The Hungarian and Turkic people (or rather, peoples) are connected in many cultural and even genetic ways. The Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus called the Hungarian conquerors ‘Turks’, and the sons of the House of Árpád (Turul gens in medieval Hungarian sources) were later called ‘Princes of Turkey’ by the Byzantines. In the origin myth of the Hungarian royal dynasty, the ‘Turul bird’ is also of Turkish origin, as the symbol of the Sky and of the supreme God of Turkish myths, where it appears as toġrïl or toğrul.
The Hungarian nobility—not only the Seklers—considered themselves to be of Hun-Scythian origin throughout the Middle Ages and partly during the modern period, and although the Scythian question should be examined separately from this fact, it is obvious to us that this sense of origin—in the light of the latest archaeogenetic results— coincides with medieval chronicle tradition and the idea of a Hunnic origin was probably not ‘adopted from Western chronicles’, as earlier research suggested.
It would be incorrect to say that Hungarian prowess in sabre-fencing began only in the modern era, when the sport of Olympic fencing was invented. Even before the Conquest period, sabres were extensively used by Magyar nomads, and were found in graves dated prior to their arrival in the Carpathian Basin.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.