276 Abû Nasr Hussainî, 312 Abû Nasr Mansur, 286, 296 Abû Nasr Mansûr al-Iraqi, 316 Abû Sa’îd Abû al-Khayr, 316 Abû Sufyan, 272 Abû Yakub Yusuf, 316 Adalbert, 47, 68, 80, 81, 83–85, 88, 90, 91, 93–96, 105, 134, 156, 176, 330 Adalbert of Prague, 77–79, 144 Adaldag, 33, 62, 66 Adalram of Salzburg, 117 Adalwin, 122 Adam prophet, 303

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Stepanov, O. Karatay (eds.), Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34429-9

333

334 

INDEX

Aden, 302 Adrianople, 194 See also Edirne Æthelstan, 48 Afghanistan, 224, 238–240, 247, 257, 259, 260, 270, 296, 306, 311, 316, 317 Afshin, 279 Ahmad, Khalaf bin, 316 Ahmad, Yasavi, 291, 294, 316 Ahnaf bin Qays, 270 Ahvar, see Lahore Aisha wife of the Prophet, 302 Alans, 168, 172, 245, 255 Albania, 173, 194, 238 Caucasus, 172 Albanians, 4 Alcuin, 83 Aleppo, 223 Alexander Macedonian, 220 Ali Caliph, 271, 272, 286, 302, 306 Almiš, 165, 173, 215, 217, 218, 221, 224, 227, 229, 230, 253, 295 Alp Tegin, 311, 314 Alparslan, 258, 259 Alp-Ilutver, 172, 173 Alps, 52 Alsace, 118 Altay Mountains, 291 Amir Ali Ubu, 290 Amu Darya, 238, 269, 270, 272, 315 Anastasius, 205 Anatolia, 24, 257–260, 275, 291, 292 Andalusia, 14, 107, 215 Andrew I, 154, 160 Anfrid, 30 Angelarius, 128, 191 Anglo-Saxon, 6, 65, 79, 122 An-lu-shan, 242

Ansgar, 28–30, 51, 52, 55–62, 66, 68, 79 Antae, 114 Anund, 29 Apennines, 3 Apostle, 4, 56, 82 Aquileia, 116 Arabia, 8, 219, 238, 303–305 Arabs, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 13, 14, 18, 73, 107, 173, 215, 230, 237–242, 244, 245, 247–253, 258–260, 265, 268–278, 280, 283, 285, 286, 292, 293, 301–303, 305–311, 314 Aral, 12, 238, 243, 245, 247 Ardagar, 30 Ardebil, 172, 172n4 Ares, 3 Århus, 33 Ari Þorgilsson, 46 Arianism, 5, 53 Arians, 5, 11, 53, 73, 74, 114 Armenia, 7, 179 Armenian, 4, 7, 47, 72, 257–259 Arnulf, 126, 129–131 Arnulf of Bavaria, 126 Aros, 41 Arpad, 84, 88 Arslan, Israil, 257 Arslan II, 296 Artuch, 296 Ashnas, 279 Ashras bin Abdallah, 289 Askal, 222, 227, 229 Asparukh, 11, 167, 204, 205 Astrik of Pannonhalma, see Radla Athanasian Creed, 153 Atrak, 222 Attila, 114, 156 Augsburg, 157 Austria, 115, 117 Avars, 11, 12, 18, 114–116, 167, 192, 239, 266

 INDEX 

Azerbaijan, 21, 238, 246, 255, 257, 258, 260, 270, 271, 292 Azo, 83, 84, 96 Azov, 17 B Baalbek, 202 Babur, 317 Bács-Kalocsa archbishopric of, 145 Bagdis, 270 Baghdad, 166, 217, 219, 222, 224, 231, 249–251, 253, 254, 258, 275, 309, 314 Al-Bahilî, Abd al-Rahman bin Muslim, 240 Al-Bâhilî, Ibn Harrî, 307 Bahrain, 305 Bahraj, 307 Balanjar, 252, 271 Balasagun, 295 Balaton, 119 Balkans, 12, 13, 18, 56, 74, 114, 122, 124, 126, 237, 246, 259, 291 Balkh, 218, 240, 270, 287, 316 Baltic, 13, 15, 50, 69, 73, 88, 107, 327 Baluchistan, 305 Bangladesh, 301 Bangore, 304 Baranjar, 221 al-Barmakî, Imran bin Musa, 311 Barskhan, 295 Barṣūlā, 227 Barvas, 305 Bashghird, 223 Bashkir, 253 Basil I, 123 Basil II, 178n5 Basra, 286 Bâtinî, 313, 314

335

Bavaria, 114, 118, 120, 122, 127, 129, 130, 133 Bavarian, 115, 118–120, 124, 125, 127, 128, 131, 132, 142, 329, 330 Bayhak, 313 Baykend, 239, 287 Bayt, al-Hikmah, 309 Becket, Thomas, 91 Belaya, 226 Belgium, 5 Belgrade, 128 Benedict VIII, 67 Benedict, mission to Poland, 67, 78, 80–83, 85–88, 90, 91, 94 Benedictine, 28, 63, 127, 128, 146 Benelux, 7 Bengali, 302, 317 Bengali Gulf, 302 Bennah, 306 Berke Khan, 252 Bern, 57 Bernard Spanish monk, 95 Bernard of Lund, 67 Bhatia, 315 Biler, 230–232 Bilge Qagan, 241, 267 Bilyar, see Biler Bilyarsk, see Biler Birka, 28–31, 33, 37, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 65, 328 Bîrûnî, 316 Bistam, 316 Björkö, 29 Björn, 29 Black Hungarians, 84, 88, 90 Blatengrad/Blatnohrad, 119, 122, 124, 125, 129 Bogomilism, 13 Bohemia, 91, 105, 107, 108, 110, 114, 115, 125, 128–130, 133, 134, 329

