Gelou
Gelou was the Vlach ruler of Transylvania at the time of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin around 900 AD, according to the Gesta Hungarorum. Although the Gesta Hungarorum, which was written after 1150, does not indicate the enemies of the conquering Hungarians known from earlier annals and chronicles, it refers to local rulersincluding Gelouwho are not mentioned in other primary sources. Consequently, historians debate whether Gelou was a historical person or an imaginary figure created by the unidentified author of the Gesta Hungarorum. In Romanian historiography, based on the mention of him by Anonymus some 300 years later, Gelou is considered one of three early-10th-century Romanian dukes with lands in the intra-Carpathian region of present-day Romania.
The Gesta Hungarorum describes pre-conquest Transylvania as a country rich in salt and gold, which was raided by Turkic peoples"Cumans and Pechenegs"before the arrival of the Magyars. Archaeological research indicates that a people who cremated their dead inhabited the regions of the Transylvanian salt mines from the seventh to the ninth centuries. Although excavated weapons suggest a military elite, none of the early-medieval Transylvanian fortresses uncovered can be reliably dated before the 10th century. The Gesta Hungarorum states that Gelou's duchy was inhabited by Vlachs and Slavs; most toponyms recorded by the chronicler in connection with Gelou's duchy are of Magyar origin. According to the Gesta Hungarorum, Tétény, who was one of seven Magyar chieftains, defeated Gelou's army at the Meseș Gates and Gelou was killed at the Căpuș River as he fled towards his unnamed fortress. Gelou's subjects then yielded to Tuhutum without further resistance.
Background
What is known about Gelou comes from the Gesta Hungarorum, the earliest surviving Hungarian chronicle. The Gesta was written during the second half of the 12th century or the early 13th century by an unidentified author, now known as Anonymus. It describes the Magyar conquest of the Carpathian Basin around 900.The Magyars, settled in the Pontic–Caspian steppe by the 830s, began a westward migration after their defeat by a coalition of Pechenegs and Bulgarians in about 895. They crossed the Carpathian Mountains, invading the surrounding area. Gelou is a local ruler described in the Gesta Hungarorum as an opponent of the invading Magyars. Anonymus did not write about Simeon I of Bulgaria, Svatopluk I of Moravia or other opponents known from contemporary sources, instead chronicling Magyar battles with local rulers not mentioned in other primary sources.
Transylvania on the eve of the Hungarian conquest
The nomadic Avars dominated the Carpathian Basin from about 567. In Transylvania, archaeological evidence attributed to them around 630 is clustered in the region of the salt mines at Ocnișoara, Ocna Mureș and Turda, and along the rivers Mureș and Someș. The cremation cemeteries of the Mediaș group, a sedentary population, were also concentrated around the salt mines in the seventh to ninth centuries. Although the Mediaș cemeteries have been attributed to Slavs, according to Madgearu "the presence of Romanians in this context should not be ruled out". The names of many rivers in Transylvaniafor instance, Bistrița, Cerna, Dobra and Târnava are of Slavic origin, indicating the historical presence of a Slavic-speaking population. According to Madgearu, two eighth-century spurs unearthed at Șura Mică and Medișoru Mare "suggest the existence of cavalry troops of Slavs and, perhaps, Romanians in Avar service".The Avar Khaganate disintegrated after the Franks invaded its western regions three times between 791 and 803. A stone column erected during the reign of Omurtag of Bulgaria commemorates the 829 death of a Bulgarian commander named Onegavon at the river Tisa, indicating that the Bulgarians invaded the eastern regions of the one-time khaganate. According to the Annals of Fulda, in 894 Emperor Arnulf sent envoys to the Bulgarians to "ask that they should not sell salt to the Moravians"; this demonstrates that the Bulgarians controlled, at a minimum, the roads between the Transylvanian salt mines and Moravia.
According to Kurdt Horedt, István Bóna and other historians, Dridu B pottery unearthed in the Alba Iulia region which was similar to ceramic utensils found along the lower Danube demonstrates that the Bulgarians expanded their authority over this region. Other historians reject this theory, saying that Dridu B ceramics can only prove cultural influences from the Balkan Peninsula. The so-called "Ciumbrud group" of cemeteries, which were also unearthed near Alba Iulia, yielded earrings and clothing accessories analogous to finds from the lower Danube region and Moravia. Spurs, weapons and other Frankish objects unearthed at Iernut, Tărtăria and other Transylvanian sites demonstrate ninth-century trade with the Carolingian Empire; similar spurs were also commonly used in Bulgaria and by 10th-century Magyars.
