The Battle of Wlndr was fought in 934 between the allied Hungarian-Pecheneg army and an army composing of the forces of the Byzantine Empire and First Bulgarian Empire, somewhere in the territory which belonged to the Bulgarian empire, near a large city called W.l.n.d.r (perhaps Belgrade), recorded by the Arab historian and geographer Al-Masudi. The battle resulted in a great victory for the Hungarian-Pecheneg forces, which they followed with a devastating raid up to the walls of Constantinople, forcing the Byzantine Empire to pay them tribute for many years (until 957). Al-Masudi's account of the battle is "one of the greatest descriptions of the nomadic war tactics."
Sources Al-Masudi narrates an account of the battle and its causes in the 17th chapter of Vol. 2. of his work The Meadows of Gold, which is about the Caucasus and the countries and tribes which lived in it or north from it.Abu al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Masʿūdī, Macoudi. Les prairies d'or Texte et traduction par Barbier de Meynard et Pavet de Courteille. Tome Deuxieme. Imprimerie Imperiale, Paris 1863, p. 58-64 In addition, the Byzantine chronicler Symeon the Metaphrast provides detailed information about the end of this campaign and the peace concluded between the Hungarian–Pecheneg alliance and the Byzantines.Symeonis Magistri ac Logothetae: Annales a Leone Armenio ad Nicephorum Phocam. In. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae vol. 45: Theophanes Continuatus, Ioannes Cameniata, Symeon Magister, Georgius Monachus. Bonnae, in Pensis Ed. Weberi, MDCCCXXXVIII, p. 746
In an academic work published in 1903, German historian Josef Marquart became the first scholar who considered the narrative from The Meadows of Gold to refer to the same events mentioned in the continuation of George Hamartolos' chronicle (Georgius Monachus Continuatus).
Preliminary explanations Al-Masudi is the only source that writes about the battle. His information about the location of the battle and the participants is a little confused. First, there is confusion about the place designated by the name W.l.n.d.r. Second, it is unclear precisely who participated in the battle on the side opposing the Byzantines, and how numerous they were. There are also questions about the Pecheneg involvement in the battle, and their number of troops.
Location Al-Masudi, as an Arab, wrote in the Arabic alphabet, which does not use letters for short vowels (although there are special diacritics for short vowels, called ḥarakāt, but they are not generally used, and they were not used by Al-Masudi). As a result, when he wrote down names of foreign tribes, towns and countries, it is hard to know how these names sounded, because only consonants are known. This is the case with ولندر = W.l.n.d.r (و - W, ل - l, ن - n, د - d, ر - r). In the translated editions of his work, Latin transcriptions of W.l.n.d.r appear with vowels chosen by the editors (Walendar in the French translation of Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille from 1838,al-Masudi, 1838, p. 59 Valandar or Vanandar in the Turkish edition from 2004),Mesudî. Murûc ez-Zeheb (Altın Bozkırlar). Arapçadan Çeviri ve notlar D. Ahsen Batur. Selenge Yayınları, İstanbul 2004, p.93 in order to make it easier to pronounce. The Hungarian translation of the part of al-Masudi's work which refers to the battle, writes the name correctly, putting points in the place of the vowels (ex. W.l.n.d.r).Maszúdí. In Györffy György: A magyarok elődeiről és a honfoglalásról; Osiris Kiadó, Budapest, 2002 p. 98-101
Al-Masudi wrote his accounts about northern countries based on verbal information from people who visited these regions. As a result, some of his information has to be handled with care. For example, he writes that W.l.n.d.r was a Greek town between the mountains and the sea, but historians such as György Györffy and Gyula Kristó – accepting the claim of Josef Marquart – believe that it was not a city but a derivation of the old name of the Bulgarians: Onogur/Onogundur (Ten Oghur Tribes), which sounded *wnondur, which in old Hungarian became nándor, from which the old Hungarian name of Belgrade, Nándorfehérvár (White castle of the Bulgarians) originates, and in the works of the Arab geographer Ahmad ibn Rustah and the Persian geographer Abu Saʿīd Gardēzī, appears as W.n.n.d.r.Györffy György: A magyarok elődeiről és a honfoglalásról; Osiris Kiadó, Budapest, 2002, note no. 155, p. 275 So the historians conclude that W.l.n.d.r in reality was not a town, like al-Masudi believed, but the old name of the Bulgarians, so the battle was somewhere in the territory of the First Bulgarian Empire. Therefore, the battle was not fought around a town between the Byzantines and the Hungarian-Pecheneg army, but rather it was a battle between the Bulgarian Empire and the Byzantines against the Magyars and Pechenegs.Kristó Gyula: Levedi törzsszövetségétől Szent István Államáig; Magvető Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1980, p. 270Györffy György, 2002 p. 98
It is possible that the exact location of the battle was Belgrade, as orientalist Mihály Kmoskó considered, due to the fact that its old Hungarian name has in it the old, Turkic name of the Bulgarians in the form used by the Hungarians: nándor, and although is not near to a sea, but it is on the Danube's bank, which could be understood as sea, plus the Carpathian Mountains and Dinaric Alps are also close, and the mountain of Avala, and it was on the Hungarian border, so for its inhabitants would have been easy to attack their territories, as al-Masudi wrote. So in al-Masudi's text W.l.n.d.r could designate both the Bulgarians and the city of Belgrade, in some sentences designating the country, while others the city. But these are only suppositions. Josef Marquart identified the settlement with the fort Develtos laid near Burgas. Hansgerd Göckenjan and István Zimonyi considered Bulgarophygon (Babaeski) as the place of battle, based on the data that the relief army reached the besieged city in eight days from Constantinople.B. Szabó János – Sudár Balázs, 2022 pp. 117–118.
