Horka,
[Tamás Hölbling, A honfoglalás forráskritikája I. – A külföldi kútfők, Ad Librum Kiadó, 2010, p. 263 ] or harka, was a title used by the
Magyar tribes in the 9th and 10th centuries. According to
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
Emperor
Constantine Porphyrogenetos in ''
De administrando imperio
''De Administrando Imperio'' ("On the Governance of the Empire") is the Latin title of a Greek-language work written by the 10th-century Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VII. The Greek title of the work is ("To yown son Romanos"). It is a domes ...
'', the horka had judicial authority. However, in other sources, the term was applied to a military leader (such as
Bulcsú, who led the Magyar forces at the
Battle of Lechfeld
The Battle of Lechfeld was a series of military engagements over the course of three days from 10–12 August 955 in which the Kingdom of Germany, led by King Otto I the Great, annihilated the Hungarian army led by ''Harka ''Bulcsú and the chi ...
). Certainly at some point in the 10th century, the roles of horka and
gyula (the chief warlord) had become similar, with the horka having authority in Western Transdanubia and the gyula in
Transylvania
Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...
in the east. In later sources the word appears, only as a personal name.
The title is somewhat similar to word
harki
''Harki'' (adjective from the Arabic ''harka'', standard Arabic ''haraka'' حركة, "war party" or "movement", i.e., a group of volunteers, especially soldiers) is the generic term for native Muslim Algerian who served as auxiliaries in the F ...
, which is used to describe soldier in Arabic.
References
Hungarian noble titles
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