336 

INDEX

Bohemian, 102, 104, 108, 125, 126, 129, 131–133 Boleslaus III, 104n1, 108 Boleslav, 64, 102, 133 Boleslav I, 133, 134, 330 Boleslav II, 134 Bolesław Chrobry, 39, 78, 80, 84–88, 86n9, 88n11, 90, 91, 94, 95, 109, 330 Bolyars, 16, 191, 199, 200 Bonifacius, 52 Bonipert of Pécs, 146 Boril, 204 Boris, Rus’, 178n5 Boris-Michael, 15, 16, 18, 22, 120, 121, 127, 128, 130, 178n5, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196–201, 203, 204, 206, 331 Bořivoj, 125, 126, 129, 133 Borna, 116, 117 Bosla, 78, 80 Bosnia, 13 Bosnian, 13 Bosphorus/Bosporus, 166, 170, 220 Braslav, 119, 131 Bratislava, 107, 132 Bratislavský Hrad, 119 Bregalnitsa, 198 Bremen, 29–34, 36, 39, 40, 45, 47–50, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 66, 68, 70, 89 Břetislav I, 91 Britain/British, 6, 22, 31, 56, 72, 74, 317, 328, 329 Bruno of Cologne, 39, 46, 63–65, 77–96, 77n2, 78n3, 83n8 Bruno of Querfurt, 39, 64, 77, 79, 144, 153 Buddhism, 1, 163, 267, 268, 292 Buddhist, 163, 267, 308, 311 Bûdhîh, 307 Budhiya, 310 Bukan, 307

Bukhara, 239–241, 256, 272, 276, 285–289, 291, 315 Bulan, 165, 171, 174, 178n5, 179, 181, 183 Bulgar, 8, 11, 12, 15–19, 22, 23, 79, 114–118, 120, 131, 165–170, 166n1, 173–177, 192–195, 197–200, 203–205, 215–233, 237, 244–246, 251–253, 258, 287 Bulgaria, 11–17, 19, 22–24, 114–116, 120, 122, 126–128, 130–132, 165, 167, 168, 171, 173, 175, 176, 190–198, 202–206, 225, 229, 231, 233, 252–254, 287, 295, 329 Burghar, 219, 221 Bust, 306 Buvaihî, 314 Byzantine Commonwealth, 191, 197 Byzantines, 6, 7, 12, 14–16, 18, 19, 55, 60, 114, 117, 120–127, 131, 138, 139, 141, 145–147, 154, 165–168, 166n2, 173–178, 178n5, 180–183, 191–193, 195, 196, 198, 199, 201, 203, 205, 246, 250, 259, 260, 327–330 Byzantium, 7, 8, 12, 14–16, 18, 19, 113, 114, 116, 119–125, 127, 130, 132, 134, 138, 147, 166, 167, 169, 172, 175–179, 192–194, 197, 201, 226, 238, 246, 247, 259, 275, 303, 330 C Caesarea, 144 Çağrı, 257 Calabria, 195 Caliphate, 10, 16, 107, 166, 167, 168n3, 172, 179, 217, 224, 241, 244, 245, 248–251, 253, 254

 INDEX 

Camel Battle, 303 Canute, 36, 39, 40 Carantania, 119, 120, 129 Carantanians, 116, 118 Carinthia, 105, 114, 328 Carloman, 120, 124–126, 129 Carolingians, 53, 55, 69, 78, 79, 93, 109, 115, 116, 118, 122, 125, 129–131, 152, 328, 330 Carpathian, 107, 138, 328 Casimir I, 329 Caspian, 107, 172, 221, 224, 225, 243, 246 Catholicism, 7 Caucasian, 4, 172, 173, 181, 238 Caucasus, 6, 24, 167, 172, 220, 224, 238, 243–245, 254, 255, 258, 259, 266, 267, 269–271 Celtic, 73 Ceylon, see Sri Lanka Chagataids, 252 Charlemagne, 22, 116, 182, 192, 330 Charles III, 129 Charles IV of Luxemburg, 128 Chigil, 279, 295 China, 2, 23, 169, 215, 224, 239, 242, 249, 276, 277, 280, 287, 302 Chinese, 240–242, 276, 277 Chinggisid, 252, 260 Chira, 303 Chiraman, 303 Chnuba, 32, 62, 63 Chorutans, 117 Chuvashia, 203 Cistercian, 146 Clement, 128 Clement of Rome, 123 Climent Ohridski, 191 Clovis, 5 Cologne, 46, 60, 62 Coloman, 149, 154, 155, 160 Constantine IV, 168, 205

337

Constantine-Cyrill, 14, 18, 54–56, 121–123, 127, 173, 174, 179–181, 329 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 178n5, 181 Constantine the Great, 9, 60, 74 Constantinople, 5, 7, 14–16, 19, 20, 24, 52, 54, 55, 114, 117, 121–124, 126, 127, 132, 134, 141, 157, 167, 173, 174, 177, 193–196, 201, 215, 226, 239, 259, 328, 330 Constantinopolitan, 123 Constantius II, 5 Corbie, 28, 57 Corvey, 58, 63, 69, 70 Council of Aachen, 117 Cranganore, see Kodungallur Crimea, 3, 8, 14, 15, 19, 54–56, 123, 172, 220 Croatia, 24, 116, 128, 203 Croats, 13, 20, 116, 117, 120, 123, 126, 128, 191, 193, 195, 198, 328 Crusaders, 13, 178, 247, 259 Csanád, 145 Cumans, 12–15 Cupan, see Koppány Cyprus, 127, 198 Cyril, 14, 15, 54, 123, 127, 128, 134, 174, 180, 191, 197, 198, 204 Cyrillo-Methodian mission, see Moravian mission Czechs, 117, 125, 129, 132, 133, 328, 330 D Dacia, 114 Dagestan, 270 Dagobert, 115 Ḍ aḥḥāk bin Muzāḥim, 289

338 

INDEX

Dâhir raja, 308 Dalmatia, 128, 329 Damascus, 250, 275 Dandanakan, 316 Danes, 9, 21, 22, 28–30, 32, 34–36, 46–48, 59, 61–63, 73, 327 Danish, 6, 21, 22, 28–30, 32–36, 40, 49, 62, 63, 68, 69, 71, 72 Danube, 11, 12, 14–17, 19, 22, 23, 52, 54, 58, 74, 116, 126, 166–168, 191, 192, 195, 245, 246, 329 Darband, 271 Davhar, 308 Dâvûd bin Yazîd bin Hâtim, 310 Daybul, 302, 305, 307, 310 Delhi Sultanates, 317 Denmark, 6, 22, 27–30, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 45, 46, 48, 58–63, 66–68, 70, 329 Devín, 119, 122 Dnieper, 14, 15, 56, 221 Dniester, 194 Dobravka, 102, 103, 105, 330 Dobrich, 198 Dobrynya, 182 Dominicans, 78, 95 Don, 14, 18, 181, 194, 221, 225, 243, 244, 246 Dorestad, 59 Drahomira, 133 Drava, 116, 117, 129 Dukak, 245, 246 Durmuftun, 304 E Eastern Turkestan, 2 Eberhard of Bamberg, 81 Ebo of Reims, 28, 29, 59 Edhem, Ibrahim, 290

