Gelou (duke) - Controversy Around His Story

Controversy Around His Story

One view is that the anonymous notary of the Hungarian king Béla III (1172–1196) wrote in the Gesta Ungarorum, based on ancient chronicles and oral tradition, that the Magyars, when they settled on the plains of the Tisza and Danube rivers, found there “Slavs, Bulgarians and Vlachs, and the shepherds of the Romans” Although the Gesta Ungarorum is in sharp contrast with the chronicle of Simon of Kéza and of other 14th century chronicles, it is a mistake to treat Gelou as a purely fictional character whose name derived from that of the Transylvanian town Gilău (Gyalu in Hungarian) Moreover, it would make no sense for the author of the Gesta to invent entire populations or to lie about the situation. Romanian archaeologists made every possible effort to prove that the Gesta was a reliable source for the medieval history of Transylvania and to turn Dăbâca into a Transylvanian Troy. Archaeological research has located his voivodate, unearthing more than 40 settlements there.

Another view that, the author of the Gesta related, around the year 1200, in a novelistic form what he thought had happened at the time of the Magyar Conquest around 895. He seems to have no idea about the real state of affairs in the Carpathian Basin at the time of the Magyar Conquest: instead of Simeon I of Bulgaria, Arnulf and Svatopluk, of whom he had no knowledge, he invented imaginary figures as enemies of the Hungarians. In the construction of his stories, he sometimes drew on legendary elements, but more frequently he worked with toponyms.

The excavations at Dăbâca evidence habitation from the ninth century, but the excavators were overwhelmed by the complexity of the site and embarrassed that no substantial evidence was found to prove the "Gesta" right. There are four enclosures at Dăbâca, each one associated with earthwork fortifications; the excavators dated the third enclosure to the 9th or 10th century, while also claiming that it post-dated the second enclosure - the only defense work to have produced clearly datable artifacts, namely a silver penny of King Peter (1038–1041 and 1044–1046).

Some Hungarian authors are claiming that Gelou was not a real person and that it was created by Anonymous from a toponym by etymology. Romanian historiography claims that he was an actual person.