ABSTRACT
The Hungarian steppe, the puszta, is a continuation of the Russian steppe, which in turn is the continuation of the Asian steppe that starts just outside Peking. In pre-colonial times, conflicts between nomads and the Chinese empire triggered waves of migration that reached the eastern reaches of Europe, which at times was as closely tied to the Turkic and Mongol kingdoms of Central Asia than to the Judaeo-Christian Occident. This first large wave were the Huns (Xiongnu), who, having been displaced by other nomads from the fringes of the Chinese empire after the fall of the Later Han Dynasty, established a proto-Turkic empire in today’s Ukraine and Hungary. After the Huns, the Avars, a Mongol horde which had fled from Central Asia under pressure from the Turkic Tujue – a people also known from Chinese dynastic histories – in the sixth century, came to dominate the same region. In the seventh century came the Khazar Turks, in the eleventh century the Pecheneg Turks, and in the twelfth the Cuman Turks. Lastly, in the thirteenth century, the sons of Genghis Khan integrated the steppe, for two years, from the Danube to Peking.1