Edirne, 5, 194 Eger, 145 Egypt, 4, 7, 189, 243, 249, 252, 258 Egyptians, 4, 8 Elbe, 59 Eldagsen, 105 Elijah church of, 174 Elwangen, 125 Emaus Monastery, 128 Emeric, 143, 144, 158 Emund, 68 England, 32, 36, 40, 48, 65–67, 79, 89, 327, 329 Ephtalites, 238, 239, 270 Erik, Emune, 69, 72 Erik, Jedvardsson, 50, 51 Erimbert, 28, 30, 61 Eskilstuna, 41 Esztergom, 145, 154 Etelköz, 131 Ethiopia, 8 Etil, see Volga Etruscans, 3 Eucharist, 80 F Farab/Farabî, 294, 295 Fatimid, 313 Fehérvár, 146 Fergana, 238, 240, 276, 296 Finland, 50 Finnic, 21 Finnish, 50, 72, 74, 327 Firdawsî, 316 First Church Council, 53 France, 5, 7, 147 Francia, 14, 22, 28, 131 Franciscans, 78, 95 Frankish, 5, 7, 20–22, 24, 31, 51, 56–62, 66, 69, 108, 116–122,

 INDEX 

124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 146, 192, 193 Franks, 5–7, 10, 15–18, 20, 22, 24, 28, 55–61, 115–121, 124–126, 191–194, 197 Fricco, 49 Frisia, 21, 28, 31 Frisian, 122, 182 Friuli, 116 Frösön, 46 Fulda, 53, 58 Fundreah, 304 Funen, 66 G Galicia, 19 Gautbert, 28–30, 58–61 Gaza, 284, 285 Georgia, 7, 259, 270 Georgians, 4, 258 Gerard, 143, 153 Gerbrand of Roskilde, 67 German, 5, 6, 9, 17–19, 24, 30, 51, 60, 65, 66, 68, 89, 104, 109, 122, 124, 133, 142–144, 147, 157, 159, 174–177, 197, 198, 200, 329, 330 Germanic, 2, 5, 6, 11, 24, 52–54, 56, 58, 71–74, 113, 122 Germans, 5, 9, 17, 18, 30, 51, 89, 133, 174–177, 198, 329, 330 Germany, 7, 17, 88, 91, 114, 132 Géza, 84, 138, 139, 141, 145–147, 156–158, 329 Ghazna, 257, 311, 313, 315–317 Ghaznavids, 24, 224, 255–258, 296, 311–317 Ghulâms, 249–251 Ghur, 313 Giecz, 91, 110 Gisela, 130, 138, 143, 146, 330

339

Glagolitic, 18, 54, 121, 122, 128 Gleb, 178n5 Gnёzdovo, 174 Gniezno, 85, 86, 86n9, 90, 110 Golden Horde, 252 Gorazd, 128 Gord, 166 Gorm, 22, 33, 34, 36 Gospel, 56, 57, 78, 80, 82, 88, 94, 122, 150 Gotebald of Lund, 67 Gothia, 40, 64 Gothic, 41, 53, 54, 56, 58, 65, 72–74 Goths, 5, 52, 53, 56, 58, 73, 74 Gotland, 37, 170 Great Bulgaria, 11 Great Wall of China, 224 Greece, 3 Greeks, 3, 5, 8, 53, 55, 73, 167, 174–177, 179, 205, 238 Greenland, 328 Gregorian reform, 65, 150 Gregory the Great, 79, 96 Gregory IV, 29, 59, 61 Gregory V, 82 Gregory VII, 40, 50, 68, 70 Gunther from Altaich, 147 Gur, 313 Gurgân, 245 Győr, 145 H Hadramawt, 303 Hadrian II, 123, 206 Haemus, see Stara Planina Hajjaj, 307, 308 Hakam, bin Avâna, 305, 310 Hakîm, bin Jabala al-Abdî, 306 Håkon, 48 Halîl, bin Ahmad al-Siczî, 316

340 

INDEX

Hallaj Mansur, 290 Hamadan, 314 Hamburg, 21, 29–34, 36, 40, 45, 49, 50, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 67, 70 Hamburg, 21, 29, 59, 61, 62 Hamburg-Bremen see, 29–34, 36, 40, 45, 49, 50, 56, 58, 67, 70, 72, 330 Hamburg Church, 21 Hanafi, 222, 223, 232, 305, 312, 313, 316 Hanbali, 313 Han dynasty, 2 Haqan Urtuj, 279 Harald, 63 Harald Bluetooth, 21, 22, 34, 36, 46–48, 63, 66, 71, 93 Harald Hårdrade, 68 Harald Klak, 28 Hâris bin Murre al-Abdî, 306 Harold, 22, 47, 48, 63, 66 Harold Bluetooth, 66 Harun al-Rashid, 168 Hasdai bin Shaphrut, 14 Hashimids, 272 Hässelby, 40 Hedeby, 30, 32, 328 Hejaz, 8 Helgö, 31 Helmold of Bosau, 69 Henry I, 32, 62, 63, 70, 83, 85, 87, 88, 92, 94, 159, 329, 330 Henry II, 64, 67, 80, 82, 88, 109, 138, 330 Henry III, 68, 159 Henry IV, 68, 70 Henry of Merseburg, 85 Henry the Fowler, 63, 133 Heraclius, 167 Herat, 270, 290 Hergeir, 29, 30, 60, 61 Herigar, 57 Herstal, 116

