Eurasian Avars

The Caucasian Avars are a modern people of Caucasus, mainly of Dagestan.

The Eurasian Avars were a nomadic people of Eurasia, supposedly of proto-Mongolian Turkic stock, who migrated from western Asia into central and eastern Europe in the 6th century. The Avar rule persisted over much of the Pannonian plain up to the early 9th century.

History

Avars were driven westward when the Gokturks defeated the Hephthalites in the 550s and the 560s. They entered Europe in the sixth century and, having been bought off by the Eastern Emperor Justinian I, pushed north into Germany (as Attila the Hun had done a century before).

Finding the country unsuited to their nomadic lifestyle (and the Franks stern opponents), they turned their attention to the Pannonian plain, which was then being contested by two Germanic tribes, the Lombards and the Gepids. Siding with the Lombards, they destroyed the Gepids in 567 and established a state in the Danube River area. Their harassment soon (ca. 568) forced the Lombards into northern Italy, a migration that marked the last Germanic migration in the Migrations Period. The Avar leader from c. 565 to c. 600 was called Bayan.

Under pressure from the Turks at the close of the 6th century, the new leadership in Byzantium began to distinguish the Pannonian Avars as pseudo-avars whose real designation should be Varchonites. Avars turned against the Eastern Roman Empire which had employed Avar mercenaries to combat attacks from other steppe tribes. Avars sought new allies and in 626, the Avars and the Persians besieged but failed to capture Constantinople. Following their defeat at Constantinople the Avars retreated to Pannonia.

As the Hegemony of the Western Turkic Empire crumbled, the Onogur dynasty was founded by Kubrat around 630, a man of Avar-Bulgar heritage from the Bulgar Dulo clan. He united the Avars, the Bulgars and probably also the Uar (Hephthalites) in a powerful Khaganate that also ruled over areas of today's Ukraine. The Bulgar warlords broke off the alliance with the Avars soon after Kubrat's death. The Avar state persisted in Pannonia throughout the 7th and 8th century, and the Avars are presumed to have mostly controlled the Slavs who had lived in the area since a few decades before the Avar arrival.

By the early 9th century, internal discord and the external pressure started to undermine the Avar state. The Avars were finally liquidated during the 810s by the Franks under Charlemagne and the Bulgars under Krum. Their presence in Pannonia is still certain in 871 but then that name is no longer used by chroniclers. The Avars are also likely to have merged with Slavs, who had formed new states in the region: the principality of Nitra in the north (later Great Moravia), and the Balaton Principality in the central parts of Pannonia.

Some theorize that Avars were the first tribe to introduce the stirrup to Europe. However, the subject is under debate and other candidates for the importers include the Huns.

List of Avar Rulers

Anthropological origins

There are several popular points of origin suggested for the Avar peoples:

• the Caucasus - as a branch of the Proto-Iberians or Alarodians
• the Hindu Kush, around present-day Kabul - associated with the Juan-Juan, Uar and Hepthalites
• the region beyond the Jaxartes (Transiaxartesia), around Lake Balkhash in today's eastern Kazakhstan - associated with the Parni

Perhaps a suitable synthesis of these ideas may be that they were originally inhabitants of Khwarezmia, and had thus influence in all three areas.

The skeletons found in European Avar graves are mostly Mongolian¹, but many items usually associated with Hebrews have been found with them². Whether they had some kind of Hebraic origin connected to the quasi-"Jewish" tribes discovered in China and were a major influence in Khazaria, or were simply influenced by the alleged Khazar conversion, is a question demanding further investigation. Others have described them as "Armenoid", loosely described as 'similar to a Mongolian type with prominent noses'.

References

• Note 1: Istvan Erdelyi's "Kabari (Kavari) v Karpatskom Basseyne", specifically page 179 from Sovietskaya Archeologiya 4 (1983)
• Note 2: A. Scheiber "Jewish inscriptions in Hungary from the 3rd Century to 1686" (1983); V.L.Vikhnovich "From the Jordan to the Dnieper" from Jewish Studies 31 (1991)
• E. Breuer "Chronological Studies to Early-Medieval Findings at the Danube Region. An Introduction to Byzantine Art at Barbaric Cemeteries." (Tettnang 2005)