page_title: Kunság
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Kunság / History / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Louis I of Hungary
context_page_description: Kunság is a historical, ethnographic and geographical region in Hungary, corresponding to a former political entity created by and for the Cumans or Kuns. It is currently divided between the counties of Bács-Kiskun and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok; these correspond roughly to two distinct traditional entities, Little Cumania and Greater Cumania, which are longitudinally separated by the Tisza. Kunság and its subdivisions were first organized by the Kingdom of Hungary to accommodate semi-nomadic Cumans escaping from the Mongol Empire. The Cuman enclaves were sometimes incorporated with Jazygia, which was similarly set up and named for Ossetian nomads.
  Kunság was the result of a second and final Cuman colonization in Hungary; while not the only Cuman-inhabited area, it remained the only center of Cuman self-rule after the end of Arpadian Hungary. Tradition dates its emergence to 1279, when Ladislaus IV, a half-Cuman King of Hungary, granted its first set of fiscal and judicial privileges. These were confirmed in the 15th century, when Cumans began organizing themselves into "seats" overseen by a Palatine of the Kingdom.
context_section_description: Following the Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1246, Béla re-invited Cumans and smaller group of Jazyges (an Ossetian tribe) back to Hungary, to settle in devastated areas of the Great Hungarian Plain. The migration reportedly involved some 40,000–70,000 Cumans, divided into 7 tribes: Olás, Csertán, Kór, Borcsol, Kondám, Honcsuk, and Jupogó. The culturally distinct Jazyges were closely allied with the various Cuman groups, their fate having become "intertwined in the wake of the Mongolian expansion."
  The 14th-century Chronicon Pictum shows Cumans as the king's yellow-clad army, in close proximity to the kings, between the Pecheneg guard and Székely frontiersmen. Cumans are also mentioned as present at the Battle of Kressenbrunn, possibly in larger numbers than their Hungarian allies. Their importance to Hungary was underscored when Béla betrothed his son Stephen to Kuthen's daughter, Elizabeth the Cuman. Her son, King Ladislaus IV, was noted for his unusually strong links with Kunság settlers. 
  In 1279, Ladislaus probably formalized Cuman territorial autonomy in the main region of settlement. In exchange for feudal duties to the Hungarian king in his war against the Mongols, the Cumans were allowed to keep their own ethnic customs. Despite being regionally centered in the Great Plain, "tiny groups of Cumans and Jazyges" could still be found throughout the Kingdom in the 13th century. The Kór and Borcsol stayed in the southeastern counties of Csanád and Temes; a Zeihan Dux Cumanorum ("Duke of the Cumans") is mentioned here in 1255. The Jazyges colonized central areas in lands adjacent to the main Cuman settlements; however, some settled near the Borcsol, near the Maxond Dunes. Documentary and archeological evidence suggests that at least some Olás Cumans were sent to Bihar County (presently Bihor, Romania). In 1323, tribal leader Demetrius owned Körösszeg fortress. A "Cuman Street" was also attested in medieval Szeged.
  Nomadic groups still had sporadic clashes with the locals: in 1280, a Borcsol rebel army was defeated by Ladislaus near Hódmezővásárhely, then expelled to what became Wallachia. Groups from this diaspora probably returned to Temes, with Cumans Vchugan and Iuanchuch still owning and selling land in Bobda in 1288. Such attacks, and messages of protest from the Catholic Church, eventually increased pressures for assimilation and full conversion: already in 1279, the Diet of Hungary legislated on the mass baptism of still-pagan Cumans and promised to disperse them across the realm. Both conclusions were largely ignored by the king, although conversion from polytheism is traceable to the 13th century, which sees the first mentions of Cumans with Christian names. There is no suggestion that Cuman settlers were required to sedentarize: the first records of Cuman towns appear in Angevin Hungary, some two centuries after the colonization, and toponymy shows that they were all founded by chieftains, and named after them.
caption: First page of the Chronicon Pictum, showing Louis I's court. On the right are warriors in Oriental clothing, including a yellow-clad Cuman
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