Notes on the Western Turks in the Work of Theophanes Confessor

Balogh, László (2005) Notes on the Western Turks in the Work of Theophanes Confessor. Acta Orientalia, 58 (2). pp. 187-195. ISSN 0001-6446

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Abstract

Theophanes Confessor, Byzantine author of the early 9th century, when referring to the Khazars in his work entitled Chronographia, used the term “Eastern Turks”. It is widely accepted that Byzantine authors used such terms in pairs, so the pendant of “Eastern Turks” was “Western Turks”, the latter being used to denote the early Hungarians. This conclusion is based on the fact that Byzantine chroniclers called the Hungarians Turks at the end of the 9th century. Theophanes mentioned the Khazars as Eastern Turks, as if he had information on a people also called Turks living west of the Khazars. However, not all historians shared this view, and some of them supposed that Theophanes applied the term Eastern Turks in a geographical sense, since the Khazars had lived east of the Byzantine Empire. The solution to this problem has far-reaching consequences. If Theophanes referred to the Hungarians, that would mark their first appearance in written sources at the beginning of the 9th century. But the pendant of the “Eastern Turks” in the chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, is not the “Western Turks”, but the “Western Huns”.

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