Géza, also Gejza, was Grand Prince of the Hungarians from the early 970s. He was the son of Grand Prince Taksony and his Oriental—Khazar, Pecheneg or Volga Bulgarian—wife. He married Sarolt, a daughter of an Eastern Orthodox Hungarian chieftain. After ascending the throne, Géza made peace with the Holy Roman Empire. Within Hungary, he consolidated his authority with extreme cruelty, according to the unanimous narration of nearly contemporaneous sources. He was the first Hungarian monarch to support Christian missionaries from Western Europe. Although he was baptised, his Christian faith remained shallow and he continued to perform acts of pagan worship. He was succeeded by his son Stephen, who was crowned the first King of Hungary in 1000 or 1001.
Taksony was the Grand Prince of the Hungarians after their catastrophic defeat in the 955 Battle of Lechfeld. In his youth he had participated in plundering raids in Western Europe, but during his reign the Hungarians only targeted the Byzantine Empire. The Gesta Hungarorum recounts that significant Muslim and Pecheneg groups settled in Hungary under Taksony.
Zoltán, also Zolta, Zsolt, Solt or Zaltas is mentioned in the Gesta Hungarorum as the third Grand Prince of the Hungarians who succeeded his father Árpád around 907. Although modern historians tend to deny this report on his reign, because other chronicles do not list him among the Hungarian rulers, there is consensus that even if Zoltán never ascended the throne, all monarchs ruling in Hungary from the House of Árpád after around 955 were descended from him.
Árpád was the head of the confederation of the Magyar tribes at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. He might have been either the sacred ruler or kende of the Hungarians, or their military leader or gyula, although most details of his life are debated by historians, because different sources contain contradictory information. Despite this, many Hungarians refer to him as the "founder of our country", and Árpád's preeminent role in the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin has been emphasized by some later chronicles. The dynasty descending from Árpád ruled the Kingdom of Hungary until 1301.
The Kabars, also known as Qavars (Qabars) or Khavars were Khazar rebels who joined the Magyar confederation in the 9th century as well as the Rus' Khaganate.
The Árpáds or Arpads were the ruling dynasty of the Principality of Hungary in the 9th and 10th centuries and of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1000 to 1301. The dynasty was named after the Hungarian Grand Prince Árpád who was the head of the Hungarian tribal federation during the conquest of the Carpathian Basin, c. 895. It is also referred to as the Turul dynasty, but rarely.
Hungarian prehistory spans the period of history of the Hungarian people, or Magyars, which started with the separation of the Hungarian language from other Finno-Ugric or Ugric languages around 800 BC, and ended with the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin around 895 AD. Based on the earliest records of the Magyars in Byzantine, Western European, and Hungarian chronicles, scholars considered them for centuries to have been the descendants of the ancient Scythians and Huns. This historiographical tradition disappeared from mainstream history after the realization of similarities between the Hungarian language and the Uralic languages in the late 18th century. Thereafter, linguistics became the principal source of the study of the Hungarians' ethnogenesis. In addition, chronicles written between the 9th and 15th centuries, the results of archaeological research and folklore analogies provide information on the Magyars' early history.
Menumorut or Menumorout was the ruler of the lands between the rivers Mureș, Someș and Tisza at the time of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin around 900, according to the Gesta Hungarorum, a Hungarian chronicle written after 1150 by an unidentified author, referred to as Anonymus. Historians debate whether Menumorut was an actual ruler or a fictional character created by the author, since the Gesta tells of multiple figures, including Menumorut, who are not identified in any other primary sources, and does not name any of the enemies of the invading Hungarians written of in other contemporary accounts of the invasion. According to Anonymus, Menumorut's duchy was populated primarily with Khazars and Székelys, and he acknowledged the suzerainty of the (unnamed) ruling Byzantine Emperor at the time.
Gyula was, according to Muslim and Byzantine sources, the title of one of the leaders, the second in rank, of the Hungarian tribal federation in the 9th–10th centuries. In the earliest Hungarian sources, the title name is only recorded as a personal name.
Levedi, or Lebed, Levedias, Lebedias, and Lebedi was a Hungarian chieftain, the first known chieftain of the Hungarians.
Fajsz, also Falicsi, was Grand Prince of the Hungarians from about 950 to around 955. All information on him comes from De administrando imperio, a book written by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. No other contemporary source or later Hungarian chronicle preserved his name, suggesting that he did not take an active role in the politics of the Hungarian tribes' confederation.
The Principality of Hungary or Duchy of Hungary was the earliest documented Hungarian state in the Carpathian Basin, established 895 or 896, following the 9th century Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin.
Koppány, also known as Cupan, was the Duke of Somogy in Hungary in the late 10th century. According to modern scholars' consensus view, he was a member of the royal Árpád dynasty. Koppány was the lord of the southern region of Transdanubia during the reign of Géza, Grand Prince of the Hungarians, who ruled between the early 970s and 997. After the death of Géza, Koppány laid claim to the throne against Géza's devout Christian son, Stephen. His claim was mainly supported by pagan Hungarians, but the royal army routed his army near Veszprém in 997 or 998. Koppány was killed either in the battle or in his duchy, to which he had fled from the battlefield. His corpse was cut in four pieces to be displayed on the walls of four major strongholds of Hungary, Győr, Veszprém, Esztergom and Gyulafehérvár.
The Magyar tribes or Hungarian clans were the fundamental political units within whose framework the Hungarians (Magyars) lived, until these clans from the region of the Ural Mountains invaded the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century and subsequently established the Principality of Hungary.
Sarolt was the wife of Géza, Grand Prince of the Hungarians.
Hont-Pázmány (Hunt-Poznan) was the name of a gens ("clan") in the Kingdom of Hungary. The Gesta Hungarorum mentions that the ancestors of the family, the brothers Hont (Hunt) and Pázmány (Pazman), originally from the Duchy of Swabia in the Holy Roman Empire, arrived in the late 10th century to the court of Grand Prince Géza of the Magyars:
The next arrivals were Hunt and Pazman, two half-brothers, courageous knights of Swabian origin. These two and their retainers had been journeying through Hungary with the intention of passing over the sea when they were detained by Duke Géza, and finally they girded King Stephen with the sword of knighthood at the river Hron, after the German custom.
Liüntika or Levente was a Hungarian tribal chieftain, the eldest son of Grand Prince Árpád. As a military leader he participated in the Hungarian Conquest.
The Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, also Hungarian conquest or Hungarian land-taking, was a series of historical events ending with the settlement of the Hungarians in Central Europe at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. Before the arrival of the Hungarians, three early medieval powers, the First Bulgarian Empire, East Francia and Moravia, had fought each other for control of the Carpathian Basin. They occasionally hired Hungarian horsemen as soldiers. Therefore, the Hungarians who dwelt on the Pontic steppes east of the Carpathians were familiar with their future homeland when their "land-taking" started.
Álmos, also Almos or Almus, was—according to the uniform account of Hungarian chronicles—the first head of the "loose federation" of the Hungarian tribes from around 850. Whether he was the sacred ruler (kende) of the Hungarians, or their military leader (gyula) is subject to scholarly debate. According to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, he accepted the Khazar khagan's suzerainty in the first decade of his reign, but the Hungarians acted independently of the Khazars from around 860. The 14th-century Illuminated Chronicle narrates that he was murdered in Transylvania at the beginning of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin around 895.
Zerind the Bald was a Hungarian lord in the 10th century. According to modern scholars' consensus, he was a member of the royal Árpád dynasty. He was the father of Koppány, the late 10th-century rebellious Duke of Somogy.
