Seats (, , , ) were administrative divisions in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary.Tibor Elekes and Péter Gyenizse, "The historical Szekely Land and its present-day spatial division", in Regional Statistics, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2024), pp. 401-409. Budapest: Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH). Available online. The seats were autonomous regions within the Kingdom, and were independent from the feudal county system. Their autonomy was granted in return for the military services they provided to the Hungarian Kings.Zsolt Miklós Varga, “Traditional Management and Transformations of Székely-Hungarian Commons in Transylvania”, in International Journal of the Commons, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2022), pp. 278–294. Available online.
The following divisions were at one point Székely seats: Marosszék Udvarhelyszék Csíkszék Gyergyószék
Sepsiszék Orbaiszék Kézdiszék Aranyosszék
Seats were formed by the:István Vásáry, Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185–1365, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 42–45.
Székelys Transylvanian Saxons Cumans Jassic people Ten Lance Bearers
Most seats gave up their autonomous status and military traditions in late medieval times and paid tax instead.Gábor Barta, “The Autonomy of the Székely Seats in the 16th–18th Centuries,” in Korall, Vol. 15, No. 59 (2014), pp. 109–130.
References