Foundation of Moldavia - Last Centuries of The Early Middle Ages

Last Centuries of The Early Middle Ages

In the second half of the 8th century, by the imposition of the Khazar political domination upon numerous populations, a period of stability and peace was established within a vast territory between the rivers Volga and Dnieper. The local population of the Carpathian-Danubian area also fully profited from the pax Chazarica for almost two centuries. The local population in 10th to 12th-century Moldavia is known from excavations of sites attributed to the so-called Dridu and Răducăneni cultures. In Moldavia, to the west of the river Prut, field surveys identified 129 archaeological sites from the 9th and 10th centuries, and the number of sites (296) is substantially higher for the 10th and 11th centuries.

But in the steppes north of the Caspian Sea, the Khazar Khaganate had to confront the Pechenegs, a tribal confederation of Turkic origin, in the late 9th century. During the second half of the 10th century, the Pechenegs settled “through violence” between the Khazars’ territories and those of Byzantium. The Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his work De Administrando Imperio (‘On Governing the Empire’) specifies that around 950 the land controlled by the Pechenegs or Patzinakia stretched from the bank opposite Distra (now Silistra, Bulgaria) of the Danube to Sarkel (now in Russia) on the Don River. One of Patzinakia’s eight “provinces”, Charaboi was located between the rivers Southern Bug and Dniester, and another “province”, Chabouxingyla stretched across the upper courses of the rivers Siret, Prut, and Dniester.

The oldest written record referring to the Vlachs (early Romanians) living in the territory of the future Moldavia seems to be the inscription, dated to the 11th century, on a memorial rune stone from Sjonhem on the Gotland island (Sweden). It mentions the murder of the Varangian Rodfos by “the Blakumen during his voyage abroad”. Since the usual route of the Varangians from the Baltic coasts to Constantinople passed along the Moldavian littoral of the Black Sea, these Vlachs must have lived east of the Carpathians.

The oldest source to attest the presence of the Romanians east of the Carpathians is an episode in the Eymundar saga, preserved in the codex Flateyjarbók. The episode narrates that Burizleif, that is Grand Prince Sviatopolk I of Kiev (1015–1019), during his war preparations against his brother, retreated to Tyrkland where he planned to launch an attack on the Kievan Rus’ with an army made up of Tyrkir and Blökumenn, that is of Pechenegs and Vlachs respectively. According to the Russian chronicles, Grand Prince Sviatopolk I took refuge with the Pechenegs in the winter of 1018–1019.

In 1036 the Pechenegs were defeated by Grand Prince Yaroslav I of Kiev (1019–1054), and thenceforward, they were hindered not only by their clashes with the Turkic tribe of the Oghuz, but also by their own intertribal disagreements. The massive migration of the Pechenegs to the Balkan Peninsula started in 1046 when two Pecheneg groups crossed the Danube into the Byzantine Empire. Although some Pecheneg groups decided to stay in the steppes, they were obliged to enter other Turkic tribal unions, or to offer their services to the Rus’ princes.

Shortly after 1060, the Oghuz moved into the steppe north of the Danube and in 1064 they burst into the Byzantine Empire. Defeated by provincial troops and by the Pechenegs in Byzantine service, one part of the Oghuz submitted to the empire, but others returned to the region north of the Danube and sought refuge in the domains of the Rus’s princes.

Next another Turkic tribe, the Cumans approached the Danube Delta. According to a variant of the oldest Turkic chronicle, Oghuzname, inserted into the Turkish Genealogy by Abu’l-Ghazi Behadur Khan (1603–1663), the Cumans fought against the countries of the Rus’, the Romanians (Ulak), the Hungarians, and the Bashkirs. The Cumans had by 1070 controlled the entire steppe corridor north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, a region hence known as Dašt-i Qipčak (‘the steppe of the Cumans’) in the Muslim sources.

But in the mid-12th century, the region was troubled not only by Cuman horsemen, but also by plots of pretenders to the thrones of the Principality of Halych and the Byzantine Empire.

In 1159, a candidate to the throne of Halych, Ivan Rostislavich the Berladnik is reported to have looted two boats belonging to fishermen from Halych on the Danube which suggests that the influence of the Principality of Halych may have extended as far as southern Moldavia. A line from the poem The Lay of Igor’s Campaign also refers to Prince Yaroslav Osmomysl of Halych (1153–1187) saying that “Your law reigns up to the river Danube”. However, the fact that Ivan Rostislavich, during his disputes with the princes of Halych, twice fled to the lands by the Danube shows that the same region could not have been under the rule of those same princes from whom he was fleeing.

In 1164 Andronicus Comnenus, the cousin and political rival of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143–1180) escaped from prison and fled to Halych. However, when he reached the borders of Halych, he was captured by Romanians (Vlachs) who thus probably were located somewhere in present-day Moldavia. The fact that the Romanians acted in the emperor’s interest suggests that the Byzantine Empire had a strong political influence beyond its Danube frontier.

In 1211, the Teutonic Knights were settled by King Andrew II of Hungary (1205–1235) to defend the kingdom against the Cumans. The knights decided to expand “beyond the snowy mountains” (ultra montes nivium) and managed to impose their military control over territories outside the Carpathians. In a charter of 1222 confirming the knights’ privileges, King Andrew II described their new acquisitions as reaching the “borders of the Brodniks” (ad terminos prodnicorum) to the east. At that time the Brodniks, whose ethnicity is still unclear and a matter of debate, lived in southern Moldavia. In 1225 King Andrew II removed the Teutonic Knights from the territory by the force, because they had started to ignore the royal authority and recognized only that of the Holy See.

On May 31, 1223, the Cumans allied with Rus' princes suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Mongols in the Battle of the Kalka River (now in Ukraine). Afterwards several Cuman groups expected support from the Kingdom of Hungary in case of a new confrontation with the Mongols. According to the chronicle of Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, in 1227 the son of the Cuman khan, at the head of a small delegation, presented himself to Robert, the archbishop of Esztergom (Hungary), and requested baptism for him and his followers. As a consequence of the large-scale acts of conversion and of the consolidation of Hungary’s positions in the outer Carpathian region, the archbishop created the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cumania with jurisdiction over the entire territory stretching eastwards to the river Siret. According to a letter of Pope Gregory IX (1227–1241), dated November 14, 1234, the Romanians (Walati) living in the territory of the bishopric ignored the bishop’s prerogatives. The pope also relates that the Romanians had their own ‘pseudo-bishops’ and even attracted some Hungarians and Germans to their Orthodox rite.

The Mongol campaign to conquer the southern half of Eastern Europe started in 1236. The invasion caused a real exodus of the Cumans who tried to find refuge in various places, for example in the Crimea, in the Balkan Peninsula and in the Kingdom of Hungary. But the massacre of the Cumans and their exodus did not lead to total evacuation of Dašt-i Qipčak, and some Cuman groups were subdued by the Mongols, the new rulers of the Eurasian steppes.

The main target of the Mongol invasion of 1241–1242 was the Kingdom of Hungary. But en route a Mongol group led by a certain Bochetor crossed Moldavia and occupied the whole “country of the Cuman bishop”. Then his armies proceeded by the way of the Quara Ulagh (‘Black Vlachs’) who lived outside of the Carpathians.

The invasion of the Mongols in Eastern Europe checked for several decades the political offensive of the Kingdom of Hungary beyond the Carpathians. Moreover, the territories east of the mountains fell under Mongol overlordship, but until 1260, during the first twenty years of the formative period of the Golden Horde, their status was obscure.