Hildesheim, 105 Hindus, 311 Hisham bin Abd’al-Malik, 293 Caliph, 289 Hisham bin Amr, 309, 311 Holy Dexter, 148 Holy Lance, 142 Holy Land, 178 Holy Roman, 68 Holy See, 108, 123, 330 Hored of Ribe, 62 Horic I, 29, 30, 59, 60 Horic II, 59 Hrabanus, 53, 58 Hsiung-nu, 2 Hsüan-tsung Emperor, 276 Hubaee, 304 Hungarians, 11, 14, 15, 17–19, 78, 82–85, 89, 119, 131–133, 138, 140, 141, 143, 147, 156–159, 202, 223, 244 Hungary, 11, 12, 22, 24, 84, 92, 95, 96, 105, 119, 132, 134, 137–139, 141, 143–145, 147, 148, 152–155, 157, 158, 160, 161, 253, 329, 330 Huns, 11, 12, 113–115, 156, 166, 167, 172, 173, 238–240 Huttal, 218 I Iberia, 6 Iberian, 3, 266 Ibn Fadlan, Ahmad, 247, 254 Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 294 Ibn Zubayr ibn Zayd, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 219 Iceland, 46, 47, 67, 72 Icelanders, 46, 47 Icelandic, xi, 46–48, 62 Iconoclasm, 7

 INDEX 

Ignatius, 123 Igor, 168, 174, 178n5 Ilkhanids, 252 Illyria, 195 Illyricum, 122, 123, 125, 127, 193, 195, 196 India, 24, 215, 224, 243, 257, 287, 301–306, 308–312, 314–317, 325, 327 Indonesia, 302 Indus, 308, 309, 312 Ingelheim, 28, 63, 193 Inge the Older, 41 Innocent III, 206 Iran, 7, 8, 166, 169, 238, 245, 247, 249, 252, 257–261, 268, 270, 273, 292, 301, 307, 312, 314 Iraq, 249, 252, 275, 279, 290, 306–308 Ireland, 31, 37, 73 Irikkalur, 304 Iron Gates, 126 Isfijab, 241, 295 Ishak Baba, 290 Isleifr, 47 Ismael bin Yasar, 273 Ismāʿı ̄l ibn Aḥ/mad/, 217 Israel, 190 Bishop, 173 Israelites, 2 Israil Arslan, 256 Issyk Lake, 276, 295 Istria, 147 István I, see Stephen I Italy, 5, 7, 22, 78, 110, 200, 260 Itil, Khazar capital, 171 Ivan Alexander, 204, 206 J Ja’far ibn Muhammad, 216 See also Mutavakkil

341

Jämtland, 46, 49 Jand, 247, 255, 295 Japheth, 183 Jaroslav Modry, 86 Jaysiyya, 308 Jelling, 33, 34, 46, 48, 63, 71 Jerusalem, 152, 177, 201 Jesuits, 78, 95 Jesus, 5, 6, 153, 181, 216 Jewish, 13, 133, 160, 166, 168, 168n3, 170, 171, 173, 174, 177–183, 205, 219, 220, 226, 229, 254 Jews, 19, 160, 161, 166n1, 166n2, 168, 171, 173–180, 182, 183 Jihad, 230, 258, 285, 292, 295, 314 Jizyah, 248, 279, 284 John Chrysostom, 54 John IX, 130 John VIII, 108, 125, 127, 196, 206 John XIII, 108 Jordan, 103, 109 Joseph, Khazar, 14, 165, 180, 181, 183 Joshua the Son of Nun, 201 Judaic, 15, 131, 178n5, 253, 325 Judaism, 4, 14, 19, 160, 165, 168, 168n3, 170, 171, 172n4, 177–181, 183, 194, 215, 229, 244, 247, 267, 292, 295 Jumne, 73 Jurjan, 270 Justinian, 6, 113, 114, 166 Justinian II, 168, 169 Jutland, 28, 33, 34, 46, 59, 65 al-Juzjânî, Abd al-Khaliq, 316 K Kabaj Khatun, 240 Kabul, 310 Kadi Yahya bin Yamur, 289 Kâkavaih Alâ al-Dawlah, 315

342 

INDEX

Kalachs, 270 Kalat, see Kikan Kálmán, see Coloman Kalocsa, 145 Kaloyan, 206 Kama, 167, 220, 225, 226, 228, 232, 296 Kandabil, 307 Kandahar, 307, 311 Kangar, 243 Kanjercote, 304 Kao Hsien-chih General, 276, 277 Karachi, 302 Karaj, 308 Karakhanids, 23, 224, 237, 242, 250, 255, 256, 258, 260, 277, 286, 295, 296, 315 Kardam, 15 Karluks, 224, 242, 244, 270, 276, 277, 279, 295 Karmatî, 314 Karrâmî, 313, 314 Kars, 316 Kash, 306 Kashgar, 287, 296 Kashmir, 301, 308–310, 315 Kaukhan Peter, 123 Kaupang, 65 Kazakhstan, 245, 291, 297 Kazak steppe, 224, 225, 243 Kerala, see Malabar Kerman, 305 Khalîliya madrasah, 316 Khallaja, 226, 228 Khariji, 307 Khazaria, 12, 14, 15, 19, 165, 171, 172, 175, 176, 178–184, 194, 243–246, 250, 252–255, 287, 295 Khazars, 11, 14, 15, 17, 54, 121, 131, 165–174, 166n1, 168n3, 172n4,

177–184, 178n5, 194, 215, 219–221, 224, 226–230, 233, 243–247, 253–255, 266, 270, 271, 287 Khersones, 166n2, 168, 169, 171, 178n5 Khersonites, 169 Khorasan, 222, 224, 226, 229, 238, 239, 241, 242, 247, 255–259, 269, 270, 273–276, 278–280, 282, 285, 289–291, 295, 296, 308, 314, 317 Al-Khūlānı ̄, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn X, 219 Khulash, 232 Khwarazm, 176, 222, 223, 225, 226, 232, 247, 251, 256, 257, 296, 315 Khwarazmian, 222, 238, 254 Kiev, 12, 14, 17, 19, 21, 78, 81, 84–88, 91, 114, 128, 165, 167, 173–176, 178, 184, 215, 221, 225, 244, 246, 329 Kikan, 306, 311 Kimek, see Kipchaks Kipchaks, 243, 244, 246, 256, 257, 317 See also Cumans Knut the Great, 66, 67 Kocel, 118–120, 122, 123, 125, 129 Kodungallur, 303 Kök Türks, 238–243, 256, 266–270 Kollam, see Quilon Kolmar, 118 Kołobrzeg, 86–88 Konrad II, 67 Koppány, 139 Koran, 289, 296, 302, 312 Krakow, 126, 133 Kremsmünster, 119 Krum, 15, 116, 192, 193 Kubrat, 11, 167, 169, 173

