Avar name
Avarian Philologists think the Avar name is coming from Caucasian Avarian "Bo" = "the armed nation" , and "Or" = "the river" words. [4]Bo-or , is the ancient A-Bar name of the White Khuns. İts means that the army is using ferrum and horses. First Huns were the Sino-Caucasian. But later Huns were Aryan mixed.
Bo-or ->Obry?
Upper Sorbian hobr, Czech obr, Slovene obər, Slovak obor, and, with a historical singulative suffix (cf. OR obĭrinŭ), Old Polish obrzym, further distorted to modern olbrzym. Cf. Bohumila Zástěrová, «Avaři a Dulebové v svědectví Povesti Vremennych Let», Vznik a počátky slovanů 3, Prague 1960, 15-37.
Thanks to the unusual sagacity of their leader (Kagan Bayan, ca. 558-582), they succeeded in securing all six within a decade (558-568). Evidently the Iranian merchants of the «Alan» confederacy, who immediately recognized that the future pax would hold great opportunities for them, provided the Avars with funds while they were still in the North Caucasus. Proof of this is that the Avars requested and received assistance from the «king» of the Alans in establishing contacts with Byzantium [172]. Subsequently, all territories important for commercial strategy,
including the Danube limes, the Elbe frontier with the Franks, and the Baltic coast, immediately came under the control of the Iranian establishments, called in the sources Serbs, Croats, Obotriti and Vilti [173]. The first to join the Avars as partners were the Hunnic Onnoġurs and Quturġurs, and, a little later, the Tarniax [174]. Soon they forced into the confederacy other Hunnic groups, the Utiġurs and the Proto-Mongolian Ζαβενδέρ = Zäben-der (= Säbir), who previously had ordinarily cooperated with Byzantium [175].
To organize a military force, the Avars needed the military and administrative specialists obtainable from sedentary states. At that time this meant Byzantium and the Frankish empire. Bayan, the new charismatic leader, chose to look to the Franks. His first attack on the Frankish frontier was defeated, in 562 [176]. Three years later, however, he won a great victory over the Frankish king Sigibert and, to judge from the data in
both Frankish and Byzantine sources, he accomplished his objectives in 565 [177].
Bayan wanted to station frontier warriors of Proto-Bulgarian, Antai and Sklavin type along the Byzantine limes. By this time he had already obtained military instructors of the Winidi class from the Frankish frontier. He still needed expendable soldiers for an army, a problem he solved by systematic capture of the local peasantry, ancestors of the future Slovenes, Czechs, Poles, and Sorbs. We can assume that he coopted peoples whose descendants even today use the name «Avar» (obr, etc.) with the meaning «giant» [179]. The Winidi, as this new force was called, under the influence of the more developed Germanic lingua franca used by their military instructors, had considerable impact on the Slavophone masses (see below).
The terminology of the Samo passage in Pseudo-Fredegar's «History» strengthens our hypothesis. As we saw above in section III.2., a close analysis reveals an opposition between the leaders, called Winidi, and the masses, called Sclavi.
(172) Menander Protector, p. 4 (fragm. 4; s.a. 558).
(174) Theophylact Simocattes, ed. de Boor/Wirth, p. 260.
(175) Menander, pp. 62-65 (fragm. 28; s.a. 568); Theophylact Simocattes, p. 260.
(176) Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri X, ed. Beuno Krusch and Rudolf Buchner, Berlin 1961, p. 224; Book 4, ch. 2-3.
(177) Gregory of Tours, Historiarum, pp. 232-234 (Book 4, ch. 29); Menander Protector, p. 56 (fragm. 23 s.a. 568); Paul the Deacon, Historia langobardorum, ed. Pertz, pp. 92-93 (Book 2, ch. 10).
(178) Menander Protector, pp. 57-58 (fragm. 25, s.a. 568); Paul the Deacon, p. 89 (Book 2, ch. 7).
(179) Upper Sorbian hobr, Czech obr, Slovene obər, Slovak obor, and, with a historical singulative suffix (cf. OR obĭrinŭ), Old Polish obrzym, further distorted to modern olbrzym. Cf. Bohumila Zástěrová, «Avaři a Dulebové v svědectví Povesti Vremennych Let», Vznik a počátky slovanů 3, Prague 1960, 15-37.