Belligerents
Al-Masudi writes about four Turkic nations (a term designate the nomadic culture and lifestyle), who took part in the battle against the Byzantines: b.dʒ.n.k (بجناك), which can be identified with the name of the Pechenegs, y.dʒ.n.i (يجنى) or b.dʒ.n.i (بجنى)Maszúdí. In Györffy György, 2002, p. 99 believed by the historians that also designates the Pechenegs,Györffy György, 2002, p. 98 b.dʒ.g.r.d (بجغرد), which can be identified with the name Badjgird, used very often by the Arab historians and geographers to designate the domestic name of the Hungarians: Magyar (Ahmad ibn Fadlan,Onuncu Asırda Türkistan'da bir İslâm Seyyahı. İbn Fazlan Seyahatnâmesi. Hazırlayan Ramazan Şeşen. Bedir Yayınevi, İstanbul 1975, p. 42 Abu Zayd al-Balkhi,Balkhí. In Györffy György, 2002 p. 94 Abū Hamid al-Gharnāti,Adorján Imre, Muzulmánok a magyarok közt. A kezdetektől az Árpád-kor végéig Fejér Megyei Pedagógiai Szolgáltató Intézet, 1988 etc.) in the 9th–12th centuries. This name in the 10–13th centuries was used by the Arab geographers for two groups: the Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin, and the Hungarians who lived between the Kama River and the Ural Mountains in the place called Magna Hungaria,Aradi Éva, About the Territory of Magna Hungaria Journal of Eurasian Studies. Volume V., Issue 2., April–June 2013, p. 10-21 who remained there and maybe they became the ancestors of the today Bashkirs, like some believe. Maybe this is why the Hungarians and the people living in the early Middle Ages in today's Bashkortostan were named the same. nu.k.r.da (نوكردة), which original reading is probably Unkaríya, derives from the name Onogur/Ungar,Kristó Gyula, 1980, p. 269 designating the other name of the Magyars, in which they are known in the majority of the European languages: Hungarian/Ungar/венгерский/húngaro/hongrois. So, the historians think that, in the same way as for the b.dʒ.n.k and b.dʒ.n.i/y.dʒ.n.i (for the Pechenegs), al-Masudi mistakenly thought that the two names of the same tribal confederation (Magyar and Hungarian) designate two different nations.
In contrast, Gyula Kristó argued that these two names actually designate the two main components of the Principality of Hungary, forming the core of the Hungarian Nation: Magyars and Onogurs. Many sources (Vita Hrodberti episcopi Salisburgensis,Szádeczky-Kardoss Samu: Az avar történelem forrásai, Magyar Őstörténeti Könyvtár, Balassi Kiadó, Budapest, 1998, p. 224 Vita St. Paulini,Szádeczky-Kardoss 1998, p. 297 Epitaphium Liutprandi regis Langobardorum,Szádeczky-Kardoss 1998, p. 266 Annales Alamannici. Codex Modoetiensis,Szádeczky-Kardoss 1998, p. 296 the Diploma of Louis the German from 860Szádeczky-Kardoss 1998, p. 307) prove that the Avars in the Middle and Late Avar period (670–804) and after the Carolingian conquest from 804 were often called Onogurs.Róna-Tas András: A honfoglaló magyar nép; Balassi Kiadó, Budapest, 1996, p. 219-220 Therefore, the b.dʒ.g.r.d could refer to the newly settled Magyars (895) and nu.k.r.da (Onogurs) to the descendants of the Avars, which survived during the Caroling and Bulgarian occupation of much of the Carpathian Basin (804-900), becoming the components of the Magyars,Szabados György: Magyar államalapítások a IX-XI. században; Szegedi Középkori Könyvtár, Szeged, 2011, p. 114-120 and in the same time gave the name which the Europeans use for denominating this nation. It is not excluded, that in 934, when the battle took place, the Onogurs in Hungary still had a kind of autonomy, with their own leaders, which may explain the fact that al-Masudi sees them as a separate political entity with its own king.Maszúdí. In Györffy György, 2002, p. 98 Hungarian translation from the original Arabic: "A kazárok és az alánok nyugatról négy türk néppel határosak [...]. Közülük mindegyiknek (külön) királya van, s területük több napi járóföldre terjed". English translation from the Hungarian: "The Khazars and the Alans are neighboured from West from four Turkic nations [...]. Every one of them has (his own) king, and their territories spread to lands which can be crossed in several days". About the Hungarian campaign in the Duchy of Saxony from 906, Annalista Saxo writes that of the two raiding Hungarian armies one was Avar and the second Magyar.Dümmerth Dezső: Álmos az áldozat; Panoráma, Budapest, 1986, p. 135-136 Hungarian translation from the original Latin: "A delemincusok felfogadták az avarokat, Saxonia hercege, Henrik ellen; ezek, miután sok öldöklést vittek véghez Saxoniában, roppant zsákmánnyal Dalamantia felé fordulván vissza, szembetalálkoztak a magyarok másik seregével". English translation from the Hungarian: "The Dalemnicians hired the Avars", against Henry, the prince of Saxony; and these, after they made many massacres in Saxony, when they returned in Dalamantia, met face in face with the other army of the Magyars" This account could refer to the different ethnic component of the two armies which came from Hungary, and the fact that the successors of the Avars/Onogurs fought as separate armies under their own commanders, or the chronicler could not make difference between the Hungarian and Avar, and used when the one when the other name.
So as a response, to the question of who and how many were the nations who fought the Byzantines and the Bulgarians, the historians conclude that they were two nomadic political entities: the Principality of Hungary and the Pecheneg Tribal Confederation.
Involvement of the Pechenegs