 INDEX 

Kucha, 276 Kufah, 275 Kûhbâye, 307 Kuli, 46–48, 67 Kusdar, 307 Kuvrat, 220 Kyrghyz, 251 Kyrgyzstan, 276, 297 L Labbe, 304 Ladislas I, 143, 147, 160 Lahore, 306, 315, 316 Langobards, 5 Latins, 175, 176, 178 Law of Moses, 180 Lechfeld, 132, 133 Leo III, 168, 193, 195 Leodvin from Lotharingia, 147 Leontius, 86 Liafdag, 33, 62 Libice, 133 Liemar, 68, 70 Limousin, 91 Linköping, 41 Lithuanians, 327 Liutizi, 83, 87 Liutprand of Cremona, 55 Ljudevit, 116, 117 Lombard, 146 Lotharingian, 147 Louis II, 200 Louis the Child, 131 Louis the German, 59, 60, 117–120, 122, 125, 126, 129, 193, 200 Louis the Pious, 22, 28, 55, 57–59, 116–118, 182, 193 Lund, 36, 40, 45, 66, 70, 71 Lusatia, 129 Luticians, 109 Lysogorsky, 173

343

M Macedonia, 16 Madain, 238 Madinah, 266, 272, 303, 304 Magdeburg, 330 Magyar, 11, 12, 17, 84, 107, 130–132, 194, 198, 202, 327, 328 See also Hungarians Mahdî Caliph, 278, 309 Muhammad, Prophet, 238 of Ghazna, 257, 310, 312–317 Makran, 305, 307 Malabar, 302–304 Malaja Pereschepina, 169, 172 Malamir, 116 Mälar, 29, 67 Malaysia, 302 Malik bin Dinar, 304 Malik bin Habib, 304 Maliki, 313 Mamlûk of Egypt, 252 Ma’mun, 219, 248 caliph, 309 Ma’mûn bin Ma’mûn, 315 Mangalore, 304 Manichaeism, 248, 267, 268, 292 Manzikert battle of, 259 Mappila, see Moplahs Margrave Aribo, 129 Margrave Arnulf, 119 Margrave Ernest, 120 Marv, 222, 270, 275, 287, 289, 290 Marv al-Rud, 270 Marwān, 172, 219, 244, 275 Mary, 216 Mas’ud of Ghazna, 257, 316 Maturidi, 294, 313

344 

INDEX

Mavara al-Nahr, see Transoxiana Mawali, 272–280, 282–284 Mecca, 172, 231, 232, 238, 266, 272, 290, 303 Medes, 2 Madinah, 4 Mediterranean, 1, 3, 8, 52, 73, 113, 166, 291, 302 Memleben, 109 Meserizi, 78 Mesopotamia, 8 Messiah, 181, 182 Methodius, 15, 18, 79, 121–124, 126–129, 133, 134, 175, 191, 197, 198, 204, 329, 330 Michael III, 120, 123, 175, 205 Mieczyslaw, see Mieszko Mieszko, 101 Mieszko I, 39, 101–110, 133, 330, 331 Mı ̄kāʾı ̄l ibn Jaʿfar, 218 son of Saljuk, 256, 257 Mikulčice, 117, 120, 128, 131 Mojmir I, 117–119 Mojmir II, 130, 131 Mojmirids, 106, 108, 117, 131, 132 Moldavia, 128, 131 Molzbichl, 105 Mongolia, 2, 241, 247, 251, 266 Mongolians, 1, 219, 252, 260 Mongols, 1, 13 Moplahs, 303, 305 Morava, 117 Moravia, 13, 15, 17, 18, 24, 107, 115–122, 124–134, 175, 197, 328, 329 Moravian Mission, 120–130, 134 Moravians, 18, 19, 106, 107, 117, 118, 120, 121, 124–126, 128–132, 328 Moravian School, 126, 128, 129 Mosaburg, 119

Mu‘awiyah, 272, 273, 303, 306 Mugirah bin Abi al-Âsî, 305 Muhallab bin Abî Sufra, 306 Muhammad, 4 Prophet, 230, 266, 272 Muhammad, Abû Bakr, 269, 305, 314 Muhammad, al-Alâfî, 307 Muhammad bin Abî Muhammad, 317 Muhammad bin Harun al-Namrî, 307 Muhammad ibn ʿIraq, 222 Muhammad bin Omar bin Ali al-Najjâr al-Zarîr, 316 Muhammad bin Qasim, 307, 308, 310 Muhammad bin Sul, 274, 278 Muhammad bin Vasi, 289 Muhammad, Mashuk Tûsî, 290 Muhtadî, 251 Muktafiʿ Bil/lāh, 217 Multan, 308–310, 314, 315 Muntasir, 250 Munzir bin Jârud, 307 Muqtadir-billah, 215, 216, 221, 231 Murawee, 304 Murom, 232 Musa bin Ka’b, 309, 311 Musta’în, 250 Mu’tasim, 277, 279 Mutavakkil, 250 caliph, 310 Mu’tazz, 250 N Nadhir al-Harami, 222 Nahum, 128 Nandana, 315 Napilla, 304 Narâdîn, see Nandana Nasr bin Sayyar, 275, 279 Naum, 191 Nemzi, 177 Nestorian, 73, 267

 INDEX 

Nethimir, 78, 92, 93 Nevai, 304 Neyrûn, 310 Nicea, 259 Nicephorus I, 192 Nicholas I, 61, 62, 66, 68, 79, 121, 195, 196, 200, 206 Nidaros, 45, 67, 71 Niemcza, 109 Nihavand, 270 battle of, 238 Nishabur, 270, 275, 290, 313, 316 Nithard, 28, 29 Nitra, 117–119, 124, 125, 127, 130 Nitravians, 117, 118 Nitrian, 118, 119, 124, 132 Nizamiyya madrasa, 317 Nizek, 240, 270 Nordalbingians, 61 Normandy, 327 Normans, 22 Norse, 32, 33, 35, 36, 40, 56 Norsemen, 27, 31, 33 Norsemen, see Northmen Northern Donets, 172 Northmen, 27, 31, 33, 48, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59 Norway, 21, 22, 34, 45–49, 65, 67, 68, 152, 328, 329 Norwegians, 73 Novgorod, 14, 21, 51, 244, 328 Nuh bin Nasr, 315 Nūḥ ibn al-Sāʾib al-Asad, 219 O Obodrites, 105 Odinkar the Older, 33 Oghuz, 23, 222, 224, 226, 237, 243–247, 251–260, 278, 279, 316 Oguric, 131 Okhrid, 202, 205

