A generation after the defeat at Constantinople, the Avars readjust their way of life, all while trying to keep their remaining subjects in line.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 2, Episode 9: Keeping it together

Last time, we followed the rebellions that burst forth after the khagan’s defeat before the walls of Constantinople. The Slavs in the western reaches of the khaganate renounced their allegiance to the Avars, elected a man named Samo to lead them, and created an independent kingdom for themselves. Meanwhile, the Bulgars challenged the khagan for the throne, and though their coup failed, a prominent leader named Kubrat drove the Avars from the steppe lands of the eastern khaganate and carved out a realm for himself. By the 630s, the khagan’s authority was only really felt within the Carpathian Basin.

As for the Romans, we saw how they triumphed over the Avars and Persians – and were immediately faced with a new threat from the Arabian deserts. The native tribes of the region united under the new religion of Islam and exploded out of the peninsula to defeat the battered and exhausted Roman forces in the Orient. By the 640s, the Romans had lost all of their eastern provinces save those in Anatolia, and were on the defensive against constant Muslim raids.

As you can imagine, the Roman emperor no longer sent subsidies to the khagan. Payments had stopped during the siege of Constantinople and now the khagan couldn’t attack the Romans to force a new deal, since he needed his warriors at home to maintain his position. This halt in subsidies and raids – two core features of the Avar lifestyle – led to a change in the very power structure of the khaganate.

As we saw in episode two, the Avar realm ran on a prestige economy, meaning that its warriors sought luxury goods not because they wanted to live comfortable lives, but because they wanted to display their social status. Since warriors no longer ventured on foreign campaigns, the only source of prestige goods was now the khagan. The Avar ruler and his predecessors had accumulated such massive amounts of riches during their decades of campaigning that their mound of treasure was enough to sustain the prestige economy even without replenishment from subsidies.

But this treasure was still finite, and so competition between Avars warriors increased as each sought to outdo the others in service to the ruler and be gifted a portion of his riches. The khagan’s followers were vying for his favour more than ever, which only strengthened his position within the khaganate.

Of course, the khagan had to be careful with how much wealth he gave away since his treasure was no longer replenished by subsidies and plunder. Accordingly, fewer riches were distributed, the number of warriors who were given prestige goods decreased, and many of the less privileged warriors fell out of the elite social class. These unfortunates redirected their attention to what they still possessed; most focused on their herds of sheep and cattle, while the poorest amongst them even started to tend the land as farmers.

This was an immense change in lifestyle for the Avars, and unfortunately, we lack written sources to get more details about this shift, but we do have some information from the archeological record. After the defeat at Constantinople, we find fewer rich single graves and more small cemeteries for the elite, which indicates that the elite class and its wealth had shrunk. In addition, in the later seventh century, cemeteries became larger and were used for longer periods of time, which suggests that more Avars were settling down in year-round settlements, and that the population of these communities was increasing. Indeed, reconstructions of past climate conditions suggest that the ecological context was more favourable to agriculture in the seventh century and that there was more farming in the Carpathian Basin than before.

This transition in lifestyle must’ve been psychologically difficult for steppe riders accustomed to glory and plunder; circumstances now forced them to abandon war as a full-time profession and to instead live like the farmers their forefathers had subjugated. One source tells us that the Avars now exacted more tribute from their agrarian subjects than before. Partly, this must’ve been to compensate for the plunder that was no longer coming in, but I reckon that increasing tribute was also a way to reinforce their power dynamic; even as they were becoming more similar to their farming subjects, the Avars wanted to underline that they were still above them in the social hierarchy.

By the 650s, the first generation of Avars to grow up in the aftermath of Constantinople was coming of age, and the material record shows that their culture had become more insular. We find much fewer Roman, Frankish, and Lombard objects in the khaganate of the later seventh century, and in fact, we find closer links between the Avars and their nomadic Bulgar brethren. Though the Avars resented the Bulgars for taking their eastern steppes, they also admired their military skills, and now adopted new styles of clothing and jewellery that were current amongst the Bulgar elite. In other words, as a more inwards-looking generation came of age, they sought to anchor themselves in their nomadic roots, and the Bulgars were a great source of inspiration due to their prestigious position.

Though the khagan had fewer warriors and resources, he was able to maintain the integrity of his realm because none of the neighbouring powers were strong enough to exploit his weaknesses.

The Avars’ most powerful neighbour, the Romans, were entangled with the Arabs. Animated by their new religion of Islam, the Arabs were formidable fighters, and nothing seemed to be able to stop them. By the 650s, they’d brought down the mighty Persian empire with which the Romans had struggled for seven centuries, and they now sought to push the borders of Islam as far as they could. That meant taking down the Roman empire and finishing what the Persians could not.

