Taksony of Hungary
Grand Prince of the Hungarians
930 CE to 973 CE
Taksony (before or around 931 – early 970s) is Grand Prince of the Hungarians after their catastrophic defeat in the 955 Battle of Lechfeld.
In his youth he had participated in plundering raids in Western Europe, but during his reign the Hungarians only target the Byzantine Empire.
The Gesta Hungarorum recounts that significant Muslim and Pecheneg groups settled in Hungary under Taksony.
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Fajsz is the only known son of Jutotzas, the third son of Árpád who had led the Hungarian tribes' confederation at the time of their conquest of the Carpathian Basin between around 895 and 907.
In the period starting with Árpád's death, fundamental changes have happened in the government of the tribal confederation.
This time is marked more by the various tribes acting in concert for raids than with the tribes acting under a strong central authority.
Hungarian visitors at Constantinople—including Termatzus, a great-grandson of Árpád – had informed Emperor Constantine VII around 948 that the "first chief" of the Hungarians "comes by succession of Árpád's family.”
Constantine VII also mentions that Fajsz was the head of the confederation of the Hungarian tribes around 950.
"A great host of Muslims" arrived in Hungary, according to the Gesta Hungarorum, "from the land of Bular" during the reign of Taksony.
The contemporaneous Abraham ben Jacob also recorded the presence of Muslim merchants from Hungary in Prague in 965.
Anonymous also writes of the arrival of Pechenegs during Taksony's reign; he granted them "a land to dwell in the region of Kemej as far as the Tisza.” The only sign of a Hungarian connection with Western Europe under Taksony is a report by Liutprand of Cremona.
He writes about Zacheus, whom Pope John XII had consecrated bishop and "sent to the Hungarians in order to preach that they should attack" the Germans in 963.
However, there is no evidence that Zacheus ever arrived in Hungary.