345

Olav, 40, 48, 73 Olav Haraldsson, 48, 65, 67, 331 Olav Tryggvason, 48, 67 Olef, Swedish king, 60 Oleg, 174, 178n5 Olga, 19, 174, 176, 178, 178n5 Olof Eriksson, 22, 64, 65 Olof Skötkonung, 30, 32, 38–40, 65, 89, 90, 95 Oman, 302, 304, 305 Omar bin Abd al-Aziz al-Habbârî, 279, 283, 289, 309, 310 Caliph, 269–271, 279, 304, 305 Omundesberg, 130 Omurtag, 15, 22, 116 Ongendus, 28 Onogurs, 17, 244 On Ok, 241 Orthodox/Orthodoxy, 5, 7, 13, 73, 86, 113, 134, 139, 146, 179, 182, 198, 206, 259 Oslo, 67 Osmund, 68 Osnabrück, 59 Östman Gudfastarson, 46, 49 Ostrogoths, 5, 53, 65 Ostrów Lednicki, 103, 105, 106, 110 Ostrów Tumski, 105, 109 Otto I, 24, 132, 133, 144, 176 Otto II, 109, 176 Otto III, 65, 84, 89, 330 Otto of Bamberg, 95 Ottomans, 247 Ottonians, 46, 65, 78, 108, 109, 138, 142, 147 Ötüken, 268 Ovche pole, 198 Oxus, see Amu Darya P Paikent, 287, 295 Pakistan, 257, 301, 312, 317

346 

INDEX

Pannonhalma, 145 Pannonia, 7, 113–118, 121, 122, 124, 129–131, 144, 157, 160, 328 Pantalayini, 304 Papacy, 7, 13, 16, 24, 28, 61, 68, 70, 113, 119, 123, 125, 127, 134, 148, 191, 193, 194, 198, 206, 330 Papal, 13, 123, 125, 195 Paschalis I, 28 Passau, 116, 118, 119, 124, 128, 144, 147 Patria Onogoria, 11, 17 Paul apostle, 176 Paul of Ancona, 125 Pax Khazarica, 15 Pax Romana Christiana, 195 Pechenegs, 11–15, 17, 18, 20, 80, 83–87, 89, 93, 94, 96, 131, 144, 225, 229, 243–246, 253, 259 Pécs, 83, 145 Pereum, 80, 81 Persia, 73, 274, 305 Persian Gulf, 302 Persian, Bulgar khan, 117, 195 Persians, 2, 8, 114, 238, 240, 247, 258, 260, 268, 269, 273–275, 291, 303, 305, 314 Perumal, see Chiraman Perun, 174 Peter, Hungarian, 159 Peter Orseolo, 154 Petur I, 205 Phanagoria, 168, 171 Photius, 54, 121, 123, 127, 173, 196 Piast, 39, 85, 86, 88, 102, 106, 107, 109, 133, 134 Piligrim, 144 Pliska, 127, 202 Polabia, 105, 133

Poland, 13, 17, 22, 24, 39, 64, 85, 86, 88, 91, 92, 101–103, 105–107, 109, 114, 133, 134, 147, 329, 330 Poles, 17, 86, 94, 101, 330 Polish, xiii, 18, 39, 77n1, 78, 80, 82, 86n9, 88, 95, 101, 102, 104, 104n1, 105, 107, 126, 133, 142, 330, 331 Pomerania, 95, 104n1 Pomeranians, 87, 88, 90, 104n1 Pontus, 221 Poppo, 34, 46, 86n9, 93 Poznań, 103, 105–107, 109, 110 Praemonstratensian, 146 Prague, 81–83, 85, 87, 88, 93, 94, 105, 107, 108, 125, 128, 133, 134, 330 Přemysl, 129 Přemyslids, 125, 130, 132–134 Presbyter John, 127 Preslav, 202 Pressburg, see Bratislava Pribina, 117–120, 127, 129 Prophet, 4, 201, 202, 216, 219, 238, 266, 269, 272, 274, 291, 301–305, 313 Prussia, 80, 82 Prussians, 64, 81, 85, 88, 90–92, 94, 134 Psalter, 56 Pskov, 174 Q Qadisiyyah battle of, 238 Qadi Yahya bin Yamur, 289 Qadr Billâh caliph, 314, 315 Qapgan, 241

 INDEX 

Quedlinburg, 91, 92, 138, 193 Quilon, 304 Quraysh, 272 Qutaibah, 240, 241, 278, 283, 285, 288, 289, 308 R Rabî bin Ziyâd, 306 Radbod, 118, 120, 182 Radim-Gaudentius, 81, 85, 91 Radla, 84, 96 Râfizî, 314 Ragenbert, 30 Rahj, 306 Rajastan, 308 Ramaḍān, 161 Râshid bin Amr al-Judaydî, 307 Rasil, 306 Rastislav, 119, 120, 122–126, 175 Ratmir, 117 Ravenna, 52, 80, 81, 83, 89, 95 Regensburg, 124, 125, 147, 193 Reginbrand of Aarhus, 62 Reginhar, 118, 119 Reinbern, 81, 83, 86–88, 90, 93–96 Reinbern of Kołobrzeg, 83, 86n9 Rey, 314 Rhineland, 147 Ribats, 290 Ribe, 33, 59, 66, 328 Rimbert, 28, 30, 31, 57, 59–62 Roman, 3–5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 24, 31, 52–54, 56, 58, 60, 64, 67, 74, 80, 81, 93, 123, 127, 138, 144, 157, 160, 168–170, 173, 175, 178, 178n5, 192, 194–197, 200, 201, 246, 259, 329, 330 Roman Empire, 4, 5, 7, 11, 24, 53, 64, 68, 74, 109, 113, 114, 132, 134, 192, 205, 247, 330 Romanos Diogenes, 259