In 654, an ambitious general named Mu’awiya marched an army across Anatolia all the way to Chalkedon, where, thirty years earlier, the Persians had besieged Constantinople. Mu’awiya’s ground forces were supported by an Arab fleet which had conquered the islands of Crete, Kos, and Rhodes. Though it took heavy losses, this navy managed to defeat the Roman fleet defending Constantinople and gain control of the Golden Horn; the path was thus cleared for a direct assault on the capital. Arab ships rendezvoused with Mu’awiya’s forces and boarded siege engines to assault Constantinople’s sea walls; but as the ships approached the capital, a fierce storm ravaged their ranks, and many were sunk. The fleet was forced to retreat and so left Mu’awiya’s army unsupported and with no way to cross the Bosphorus. For the second time in thirty years, the Romans had narrowly avoided the capture of their capital.

Two years after the failed Muslim siege of Constantinople, their caliph died, which brought a pause to their constant attacks against the empire. The Romans were thus allowed some time to breathe and think about their next move. If the emperor wanted to survive the next inevitable Muslim assault, he needed to strengthen his realm, and the most straightforward way to do so was to take back what had been lost in the Balkans.

The Avar and Slavic invasions of the early seventh century had destroyed imperial authority in the region in all but the fortified coastal cities of Greece. Towns in the interior were much reduced as many of their inhabitants had left for the safety of valleys and mountains. The Slavs hadn’t occupied these urban settlements since they preferred to live in rural communities according to their own customs and laws, but these Roman towns ceased to function as urban centers since they were no longer dense enough to sustain that lifestyle. Regarding the countryside, many Roman villagers throughout the hinterlands of Macedonia and Greece had fled their homes to save themselves, and Slavic migrants had occupied their dwellings and begun to farm their fields.

Yet despite being battered and scattered, Roman provincials continued to live in the Balkans, and the emperor aimed to reintegrate them into the imperial order. As to the Slavs who were occupying his lands, he was going to either drive them out or subjugate them and turn them into obedient subjects who would pay taxes and provide recruits.

And so, after surviving the Muslim siege of Constantinople, the Roman emperor marched an army into Thrace in 657. Imperial forces defeated several Slavic clans, took numerous captives, and forced their communities to pay tribute and supply recruits to the empire. But the emperor didn’t fight every tribe he encountered. Some Slavic communities traded with Roman cities on the coast, and their leaders were more amenable to collaboration than conflict. As such, the emperor sought to charm them by granting them titles and even offices in the imperial administration.

For instance, some Slavic leaders were recognized as archon, meaning “ruler” in Greek, and given a salary from the state treasury. This grant acknowledged their right to administer a specific territory, but also came with the expectation of converting to Christianity and adhering to Roman norms. Moreover, it implicitly acknowledged that it was the emperor who granted them this right, which brought these Slavic archontes under the empire’s umbrella, along with any Roman provincials who lived on their lands. Of course, such an arrangement wasn’t comparable to having an actual Roman governor administering a territory, but it was better than letting these Slavic leaders carve out independent realms for themselves. And so, in this way, Slavic rulers were slowly being enmeshed into the Roman administration while former provincials who lived on their territories were being brought back into the fold.

These reintegration efforts mainly concerned Greece and Macedonia, because the empire didn’t have the resources to exert influence beyond these regions. Accordingly, there was a good buffer between the Romans south of the Balkan Mountains and the Avars north of the Danube, which was a great relief for the khagan. He didn’t have the forces to fight his old archnemesis and, in any case, his attention was needed elsewhere.

Around the year 660, Samo of the Slavs died. He had ruled an independent kingdom at the far western edge of the khaganate for three decades, and had married a daughter from each of the twelve leading clans of his realm to ensure their loyalty. While this stabilized the kingdom, it also meant that, when he died, there were dozens of sons with a claim to leadership, each supported by their extended families. And with no established law of succession, Samo’s kingdom immediately crumbled into several parts fighting for control of the whole. The khagan looked at this disorder with delight and sent his riders to attack and subjugate each small realm in turn; within a few years, the Avars had restored the khaganate’s western borders to what they had been before the Slavic rebellion, thus securing the entirety of the Carpathian Basin.

