According to
ibn Fadlan
Ahmad ibn Fadlan ibn al-Abbas al-Baghdadi () or simply known as Ibn Fadlan, was a 10th-century traveler from Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate, famous for his account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir to the king ...
, the Kündür was an official in the
Khazar
The Khazars ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a nomadic Turkic people who, in the late 6th century CE, established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, an ...
government under the command of the
Khagan Bek. Ibn Fadlan did not describe the duties of this officer, nor does any extant source. The
Magyars
Hungarians, also known as Magyars, are an ethnic group native to Hungary (), who share a common culture, language and history. They also have a notable presence in former parts of the Kingdom of Hungary. The Hungarian language belongs to the ...
had a dual-kingship system in which power was divided between a
gyula and a
kende
The ''kende'' (or ''kündü'') was one of the kings of the dual-monarchy of the early Hungarians along with the ''Gyula (title), gyula'' or war-chief. The function of the ''kende'' is believed to have been a religious one ("sacral prince").Victo ...
; therefore it has been hypothesized that the kündür was a client-ruler of
Hungarian remnants who remained in the
Pontic steppe during the 10th century. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the title may derive from an
Old Turkic
Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Kh ...
word for law, and that the kündür may have been a judicial officer, possibly the head of the
Khazar judiciary. Noting that ''kündü'' only exists in
Siberian Turkic where it means "awe, politeness, reverence, regale", Peter B. Golden proposes that Turkic ''kündü'' is borrowed from
Mongolic *''kündü-'' (>
Middle Mongol
Middle Mongol or Middle Mongolian was a Mongolic languages, Mongolic koiné language spoken in the Mongol Empire. Originating from Genghis Khan's home region of Northeastern Mongolia, it diversified into several Mongolic languages after the coll ...
kündü >
Khalkha
The Khalkha (; ) have been the largest subgroup of the Mongols in modern Mongolia since the 15th century. The Khalkha, together with Chahars, Ordos Mongols, Ordos and Tumed, were directly ruled by Borjigin khans until the 20th century. In cont ...
хүнд ''hünd'', meaning "heavy").
Sources
*
Kevin Alan Brook. ''The Jews of Khazaria.'' 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006.
*
Douglas M. Dunlop, ''The History of the Jewish Khazars,'' Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954.
*
Peter B. Golden. "Khazarica: Notes on Some Khazar Terms", in ''Turkic Languages'', ed. Lars Johanson, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kundur
Khazar titles