347

Rome, 1, 3, 5, 7, 16, 19, 20, 24, 36, 52, 58, 59, 65, 67, 68, 91, 114, 121–123, 132, 174, 176, 177, 193, 195, 196, 199–202, 204, 206, 244, 249, 324 Romuald, 82–85, 91, 95 Roskilde, 66, 67 Routger, 46, 63, 64 Rügen, 69, 72 Rurik, 178n5 Rus’, ix, xii, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 24, 55, 56, 85, 86, 88, 90–92, 114, 128, 165, 166, 172–177, 178n5, 182–184, 194, 215, 225, 227, 230, 244, 246, 329 S Sabriel, 178n5 Sabûnî madrasah, 316 Al-Saffah, Abû al-Abbas, 275 Sâgir bin Zu’r, 306 Sahban, 308 Saîd bin Aslem al-Kilâbî, 307 Said bin Uthman, 239 St. Andronicus, 123 St. Emmeram, 118, 119, 127 St. Gallen monastery, 182 Saint-Gilles monastery of, 147 St. Jerome, 128 St. Michael the Archangel, 200, 201 St. Peter's Basilica, 123, 199 St. Prokop, 128 St. Vit, 72, 73 St. Vit Cathedral, 133 Saka, see Scythians al-Sakafi, Amr bin Muhammad, 311 Saksin, 222, 228 Saljukids, 256–259, 296, 317 Saljuks, 224, 246, 247, 250, 254–258

348 

INDEX

Sallām, 220 Salm bin Ziyad, 239 Salonica, 121 Saltov, 172 Saltovo-Mayatsk, 168, 170, 172 Salzburg, 115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 124, 126 Samanids, 176, 217, 222–225, 233, 248, 250, 255, 256, 280, 286, 287, 289, 295, 296, 311, 314, 315 Samaritans, 2 Samarkand, 239–241, 256, 272, 276, 286, 287, 289, 291 Samarra, 249, 251 Samo, 115 Sandomierz, 107 Ṣaqāliba, 215, 219, 221, 226, 227, 229 Saracens, 180, 181 Sarahs, 270 Sarkel, 170, 171, 181, 246 Sassanian, 7, 8, 166, 268 Sassanids, 167, 169, 238, 240, 268–271, 305 Satuk bin Bazir, see Satuk Buğra Satuk Buğra, 286 Sava, 117, 194 Savian, 116, 117, 119, 131 Savian Principality, 116 Savran, 295 Saxons, 24, 28, 34, 39, 46, 56, 59, 69, 72, 73, 79, 91, 122, 132–134 Saxony, 17, 24, 56, 105, 109, 110 Sayram, see Isfijab Sazava, 128 Scandinavia, 21, 27, 36, 40, 45, 49, 51–54, 56, 57, 60, 65, 67, 68, 70–72, 74, 89, 225, 226, 327 Scandinavians, 21, 22, 28, 39, 45, 48, 51, 52, 56, 57, 60, 65, 68, 70–73, 107, 178n5, 244, 327–330

Scania, 40 Schleswig, 59, 62, 65 Sclaviniae, 114 Scythia, 52–54, 56, 58, 72, 74 Scythians, 3, 7, 53, 56, 58 Sebük Tegin, 311, 314 Second Bulgarian Tsardom, 190, 199, 203, 204 Semirechie, 224 Seraphin, 154 Serbia, 24, 128 Serbian, 13, 197 Serbs, 20, 114, 117, 120, 123, 126, 191, 193, 195, 197, 198 Serendib, see Sri Lanka Shafi, 222, 313, 316 Shahrbaraz, 271 Shakik Balkhi, 290 Shaleeat, 304 Shamans, 290 Shash, 241 See also Tashkent Shihr, 303 Shi’i, 291 Shiism, 305, 309, 313 Shu’ubiyyah, 274, 293 Siberia, 226, 243, 251 Siberian, 296 Sicily, 22, 195 Sigtuna, 38, 40, 41, 65, 67 Sijistan, 305, 307, 316 Silesia, 126, 133 Šilki, 216, 217 Silk Road, 225, 286 Silvester II, 90 Simeon, 130, 131, 205 Sinan bin Salama, 307 Sind, 302, 303, 305–311 Sir Darya, 238, 243, 256, 279, 295 Sirmium, 123, 124 Sisak, 116 Sistan, 270

 INDEX 

Skåne, 66 Skara, 40, 41, 64, 89 Skirigssal, 65 Slavic, 2, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 18, 20, 21, 24, 73, 107, 113–117, 119–128, 132, 133, 138, 174, 175, 178, 179, 195, 244, 246, 328, 329 Slavnikids, 133, 134 Slavomir, 124, 125 Slavonic, 54–56, 71, 73, 74, 81, 106, 121, 122 Slavs, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16, 18, 29, 54, 73, 114–117, 123, 127, 128, 130, 132, 134, 244, 327, 329 Slesvig, 33 Slovakia, 114, 117 Slovenes, 117, 328 Slovenians, 128 Sogdians, 238–242, 247, 286 Sorbs, 126, 129, 130 Spain, 5, 301, 308 Spytihněv, 130, 132, 133 Spytihněv I, 105 Sri Lanka, 303–305 Stara Planina, 192, 197 Stephen I, 83, 84, 95, 132, 138, 139, 141–148, 151, 153–157, 159, 328, 330, 331 Stephen V, 128 Stockholm, 32, 33 Storsjön, 46 Strängnes, 41 Sueones, 55, 57, 58, 61 Sueonia, 49, 57, 58, 60–62 Sufis, 280, 290, 291 Sufyan Servi, 290 Suleiman caliph, 308 Su-lu, 241, 285, 293 Sun City, 199, 201, 202 Sunnah, 313, 314, 317 Sunni, 222, 291, 305, 313, 314

