page_title: Alternative theories of the location of Great Moravia
section_title: Byzantine texts
hierarchical_section_title: Alternative theories of the location of Great Moravia / Southern Moravia of Imre Boba / Byzantine texts
caption_attribution_description: Gold Solidus of Constantin VII Porphyrogenetos, 913-959
context_page_description: Alternative theories of the location of Great Moravia propose that the core territory of "Great Moravia", a 9th-century Slavic polity, was not located in the region of the northern Morava River. Moravia emerged after the fall of the Avar Khaganate in the early 9th century. It flourished during the reign of Svatopluk I in the second half of the century, but collapsed in the first decade of the 10th century. "Great Moravia" was regarded as an archetype of Czechoslovakia, the common state of the Czechs and Slovaks, in the 20th century, and its legacy is mentioned in the preamble to the Constitution of Slovakia.
  Several aspects of its history are the subject of scholarly disputes. A debate about the location of its core territory began in the second half of the 20th century. Imre Boba proposed that the center of Moravia was located near the southern Morava River. Most specialists rejected Boba's theory, but it was further developed by other historians, including Charles Bowlus and Martin Eggers.
context_section_description: Emperor Constantine VII mentioned "great Moravia" four times in his De administrando imperio. According to his catalogue of the peoples that were the neighbors of the Hungarians, "great Moravia, the country of Sphendoplokos" was located to the south of the Principality of Hungary. When listing the "landmarks and names along the Danube river", Constantine stated that "great Moravia, the unbaptized ... over which in former days Sphendoplokus used to rule." lay beyond Trajan's Bridge, Sirmium and Belgrade. According to Boba, all descriptions show that Constantine thought that Moravia had been situated in the wider region of Trajan's Bridge (in present-day Drobeta-Turnu Severin in Romania), Belgrade and Sirmium. The Hungarian historian Sándor László Tóth says that Constantine, who knew that the Hungarians had occupied Moravia, most probably described Moravia based on his information of the Hungarians' land around 950, instead of using earlier sources.
  Florin Curta says that primary sources show that Moravia could not be located in the region of Sirmium. The Life of Methodius recorded that the "koroljъ ugrъrъsk came to the lands of the Danube" and Methodius went to see him. According to Curta, the episode refers to a meeting between a "Magyar king" and Methodius during Methodius's journey to or from the Byzantine Empire in 881 or 882. This would make the southern location of Moravia impossible, because Methodius would not have approached the region of the Lower Danube (dominated by the Magyars in the 880s) if he had travelled between Sirmium and Constantinople. Many scholars (including Marvin Kantor, the translator of the Life of Methodius) say that the koroljъ ugrъrъsk was actually Emperor Charles the Fat; if their interpretation is valid, Methodius met the emperor in East Francia. According to Curta, the Life of St. Clement of Ohrid, a hagiography attributed to Theophylact of Ohrid who died in 1126, suggests that Methodius's three disciples, Clement, Naum and Angelarius, approached the Danube from the north before crossing the river at Belgrade during their flight from Moravia to the Byzantine Empire after Methodius's death.
caption: Gold solidus of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus: his work (De administrando imperio) is the only primary source containing the expression "great Moravia"
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