[I have to confess I'd intended Mahijada to sort of fall off the radar after that post, but Bmao inspired me. So here's a little history of his younger years, combined with a details about what's going on in Pannonia.]
Avars and Xasars
It is said that in the first years of his exile, the Prince Mahijada came to the city of Constantinople. With him came many companions, perhaps fifty men in all, including his childhood friend Narse and his bodyguard Artakhsatr. They were mostly young and warlike, the retainers of the would be Shah. Mahijada, beloved-of-the-gods, did not match their temperament. He was a holy and refined man, overly severe perhaps, but he had a gift for inspiring devotion in his followers.
Hosts of the Rhom Shah, they dined in sumptuous excellence in the golden halls of the rebuilt Imperial Palace. Disiapata, the Rhom Shah, saw in Mahijada an excellent opportunity. If he could unseat the Syrian Shah, Rhom would have both a fresh source of manpower and a strong buffer against any incursions from the East. However, in 718, but a few months after their arrival, Disiapata would die and with him Mahijada's hopes of reclaiming his throne. Where Disiapata had been bold and decisive, his son Datuvahya, though not untalented, was indecisive and relied on his father's able councilors. A taker of the drug the Hindis called charas and a drunkard to boot, he personally gave Mahijada little hope that Syria would ever be recovered.
So he went north, and perhaps half of his remaining companions followed him. For those who did not there were places in the retainer of Shah Datuvahya. For those who followed him, Avar country beckoned, with its lush verdant valleys and sweeping yellow plains.
Under its latest ruler, Amurtay Khagan, the Avar Empire was crumbling. Xasar warlords fled over the Carpathians to escape the Turks, and Slavs from both the north and the south raided their borders. Langobardia had been lost. The Isidorians could strike with impunity in Dalmatia, and the economy, always dependent on a degree of aggression from the Khaganate, had stagnated. Furthermore, the Avar were poorly positioned to take advantage of the newly developing trade routes. Amurtay was a capable ruler but like most of the Avar Khagans he was a traditionalist and a warrior. His minor victories along his various frontiers were irrelevant because he could not face all of the various threats his realm faced at once, and he had no understanding of how to address the underlying problems.
In 721, Prince Mahijada arrived in Srem, the Avar capital (formerly Sirmium) and Amurtay eagerly hired him on as a sort of advisor and mercenary. The Prince wasted little time in riding east and meeting the many Xasar-Sahu chiefs who had brought their tribes into Avar territory. While he could not speak to them except with the help of a translator, he conveyed to them his own story. Like them, he was an exile. Like them, he longed for home but this was a land of opportunity. They could accomplish far more working with the Khagan than against him.
Turning the nomadic tribes into an army was no easy task, but Mahijada had been groomed to rule from a young age, and he had not forgotten those lessons in exile. Culturally the Xasar-Sahu and Eftal had much in common, and this helped him to be accepted as a leader. Within two years, he had bound the Xasari into a loose confederation - ostensibly mercenaries who would serve the Khagan, and pay token tribute rather than raid. They received large grants of land for pasture, which effectively amounted to a recognition of their new homeland. Then, leaving Narse in Srem as an advisor, the prince led a picked group of the Xasar north against the Slavs.
On this campaign, lasting from 724 to 726, he turned those warriors he brought north into a disciplined army, united by shared experience rather than divided by tribal identity. Riding against the Kniaz of the Vistulan tribe, he dealt them a crushing blow in the field and proceeded to siege hill-fort after hill-fort, carrying off captives and wealth and obtaining the personal submission of the Kniaz. Leaving a garrison in Wislica, their capital, under the command of his bodyguard Artakhsatr, he rode down the length of the Vistula river, conquering the Masovians in turn. There, on the broad plains of Masovia his cavalry were even more effective, but he struggled to take the large and well-fortified towns into which the people retreated.
Although he had little intent to remain in the north, his victories proved his quality to the Avar Khagan, and perhaps most importantly the quality of the Xasar. Having earned the Khagan's trust, he would spend subsequent years at court, and as time went on his ambition to return home was slowly forgotten. He decided he would make his legacy here, in this country. Destiny, dharma, had chosen a different course for him.
Sklavenia
Two generations after the official independence of the Three Slavic Kingdoms, trouble was brewing. Eprius, always the smallest and weakest of the kingdoms, had seen its nobility benefit the least from the Mediterranean revival of trade. Apart from a few coastal cities, it was hilly, thickly forested country which was perfect for bandits and brigands. It was in Epirus that the last pagan holdouts remained, raiding their wealthy Thessalonian and Thracian neighbors, much to the consternation of the Eprioite Kniaz.
Like their northern cousins, who before the coming of the Isidorian Navy had established pirate havens in hidden coves along the Dalmatian coast, these raiders disrupted both commerce and the settled agrarian peoples rather indiscriminately. While theoretically the local nobles should have been responsible for settling this threat, in practice they either failed or found it easier to simply take a cut of the plunder and look the other way as their neighbors were raided. Finally, in 716, the situation reached the breaking point. The Langobards to the north petitioned the Thessalonian Kniaz, Boris, to handle the situation or they would be forced to invade Epirus - a threat which would invariably drag the entire Balkans into war on one side or the other.