Around the same time, news arrived of promising developments in the East. Kubrat, the Bulgar commander who had taken control of the steppes north of the Black Sea, had just died in 665 after three decades of rule. Leadership of the Bulgars passed to his eldest son, but as this inexperienced ruler was settling into the saddle, he was hit by a massive invasion from the East. The Khazars, who were a nomadic Turkic people ruling a vast swath of the Eurasian steppe, rode in to wrest control of the grasslands held by the Bulgars. We have very few details about this conflict, but the two sides spent the next decade fighting each other in a bitter and bloody steppe war. I’ve included a map in this episode’s description to help you visualize the situation. The khagan was thrilled by the news of the Khazars fighting the Bulgars, but decided not to get into a three-way fray; he was happy to let his rebellious subjects get worn down by a foreign threat, because his army was still not strong enough to confidently undertake an offensive war.

In fact, the only record that we have of an Avar offensive during this time relates to Italy. You see, the Avar khagan had a longstanding alliance with the Lombard king going all the way back to when their two peoples had defeated the Gepids and expulsed them from the Carpathian Basin; ever since that campaign a hundred years earlier, each succeeding ruler on both sides had reaffirmed their alliance. Now in 663, the Lombard king of Italy asked the khagan to honour their deal to help defeat the rebellious dux of Friuli.

The khagan mobilized his army, marched on Italy, and promptly defeated the dux. He tried to keep the duchy of Friuli through right of conquest, but when the Lombard king threatened to attack, he relented and retreated, which reveals the extent of the khagan’s weakness. He was obviously not confident that his army would prevail in war, and he didn’t even take the risk; after the turmoil of the past few decades, a defeat could spell the end of the khaganate, so he instead took the safe option and kept his warriors home. The Avars were not now what they had once been.

Indeed, the Avars were focused on maintaining their existing possessions, and it was quite the effort to keep all their subjects in line. The Miracula Sancti Demetrii, written by a scholar in Thessaloniki in the late seventh century, recounts that many Romans had been taken to Pannonia by the Avars during their initial invasions. The author says: “Thereafter they mixed with Bulgars, Avars, and other heathen peoples, had children with one another, and became a populous nation. Each son, however, assumed from his father the traditions and attitudes of his kin towards the customs of the Romans. … Sixty years and more after the barbarians had subjected their forefathers, a new and different people had developed. With time, however, most of them became freemen. The khagan of the Avars, who now considered them as a people of their own, according to the constitution of his people appointed a leader over them by the name of Kuver.”

As the text makes clear, though these abducted provincials had mixed with barbarians, their descendants had preserved their Roman customs for generations, and were accordingly recognized as a distinct ethnicity within the khaganate. We don’t know what this group called themselves, but the author of the Miracula refers to them as “Sermesianoi,” meaning the people from around Sirmium. This had been an ancient imperial city which later became the capital of the Gepids and was then conquered by the Avars; and it seems that these abducted provincials had been settled near it. The author of the Miracula didn’t refer to them as Romans because he thought of himself as a Roman by virtue of living in the empire and adhering to its laws; in contrast, those people had accepted the khagan as their ruler and lived by his principles. Even though they had many customs in common, the author thought of them as too barbarian to be Roman.

Of course, these were not the only Roman descendants living in the khaganate, but they were the only ones who were given political recognition and representation. The reason is that they constituted a fighting force. Usually, Roman prisoners who were displaced into the khaganate were disarmed and put to work the land or to provide specialized services like siege engineering; the Avars and Bulgars maintained a monopoly on force, and they got to do the actual fighting and get all the rewards that came from it. But it seems that, in this case, those Avars and Bulgars who had mixed with Roman prisoners had passed on their right to fight to their children. And so it happened that this group of Sermesianoi were Roman in character yet were allowed to fight, and so the khagan had to take them into account.

The Avar ruler wanted to control them to avoid an independent power source emerging in his realm; so, he legitimized the Sermesianoi before they demanded recognition by force. He did so by appointing Kuver as their leader, since he was, presumably, friendly to the regime. Some scholars have theorized that this Kuver was a son of Kubrat since their names are similar. The theory could make sense; the events relating to the Sermesianoi occur after Kubrat’s death when his realm was in the midst of war with the Khazars, and one of his sons could’ve fled to the Avars for refuge. But it seems unlikely that the khagan would empower a potential rival with an army, and the Miracula doesn’t mention a connection between Kuver and Kubrat. For me, the most plausible explanation is that Kuver was a leading man from amongst the Sermesianoi with whom the khagan felt he could negotiate.

The most telling evidence for this hypothesis is Kuver’s ambitions. The leader of the Sermesianoi didn’t want to go to the steppe lands of the east, as might be expected from a son wishing to regain his father’s realm. No, instead, he saw his future in the Roman empire.