349

Suraka bin Amr, 271 Suvars, 202, 220, 222, 223, 228, 232 Svantevit, 69, 72, 73 Svatopluk, 108, 119, 123–130 Svatopluk II, 130 Svatožižna, 125, 130 Svear, 28–30, 32, 37, 39, 40 Sven Estridsson, 36, 39, 40, 66, 68, 70 Sven Forkbeard, 66, 67 Sven Grathe, 73 Sven Haraldsen, 39 Sviatoslav, 19, 174, 177, 182, 230, 246 Svitjod, 29–32, 38–41 See also Sweden Svyatopolk, 86 Swabia, 125 Sweden, 21, 22, 27–33, 36, 40, 41, 45, 46, 49, 50, 58, 60, 61, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71, 96, 105, 328 Swedes, 21, 40, 61, 64, 73, 89, 328 Switzerland, 105 Sylvester II, 132, 330 Synod of Esztergom, 148–151, 155–156 Synod of Szabolcs, 148, 151, 161 Syria, 249, 259, 275, 290, 303 Syriac, 4 TTabaristan, 315 Tagino of Magdeburg, 85 Tahirids, 248 Taksony, 158 Talas, 242, 276, 277 Taman, 168 T’ang, 276 Tanna, 302, 305, 306 Taraz, 224, 276, 295 Tarcal Council of, 154 Tarhun al-Jammâl, 274, 279 Tarhun bin al-Zai, 274, 279

350 

INDEX

Tariq bin Ziyad, 308 Tarnovo, 205, 206 Tasawwuf, 290 Tashkent, 241, 276, 291 Tassilo of Bavaria, 119 Tatar, 219 Tbilisi, 238 Tekin, 222 Tengri, 267, 277, 292 Termez, 240 Tervel, 168 Theodora, 168 Theodosius the Great, 192 Thessaloniki, 195 Thessaly, 194 Thietmar of Merseburg, 63, 66, 109 Thietmar of Prague, 108, 134 Thietmar of Salzburg, 132 Thor, 35, 40, 49 Thorgny, 65 Thurgot, 40, 64, 65 Tien-shan, 277 Tigris, 238 Timociani, 116 Timurid, 317 Tisza, 116, 126, 127, 194 Tocharian, 203 Togarmah, 181, 183 Tokharistan, 238, 241, 270, 276 Tokmak, 276 Tomis, 52–54 Tou-lu, 270 Tourkia, 141, 259 Traismauer, 119 Transoxiana, 222–225, 232, 238–243, 247, 248, 251, 255, 256, 269, 270, 272, 273, 276, 277, 279, 280, 282, 285, 287, 290, 291, 295, 308, 311, 317 Transylvania, 115, 127, 130, 131, 145, 328 Traungau, 118

Trondheim, 45, 67, 71 Tsimlyansk, 170 Tuğrul, 257, 258 Tukhsi, 279, 295 Tulln, 129 Türgish, 241, 243, 247, 248, 276, 285, 293 Turgot, 89 Turkic, 2, 3, 13, 21, 24, 131, 168, 169, 178, 181, 183, 220, 224, 228, 231, 237–240, 243, 245–247, 249–253, 255, 258–260, 265–296, 311, 316, 317, 325 Turkmenistan, 245, 260, 297 Turkmens, 256, 257, 259, 260 Turks, 9, 10, 18, 21, 24, 167, 169, 222, 227, 237–242, 244, 247–252, 256, 258–260, 265–281, 283, 284, 286–288, 290–296, 315 U Ubaydullah bin Ziyad, 239, 269, 278, 288 Ugrians, see Hungarians Uhud, 269 Ukraine, 17, 131, 203, 244, 246 Umayyads, 4, 215, 224, 242, 244, 248, 269, 272–277, 279–283, 287–289, 291, 293, 303, 306–309 Unger, 85, 86n9, 109 Unni, 32–34, 58, 62, 63 Unwan of Bremen, 40, 67 Uppåkra, 65 Uppland, 33, 50, 89 Uppsala, 29, 32, 39–41, 45, 49–51, 64, 65, 67, 71, 89, 90, 329 Uralic Mountains, 131

 INDEX 

Urals, 194, 237 Useyfân, 310 Ustrushana, 241 Uthman bin Abi al-Âsî al-Sakafî, 305 Caliph, 269–272, 306 Uyghurs, 242, 247, 251, 266 Uzbekistan, 297, 312 Uznach, 105 V Vaclav I, 133 Václav of Bohemia, 329 Vajk, 17 Valens, 5 Valsta, 40 Van Lake, 259 Vandals, 5, 53 Varangians, 14, 15, 19, 174, 177, 178n5, 244, 246 Varyags, 328 Västerås, see Aros Västergötland, 39, 64 Vata rebellion of, 132 Velehrad, 117, 121, 122, 126, 128 Veneti, 114 Venice, 123 Verdun Treaty, 118 Veszprém, 145 Veszprémvölgy, 146 Vienna Woods, 129 Vikings, 21, 22, 27, 29, 30, 40, 49, 56, 60, 327 Virgin Mary, 143, 146, 147, 153 Visigoths, 53, 65 Vistulians, 126 Vitmar, 29 Vitus, 69, 73 Vladimir, 89 Vladimir (Rasate), 130, 197

351

Vladimir, of Kiev, 16, 19, 80, 84, 86, 90, 95, 165, 167, 173–179, 178n5, 182–184, 331 Vlakhs, 175 Vogatisburg, 115 Vojnomir, 116 Vojteh, 134 Volga, 16, 19, 23, 165–167, 175, 176, 215–224, 226–228, 230–232, 237, 243–246, 251–254, 287, 295, 296 Volhynia, 19 Voznesenka, 169, 170 Vratislav I, 132, 133 Vyshesteblievka, 168 W Walafrid Strabo, 53, 54, 56, 58, 73, 74 Wallachia, 128 Wātiq, 220 Weichel, 58 Wenceslaus, see Vaclav I Westphalia, 31 White Hun, see Ephtalite Wiching, 127 Widukind of Corvey, 32, 34, 36, 46, 47, 63, 93 Wilhelm I, 118 William the Conqueror, 22 Willibrod of Northumbria, 28 Winfrid-Bonifatius, 122 Wisu, 227 Witmar, 57, 58 Wolfred, 40 Wotan, 49 Y Yabgu of the Oghuz, 239, 246, 247, 254–256

352 

INDEX

Yaghma, 279, 295 Yazdgard, 270 Yemen, 8, 304, 305 Yezdgerd, 238 Yiltawār, 216, 218, 228 Yınal the Little, 254 York, 66 Yunus bin Tahir al-Nasîrî, 316 Yusuf Hamadanî, 316

Z Zâbul, 306 Zaraftan, 304 Zaranj, 306 Ziyad bin Abihî, 307 Ziyad bin Salih, 276 Zobor, 127 Zoroastrian, 8, 247 Zoroastrianism, 267, 268, 292 Zuts, 302, 310