Boris gathered his retainers and levies and marched into the Epiroite hills. To counter this incursion, the raiders gathered en masse under the charismatic Gostislav, and in an ambush destroyed or captured much of the army's baggage, before melting into the hills and local communities. Embarrassed and frustrated, Boris ordered the torching of any local village where "signs of unbelief" were apparent. These signs were broad and wide-ranging, and often were merely an excuse for his soldiers to gather fresh provisions and a little loot.
The Epiroite Kniaz, Stylianus, was forced to take action. He gathered his own retainers and linked up with Gostislav's brigands, persuading the bandits that together they could repulse the invaders and that Gostislav and his men could become wealthy landowners in Thessalonica. He was no fanatic, he told them, foaming at the mouth to slaughter heathens. They could keep their old gods if they named Christ among their number. Gostislav, fearing the alternate was a two front war he could not win, and knowing that many of his old bases of operation had been destroyed by Prince Boris, accepted the terms reluctantly. The two armies linked up and moved to defeat Boris. At the Battle of Ohrid (716), Gostislav's irregular bandits were incapable of holding a line against the determined charge of Boris' heavy horse, and the battle was lost. The Epiroite Kniaz was captured along with many of his nobles, and they were made to swear fealty to the Thessalonian crown. All of the bandits taken alive were impaled on stakes as an example to future rebels - one which seems to have horrified and cowed Stylianus, who returned to Arta a broken man.
Boris' campaign had been successful beyond his wildest dreams. Knowing the Avar Khagan was distracted, he followed up on his victory by taking both his own army and the Epiroite forces north, capturing the Langobard capital at Dekateria in 718. The Langobard Doux, Arechis II, was made yet another vassal. When word of this conquest reached Amurtay Khagan, who had been in the north fighting the Sorbs, he sent a emissary south, inciting the Thracian Kniaz Casamir III to join him. Together, they proposed to divide the Thessalonian kingdom between themselves, with the Avars regaining Langobardia and part of Epirus, and the Thracians taking the rest.
However, from the start the alliance was deeply divided. Casamir, deeply devout as his father and grandfather had been, refused to trust the heathen Khagan one iota. He immediately deviated from the agreed-upon plan and instead marched directly on Thessalonia, wagering that Boris and Amurtay would distract each other in the north until he had completed his coup de grace. However, his wager would be wrong. In a lightening campaign Boris advanced on Srem and the outnumbered Khagan retreated, biding his time until Casamir would arrive - but as Boris closed in and his ally was nowhere to be found, he agreed to accept the loss of Langobardia in exchange for a large sum to be paid in golden Roman coins and a select group of hostages, including Boris' third son, Simeon.
Then Boris marched south and, as summer turned into autumn his force reached Thessalonia. Casamir broke his siege and retreated north, but Boris smashed his army in a five day running battle. Casamir fled to Adrianople and after a long siege the city was finally taken and subjected to a brutal sack. The prince's body was never found, and with much of the leading Thracian aristocracy dead in the wake of the siege, Boris took his time reducing their castles and villas one after another, before apportioning them to his loyal soldiers.
When he returned to Thessalonica, he was crowned by the Bishop there as Autocrat Boris I, Grand Prince of All Sklavenia and the Langobards.
Migration and Urbanism in the Avar "Empire"
The latter rulers of the Avar Empire have been rather dimly received by later history. As the distinction between the broader populace of the Avars and the Slavic people they ruled diminished, the monarchy and its associated clique looked more and more to a disappearing Turkic heritage. As their federate vassals began to convert to Christianity, they based their identity more and more around Tengri and their ancestors. This amounted to little more than a reactionary holding action against demographic trends that were simply not in their favor.
The growth of cities such as Mundraga, Belgrad, and Chernagrad speak to an increasingly Slavic civilization growing along the Danube - one which did not necessarily associate itself with the petty kingdoms that would become Sklavenia, but nevertheless was distinct from the diminishing semi-nomadic culture of the Avars. The Danube basin was fertile and could support a not insignificant sedentary population. A curious assimilation would transpire as a result - a people who called themselves Avar or Bulgar, but were largely Nicene Christians of Slavic ancestry whose architecture and art was a blend of both styles with the Roman heritage of the region.
Into this curious cultural breeding ground plunged thousands of Xasar-Sahu migrants fleeing the Turks to the east. While the majority of the Xasar-Sahu would remain in their homelands and accept their new rulers, mass displacements nevertheless occurred. Primarily Buddhist and Iranian in origin, they were numerous enough to overwhelm the still semi-nomadic Avar population of the Trans-Carpathians and much of the Tisza river basin. These less urban regions were more vulnerable to their conquest, and were easily assimilated. This assimilation was followed by a revival of the Xasar urban tradition, reflected in the establishment of cities such as Biharabad (on the Tisza) and Shahidjan (near the ruins of Roman Aquincum). Shahidjan in particular would prosper, owing to its critical position along the Danube.
As the Xasar settled regions which were the traditional powerbase of the monarchy, their loss was crippling. The fact that the Avars would ultimately subdue the Xasar and persuade them to serve as mercenaries did not solve the crisis but in fact only exacerbated it - by legitimizing and utilizing the Xasar the Khagan essentially put the stability of his state into their hands. By allowing them to settle and raise fortified cities in his territory, the Khagan allowed the newcomers to entrench.
The Khagan attempted to remain aloof, embracing neither the new Xasari arrivals or his Slavic population. But the arrival of the exiled Eftal Prince Mahijada, himself a Buddhist, would begin to swing Amurtay Khagan's opinion in favor of the Xasari, alienating the majority of his population...