Sometime in the 670s, Kuver gathered his warriors and began marching south, aiming to leave the khagan’s service and make his own path. The Avar ruler of course tried to stop him, but Kuver defeated him in five separate battles and forced him to withdraw. Obviously, the khagan did not have the same strength he had once commanded.

Kuver was thus free to cross the Danube, and he led his army southwards into Macedonia, where many of his followers planned to go back to the cities of their forefathers. Interestingly, these descendants had maintained a Christian identity and a Roman sense of lineage even two generations after their ancestors had been brought to the khaganate, and these links were strong enough to make them want to go back to the empire.

Kuver, for his part, wanted to maintain his position of power and to create a realm for himself on imperial territory. But he didn’t rule alone, as he had several archontes who had followers and estates of their own, and who made decisions with him in common consultation. We know little about this entourage, but they were most likely multiethnic. One of his most prominent commanders, a man named Mavros, spoke Bulgar, Slavic, Greek, and Latin, which might reflect the tongues spoken amongst his followers, because why else would he have reason to use them?

In one of their gatherings, these archontes decided to call Kuver their khagan. They then sent an embassy to the emperor to request that the land which Kuver now possessed through force be granted to him by law. The emperor couldn’t dislodge these invaders because, as we saw, his hold on the Balkans was tenuous; so instead of antagonizing him, he appointed Kuver as official general of the Sermesianoi, and instructed the Slavic communities nearby to provide food to his warriors. Of course, these acts were more symbolic than anything. The imperial army and administration had long abandoned the lands which Kuver occupied, so the emperor didn’t actually control them, let alone the Slavic communities on them. But he still had the legal right to those lands, and the power to denounce or legitimize rulers living on them. And so, the emperor decided to make the best of an already-existing situation and pretend like Kuver was his legitimate representative in the region, which would make it more likely that the Sermesianoi would fight alongside him, not against him.

But that doesn’t mean that Kuver was a loyal servant of the crown. He continued advancing deeper into the empire, and when he got close to Thessaloniki, he decided to make it his capital. Kuver knew he couldn’t take the city by force – it was the biggest one in the Balkans besides Constantinople – so he instead resorted to guile. The plan was for one of his commanders, Mavros, to defect to the empire and settle in Thessaloniki with his followers; and when an opportune moment arose, they would turn the city over to him.

Mavros was able to defect pretty convincingly since so many men in Kuver’s army were already heading back to their ancestor’s towns. But Mavros wasn’t just another foot soldier, and when he entered Thessaloniki, he received an imperial invitation to come to Constantinople. The emperor knew he couldn’t fully trust this defecting commander, and wanted to make sure he was really on his side. Accordingly, Mavros, his family, and his retinue were taken to the capital and entertained, and the man himself was graced with a military command, probably in Thrace.

This charm offensive worked well beyond expectations, because Mavros’ son revealed to the emperor the plot to seize Thessaloniki; clearly, the son was impressed by the Queen of Cities and felt that the empire would afford him more opportunities than anything that could be had in an independent Balkan realm. Mavros was immediately relieved of his command, and his son replaced him in the role. He was made archon of the defectors, and they were all probably settled near the capital as a buffer against barbarians.

As to Kuver himself, his army clearly no longer posed a threat to Thessaloniki; his force was much diminished by Mavros’ departure and by the return of many of his Christian followers to the towns of their forefathers. His initial momentum evaporated, and he thereafter disappears from our sources. He didn’t become a second khagan, but simply another bandit lord in the Balkans.

The story of the Sermesianoi is quite striking. It not only hints at how the khaganate was changing – a whole new ethnicity had evolved within it – but also shows the unique path taken by some Roman prisoners who had mixed with the Bulgars and Avars. Of course, the Sermesianoi were just one group amongst many; they’re noteworthy because they chose to mingle with the nomads. But the rest of the Romanics inside the khaganate had kept their distance from their overlords, and had chosen another path.

Next time, we’ll see those Romanics further develop their own distinct identity, and head towards becoming an entirely new people.

That story, though, will have to wait a bit, because I just became a dad! With a newborn and a day job, I can’t promise to release an episode every two weeks like I’ve done so far. It’s my first time welcoming a human into the world, so I don’t know what my schedule will look like; but I am committed to continuing the podcast, so rest assured that I’ll keep researching, writing, and recording to bring you new episodes and continue the story.

Thanks again so much for listening. Stay tuned and see you soon!