ABSTRACT
In the first half of the eleventh century, military conflict and political changes altered the ethnolinguistic makeup of the population in the central parts of Central Europe in an unprecedented manner that would not be repeated until the twentieth century. A coalition of pastoralist (“nomadic”) Finno-Ugric and Turkic ethnic groups expanded to the Danubian Basin. Under this military and demographic pressure, Greater Moravia waned and ceased to exist at the turn of the eleventh century. The invaders established their own polity in its stead, which became known as Hungary. The western half of Greater Moravia, organized as the poli-ties of Bohemia and Moravia became part of the Frankish Kingdom, in 962 overhauled into a Holy Roman Empire. The center of Hungary and its eastern borderlands became increasingly Finno-Ugric from the ethnolinguistic point of view. Turkic-speakers assimilated with the Finno-Ugric majority of the invaders and disappeared. However, during the 1237 Mongol invasion of Central Europe, Turkic-speaking Cumans (Polovtsians, Kipchaks) sought refuge in Hungary. Afterward they settled in this kingdom and received territorial autonomy, which they retained until 1876, for centuries after they stopped speaking Turkic. These autonomous territories were known as Cumania Major (Nagykunság) and Cumania Minor (Kiskunság).