According to historians Vlad Georgescu, Ioan-Aurel Pop and Alexandru Madgearu, the existence of a ninth-century Vlach polity in the Carpatho-Danubian region is verified by the Gesta Hungarorum and contemporary sources. Alfred the Great's translation of the Historiae Adversus Paganosa fifth-century work by Orosiusreferred to "the Dacians, who were formerly Goths" and lived east of the Moravians and the "Vistula country". The 11th-century Persian scholar Gardizi, who studied the works of the late ninth-century Abu Abdallah al-Jayhani, wrote about the Nandars"a people of Rūm who are all Christians"who inhabited the lower Danube and the Carpathians. Pop identifies the "nandars" to be Romanians, but Bóna and Kristó consider them Bulgarians because nándor was the Hungarian term used for Bulgarians. Although Rūm is the New Persian term for Rome and the Roman Empire, Hungarian scholar Sándor identified a Persian source in which the Vlachs are referred to by "ulagh" rather than Rūm. Vladimir Minorsky also does not consider the "Nandars" to be Romanians, but "Onogur-Bulgarians", since the text mentions them in two places, south of the country of the Hungarians and the Danube, and above the Khazars, and west of the Volga, roughly where the state of the Volga Bulgarians was, and there were certainly never any Romanians living near the Volga. An Armenian geographical work mentions "an unknown country called Balak" north of Bulgaria. According to Pop and Georgescu, this demonstrates that a Vlach country existed in the region at the end of the ninth century. Manuscript studies indicate that the reference to Balak was interpolated after 1000, with the original text describing the "large country of Dacia" and its 25 Slavic tribes. According to the early-12th-century Primary Chronicle, although the Slavs were the first settlers west of the Carpathians, the Volokhs seized their territory. The Volokhs were expelled in turn by the Magyars, who "took their lands and settled among the Slavs". Many scholars, including Georgescu and Madgearu, identify the Volokhs as Vlachs fighting the invading Magyars. Although the majority of non-Romanian scholars consider the "Volokh" in the text to be the Franks, not the Vlachs, as they appear in other parts of the text and their state is described as being close to even England.. Since the Vlachs never reached Normandy, which was also the territory of the Volokhs mentioned in the text, it is highly probable that the text refers to the Franks, who were indeed driven out of the Carpathian Basin by the Hungarians at the time of the Hungarian conquest.
Although Romanian scholars have identified about a dozen Transylvanian fort sites in Gelou's duchy, none can be definitively dated before the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries. The forts at Dăbâca and Șirioara were destroyed between the last decades of the 10th century and the first half of the 11th, but their existence before 900 is unproven. At Dăbâca, "the evidence published so far, albeit poorly, does contain evidence of a ninth-century occupation of the site", according to archaeologist Florin Curta. Curta mentions two pairs of bell-shaped pendants, found outside the fort, which are similar to 9th-century Moravian artefacts. Another Romanian archaeologist, Alexandru Madgearu, writes that the bell-shaped pendants were only made after around 965, because similar jewellery was found at sites dated between the last third of the 10th century and the first half of the 11th century. Pottery finds suggest that the fortress at Cluj-Mănăștur may have been built during the ninth or tenth century. Early-medieval forts at Moigrad, Ortelec, Șimleu Silvaniei and Zalnoc were built at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries, and the fort at Moldovenești even later. According to Vlad Georgescu, more than 40 excavated Transylvanian sites can be identified as settlements in Gelou's duchy. Furthermore, Madgearu argues it is certain that the place-name Gilău derives from Gelou, intended to preserve the leader's memory, given the Gesta Hungarorum records Gelou's death as having occurred in this area.
Anonymus' narrative
Gelou and his duchy
According to Anonymus, "Slavs, Bulgarians, Vlachs, and the shepherds of the Romans" inhabited the Carpathian Basin when the Magyars invaded the territory. The chronicler describes Transylvania as a rich country with salt mines and gold-yielding rivers, inhabited by "Vlachs and Slavs" when the Magyars arrived, and records the names of five Transylvanian rivers or mountain passes. Unsurprisingly, mostAlmaș, Aștileu, Căpuș and Mezeșare of Hungarian origin, given at the time the source was written, Hungarian names had already replaced the old Romanian ones. In the Gesta Hungarorum Gelou is described as "a certain Vlach" and "prince of the Vlachs", indicating that the Vlachs were considered the dominant Transylvanian population.According to Anonymus, Gelou "was not steadfast and did not have around him good warriors". The Vlachs and Slavs of Transylvania were "the basest of the whole world" because "they had nothing else for arms than bows and arrows"; Transylvanian weakness was the result of frequent raids by "the Cumans and Pechenegs". According to Ioan Aurel Pop, Anonymus' description of Gelou's subjects indicates a sedentary people called to arms. Carlile Aylmer Macartney writes that the Blasii and Picenati words for Vlachs and Pechenegs and the reference to their "bows and arrows" suggest that Anonymus borrowed the text from a work describing the route of the Third or Fourth Crusade across the Balkans; the late-12th-century Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris refers to Vlachs and Cumanians and their bows and arrows. Based on Anonymus's narrative, Sălăgean says that Gelou's polity was small compared with the other five mentioned in the Gesta Hungarorum.