Gyula (title) - The gyulas in The 10th-11th Centuries

The gyulas in The 10th-11th Centuries

See also: Principality of Hungary

Following the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin around 896, the title gyula can be found in the De administrando imperio (“On the Governance of the Empire”) written by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The emperor confirms that around 950 the gyla was one of the two important officers who assisted the leader of Hungarian tribal federation; also, each tribe had a chieftain.

They /the Hungarians/ have for their first chief the prince who comes by succession of Árpád’s family, and two others, the gylas and the karchas, who have the rank of judge; and each clan has a prince.
The karchas Boultzous is the son of the karchas Kalis, and Kalis is a proper name, but karchas is a dignity, like gylas, which is superior to karchas. —Constantine Porphyrogenitus: De administrando imperio

The Byzantine Ioannes Skylitzes in the second half of the 11th century recounted (using earlier written sources) the baptism of the Hungarian chieftain Gyula (or gyula) in Constantinople in the mid-10th century. According to Ioannes Skylitzes, Gyula stayed true to his new faith and took a missionary bishop, Hierotheos, with him. A Slavic source also contains related information.

The almost contemporary Annales Hildesheimenses (“The Annals of Hildesheim”) recorded for 1003 that “King Stephen of Hungary led an army against his maternal uncle, King Gyula” and “obliged his country by force to adopt the Christian faith.”