Fajsz (), also Falicsi (), was

Grand Prince of the Hungarians Grand Prince ( hu, Nagyfejedelem) was the title used by contemporary sources to name the leader of the federation of the Hungarian tribes in the tenth century.Constantine VII mentioned Árpád in his book De Administrando Imperio as ', while Bru ...

from about 950 to around 955. All information on him comes from ''

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 ...

'', a book written by the

Byzantine Emperor This is a list of the Byzantine emperors from the foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD, which marks the conventional start of the Eastern Roman Empire, to its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD. Only the emperors who were recognized as ...

Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (; 17 May 905 – 9 November 959) was the fourth Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, reigning from 6 June 913 to 9 November 959. He was the son of Emperor Leo VI and his fourth wife, Zoe ...

. 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 The Magyar tribes ( , hu, magyar törzsek) or Hungarian clans were the fundamental political units within whose framework the Hungarians (Magyars) lived, before the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin and the subsequent established the Pr ...

' confederation.

Life

Fajsz was the only known son of Jutotzas, the third son of

Árpád Árpád (; 845 – 907) 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 '' g ...

who led the

' confederation at the time of their conquest of the Carpathian Basin between around 895 and 907. After Árpád's death, fundamental changes happened in the government of the tribal confederation. Although the various tribes could even thereafter act in concert for raids, they did not obey a strong central authority any more. Even so, as the historian Miklós Molnár emphasizes, "the supremacy of the House of Árpád seems to have remained unshaken." For instance, Hungarian visitors to

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...

including Termatzus, a great-grandson of Árpád informed Emperor Constantine VII around 948 that the "first chief" of the Hungarians "comes by succession of Árpád's family".''Constantine Porphyrogenitus: De Administrando Imperio'' (ch. 40), p. 179.

Constantine VII Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (; 17 May 905 – 9 November 959) was the fourth Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, reigning from 6 June 913 to 9 November 959. He was the son of Emperor Leo VI and his fourth wife, Zoe ...

also mentions that Fajsz was the head of the confederation of the Hungarian tribes around 950. The historian Gyula Kristó proposes that Fajsz abdicated after the Hungarians' catastrophic defeat by the

Germans , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...

in the battle of Lechfeld in 955.

Name and legacy

Fajsz's name, which was preserved in two forms"Phalitzi" and "Phalis" may be connected either to the Hungarian word for "half" ''(fél)'' or to the verb ''fal'' ("to gobble up"). Historian

György Györffy György Györffy (26 September 1917 – 19 December 2000) was a Hungarian historian, and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( hu, MTA). Biography Györffy was born in Szucság (Suceagu, today part of Baciu, Romania), Hungary the son o ...

proposes that the villages named Fajsz in the

Carpathian Basin The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large Sedimentary basin, basin situated in south-east Central Europe. The Geomorphology, geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewh ...

for instance, the one in

Bács-Kiskun County Bács-Kiskun ( hu, Bács-Kiskun megye, ) is a county (''megye'' in Hungarian) located in southern Hungary. It was created as a result of World War II, merging the prewar Bács-Bodrog and the southern parts of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun counties. Wit ...

(

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...

)were named after him. Based on the recorded Phalitzi form of Fajsz's name, Gyula Kristó rejects this hypothesis.

References

Sources

*''Constantine Porphyrogenitus: De Administrando Imperio'' (Greek text edited by Gyula Moravcsik, English translation by Romillyi J. H. Jenkins) (1967). Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. . * * * * *

Life

Name and legacy

See also

References

Sources

Further reading