Über die vorchristliche Religion der Altungarn

Fodor, István (2003) Über die vorchristliche Religion der Altungarn. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 48 (3-4). pp. 327-351. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

The Hungarians coming from the east settled in the Carpathian basin in A.D. 896, and established their Christian kingdom in 1000. They kept their ancestral religion for a century which was preserved in fragments in Hungarian popular beliefs and folklore. On the basis of these fragments, the researchers defined the religion before Christianity to be Shamanism. Shamanism however has different variations depending on the degree of development of the society in question. Recently, a segment of the Arabic al-Bakri's writings from the 11th century has been published from among the very few written sources. It reports that Hungarians worship the Lord of the Heaven. Consequently, the Hungarian Shamanism was different from that of primitive Siberian peoples; it was rather similar to Tengrism which was common in eastern nomadic empires. The archeological findings from the 10th century confirm the information found in the written source since ancient art preserved several elements of the beliefs (tree of life, the assisting spirits of the shaman, animal spirits).

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