Alans, AntesThus we take it that the
Antes/Antai were the frontiersmen of the Alans, the warriors whose duty it was to have contact with the Alans' neighbors. This type of force was probably created by the Alans during the fourth century, as a response to the imperial ambitious of Hermanarich. As subsequent groups came into Eastern Europe - the Huns in 375 and later their successors, the Utiġur-Quturġur-Bulgars - they adopted this type of
Alanic warriors for their own aims, and therefore the sources provide information about the Antai used by the newcomers.
(99) George Vernadsky, The origins of Russia, Oxford 1959, pp. 13-16.
(100) A history of the Alans in the West, Minneapolis 1973.
Procopius (d. ca. 562) surely had in mind the Hunnic Antai when he located them in the frontier zone of the Maeotis (Sea of Azov) and Tanais (Don) regions to the north of the Hunnic Οὐτίγουροι. [101]
The Antai of the Proto-Bulgars were said by Procopius to be living on the Danube limes close to the [Pannonian Proto-] Bulgarian Σκλαβηνοί «at the time Justinian I [527-565] took over the Roman Empire» (vol. 6, p. 216). The Chilbudius episode in the year 546 is especially instructive concerning the mode of action of the Bulgarian Antai [102]. The Proto-Bulgarian Antai also occur in the «History» of Menander Protector (d. after 582) in the context of the story of Mezamiros [103]. All these instances show how jealously they guarded their freedom of action and how easily conflicts between them and the Sclaveni arose.
Emperor Justinian I established a special relationship with the Antai, who often supported him in his many wars. He made Anticus [104] a part of his official titulature, and in 545 he «expressed the desire that they should all settle in an [abandoned] ancient city, Turris by name, situated to the north of the river Ister [Danube]» [105]. From 545 to 602 the Antai usually cooperated with the Romans, but in about 560 the Avars began to assume the hegemony over Eastern Europe and to demand loyalty from the Antai. The tragedy of these warriors - who had
(101) Procopius, vol. 5, p. 84.
(102) Procopius, vol. 4, pp. 262, 264, 268, 270, 272, 274.
(103) Menander Protector, ed. Dindorf, HGM, vol. 2, pp. 5-6.
(104) Codex Justinianus in Corpus iuris civilis, ed. P. Krueger, vol. 2, 9th ed. (Berlin, 1915), p. 3.
(105) Procopius, vol. 4, p. 272.
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striven for independence, especially in 602, and to change their masters (in this case, from the Avars to the Byzantines) - is presented in the seventh-century «History» of Theophylact Simocattes [106], and repeated in the «Chronicle» of Theophanes (760-818) [107]. These events of 602 mark the last time this group is named; at this point the Antai just disappear from history.
5.The word Antai is, as Max Vasmer has shown [108], of Iranian origin; the ending -tä is a typical plural suffix in the language of the Alans (and modern Ossetians). The root is the Iranian word anta = Sanskrit anta- 'frontier; end'. In developing this etymology further, one should note, beside the derivative in Iranian *ant-ya 'frontier-man [in the original meaning of the word]', that Ossetian shows two parallel forms for *antya, one with /nt/ and the other with the geminate */tt/ > /dd/ : ändä and äddä 'behind'. These forms and the Syriac spelling anṭi-y-ū (where /ū/ is the plural suffix functionally equal to the Alanian /tä/), suggests that the Greek Antai /antä/ goes back to *antya-tä, which developed into *anttä [109] and then was simplified by degemination. This change suggests that the Byzantines first received the name either via the Proto-Bulgars or from the Turks; both linguistic groups tend to avoid geminates.
The term Antai, not unlike Winid-, appears to be a
(106) Historiae, ed. de Boor/Wirth, p. 293.
(107) «Chronography», ed. Čičurov, p. 34.
(108) Russisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, s.v. vjatiči, and a letter of February 1, 1958, published by Franz Altheim in his Geschichte der Hunnen, vol. 1, Berlin 1959, pp. 71, 76, 94.
(109) Vasilij Ivanovič Abaev, Istoriko-ètimologičeskij slovar' osetinskogo jazyka, vol. 1, Moscow-Leningrad 1958, pp. 104-105.
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designation for frontierman, but most probably one using an Eastern Iranian lingua franca. Possibly the word was the creation of the Alans, and therefore Jordanes equated the Antes with the Spali/*Alani (§ 28).
