page_title: Hungary
section_title: Before 895
hierarchical_section_title: Hungary / History / Before 895
caption_attribution_description: English: Hungarian warrior (10th century) from Patriarchate of Aquileia (fresco)
context_page_description: Hungary is a country in Central Europe. Spanning 93,030 square kilometres in the Carpathian Basin, it borders Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and Slovenia to the southwest, and Austria to the west. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a medium-sized member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken Uralic language in the world, and among the few non-Indo-European languages to be widely spoken in Europe. Hungary's capital and largest city is Budapest; other major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs, and Győr.
  The territory of present Hungary was for centuries inhabited by a succession of peoples, including Celts, Romans, Germanic tribes, Huns, West Slavs and the Avars. The foundations of the Hungarian state were established in the late ninth century AD by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád following the conquest of the Carpathian Basin. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended the throne in 1000, converting his realm to a Christian kingdom.
context_section_description: The Roman Empire conquered the territory west of the Danube River between 35 and 9 BC. From 9 BC to the end of the 4th century AD, Pannonia, the western part of the Carpathian Basin, was part of the Roman Empire. After the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century AD under the stress of the migration of Germanic tribes and Carpian pressure, the Migration Period continued to bring many invaders into Central Europe, beginning with the Hunnic Empire (c. 370–469). The most powerful ruler of the Hunnic Empire was Attila the Hun (434–453) who later became a central figure in Hungarian mythology. After the disintegration of the Hunnic Empire, the Gepids, an Eastern Germanic tribe, who had been vassalized by the Huns, established their own kingdom in the Carpathian Basin. Other groups which reached the Carpathian Basin in the Migration Period were the Goths, Vandals, Lombards, and Slavs. In the 560s, the Avars founded the Avar Khaganate, a state that maintained supremacy in the region for more than two centuries. The Franks under Charlemagne defeated the Avars in a series of campaigns during the 790s. By the mid-9th century, the Balaton Principality, also known as Lower Pannonia, was established west of the Danube river as part of the Frankish March of Pannonia. The First Bulgarian Empire conquered the lands east of the Danube river and took over rule of the local Slavic tribes and remnants of the Avars.
caption: Italian fresco depicting a Hungarian warrior shooting backwards
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