[...]
Korai Magyar Történeti Lexikon contains some 2000 entries, most of them reasonably extensive, with many maps and sketches (mainly of urban and other topography), written by some 170 scholars from Hungary and abroad. The entries cover virtually all significant locations (settlements, towns, archaeological sites), major events, well-known personalities including many noble families (or clans, kindreds), institutions and a fair number of topical articles, such as history of Hungary, languages and peoples of the region, and medieval sources (writers, codices, and so on). This book is clearly designed for domestic use, i. e., for those who read Hungarian. Consequently, its bibliographical references inlude foreign language titles only if there is nothing in Magyar (even translations of Hungarian books are rarely if ever listed). One sometimes peruses dictionaries in strange languages, hoping to find useful references in a language familiar to one; in this case that would not be a promising quest. Considering all this, your reviewer begs to be excused from going into details, which would be, in a way, even unfair, as most readers of Budapest Review of Books wouldn't be able to control his critical remarks.
The active participation of medievalists from Szeged University, the home of the project, is conspicuous, and a careful observer may detect a certain slant towards the major interests of that "school", i.e., their Byzantinist strength and their work on settlement and historical geography. Other emphases, such as that on the history of Turkic peoples (who may have been in contact with the early Magyars) are due to necessity: the authors of these contributions proved to be more reliable than others. Still, it strikes one as strange that there are entries on a number of lesser-known Turkic peoples who had very little to do with the Hungarians - or at least the entry does not clarify the connection. Other gaps reflect not only failings of the authors, but also the limitations of Hungarian medieval studies in those fields which have come to the fore in international medievalist scholarship during recent decades. There is very little on questions of everyday life (though crafts and artifacts are treated from an archaeological point of view), on mentalities, on populations not extensively studied earlier (from women and children to marginals, and heretics). It is characteristic that the editors, aware of imbalances in the coverage (caused partly by the numerous reorganisations) apologise for the weakness in prosopography and archontology, but have no qualms, for example, about the entry on family that discusses the subject exclusively in legal terms (there is no entry on marriage). Western readers would be surprised to find that the entry on "historical anthropology" (ca. 150 words) is a brief treatment of what is commonly called physical anthropology, with a sentence about its purview being expanded "nowadays" to aspects other than craniometry and related data. And there is only a single bibliographical reference to a four-page entry in a handbook on human biology.7
Only someone who never tried to put together such a project would have the temerity to list his desiderata and minor complaints - and I am not one of those, having laboured for many years on the preparation of the Garland series' volume on East-Central Europe. Indeed, I may be forced to make even greater compromises than Prof. Kristó and his team. Still let me note that the authors should have been better instructed (or should have held better to the instruction, if so given) regarding the ratio of general (commonly known) information and regional specialities. So, for example, "Ordeal" treats the overall issue (very well!) in two-thirds of the article and only the rest is on ritual proof in Hungary (although there is uniquely good source material on this); likewise, out of the thirty-eight lines on "Investiture", thirty could be taken from any other general reference work. On the other hand, there is a most laudable effort to report on scholarly controversy (which was, for example, discouraged in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages) and to list opposing views, sometimes, especially in the "hot" (because nationally sensitive) issues, with a careful and well-balanced judgment on their merit and scholarly value. Anyone who knows something about this part of the world will appreciate the difficulties authors had to face when formulating entries on Slavs and Slovaks, Romanians and their ancestors, settlement questions of Magyars and non-Magyars in the Carpathian Basin and related subjects.
I understand that Polish medievalists are planning to bring out an abbreviated English-language version of their Sl/ownik (in preparation at Poznan´); it would be a great service to scholarship were the Hungarian dictionary available in a more widely accessible language - even if not in full. For the Korai Magyar Történeti Lexikon is a reference work of great value and its editors deserve gratitude from all interested readers.
Name of a 9th-10th C. Hungarian dignitary, probably with judicial authorities, as recorded by Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos (De administrando imperio, cap. 40). The horka may have been originally a leader among the Kabar tribes who joined the Magyars when they left the Khazar tribal alliance. In later sources the word appears only as a personal name in slightly different form. Cf. KMTL. p. 269.