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The recent decades witnessed the appearance of new sources on the relation of the Byzantine Empire and the Hungarians. In many cases these sources modified our knowledge of the age. Previously, several researchers assumed that a Hungarian army attacked and took over two southern Italian Byzantine cities, Oria and Tarentum in 927. This view was based on the work of Romualdo Salernitano. However, his statement is wrong. The two cities were captured by Muslim troops, and the Italian author mistakenly wrote Hungarians instead of Muslims. A Muslim author, Abu Firas tells us, that when the Byzantine Empire attacked the Hamdanid Principality in 958, a Hungarian military troop fought as part of the Byzantine army. Recently I became aware that Emperor Constantine VII also highlighted the presence of foreign troops in the Byzantine army in his oratio to his troops during the campaign. This confirms the facts we find in the work of the Muslim author. A South Italian diploma mentions a peasant, called Leo filius Petri Ungri in 980. He or his descendant probably was a Hungarian warrior in Byzantine service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byzantine authors of the 9th-10th centuries called the Hungarians Turks. Some Muslim and Latin sources also adopted the practice observable in Byzantine sources. The question why the ethnonym Turk was used in connection with Hungarians was the subject of many scholarly works. As the Hungarians lived under Khazar rule for a long period, some scholars thought that the Hungarians received the name from the Khazars. Others assumed that the name Turk in Byzantine sources simply meant 'nomad'. As the Hungarians lived a nomadic life in the 9th century, the Byzantine authors called them by the name Turk legitimately. According to other scholars, this was the consequence of a misunderstanding. Emperor Leo the Wise (886-912) thought that the so-called Maurikios' tactics was mentioning the Hungarians when talking about the tactics and weapons of the Turks ('Inner Asian Turks'). From this time the Byzantine authors called the Hungarians Turks. However, these theories seem to be erroneous. In fact, the Byzantine authors believed that the Hungarians had a common origin with the Central Asian Turk warriors in the army of the Caliphate of Bagdad in the 9th-10th centuries. These warriors were called Turks by the Muslims. Accordingly, the Byzantine authors began to use the name Turk for the Hungarians too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]