Why were the magyars important

Their impact gradually lessened, but they still watched for disorder in the lands of the East Franks, the eastern part of the old empire of Charlemagne, and serious trouble between the local warlords could prompt a Magyar incursion.

He considered himself the successor of Charlemagne and began to reduce his subordinate lords to obedience, with the support of the Church, which much preferred order to anarchy. Other lords joined them and the Magyars saw an opportunity. An estimated horde of over 50, stormed through Bavaria and Franconia in They crossed the Rhine to devastate north-eastern France and ride south through Burgundy into Lombardy before returning home.

In they returned and menaced Augsburg in Swabia. They closed ranks behind Otto, who led an army drawn from Bavaria, Swabia, Bohemia and Lorraine to confront the Magyars. Some scholars argue that they engaged in agriculture beginning in the second millennium B. Before the fifth century A. Later, probably under pressure from hostile tribes to the east, they migrated to the area between the Don and lower Dnepr rivers. There they lived close to, and perhaps were dominated by, the Bulgar-Turks from about the fifth to the seventh century.

During this period, the Magyars became a semisedentary people who lived by raising cattle and sheep, planting crops, and fishing. The Bulgar-Turkish influence on the Magyars was significant, especially in agriculture. Most Hungarian words dealing with agriculture and animal husbandry have Turkic roots. By contrast, the etymology of the word Hungary has been traced to a Slavicized form of the Turkic words on ogur, meaning "ten arrows," which may have referred to the number of Magyar tribes.

The Magyars lived on lands controlled by the Khazars a Turkish people whose realm stretched from the lower Volga and the lower Don rivers to the Caucasus from about the seventh to the ninth century, when they freed themselves from Khazar rule. The Khazars attempted to reconquer the Magyars both by themselves and with the help of the Pechenegs, another Turkish tribe. This tribe drove the Magyars from their homes westward to lands between the Dnepr and lower Danube rivers in However, the Bulgars emerged victorious.

Their allies, the Pechenegs, attacked the weakened Magyars and forced them westward yet again in or This migration took the Magyars over the Carpathian Mountains and into the basin drained by the Danube and Tisza rivers, a region that corresponds roughly to present-day Hungary. Romans, Goths, Huns, Slavs, and other peoples had previously occupied the region, but at the time of the Magyar migration, the land was inhabited only by a sparse population of Slavs, numbering about ,