text: Origins The Magyars (or Hungarians) lived in the Pontic steppes when they first appear in written sources from the mid-9th century. Muslim merchants described them as wealthy nomadic warriors, but they also noticed the Magyars had extensive arable lands. The Magyars crossed the Carpathian Mountains after the Pechenegs invaded their lands in 894 or 895. They settled in the lowlands along the Middle Danube, annihilated Moravia and defeated the Bavarians in the 900s. According to some scholarly theories, at least three Hungarian noble clans were descended from Moravian aristocrats who survived the Magyar conquest. Historians who are convinced that the Vlachs (or Romanians) were already present in the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century propose that the Vlach  (or chieftains) also endured. Neither of these hypotheses are universally accepted.
  Around 950, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus () wrote that the Hungarians were organized into "tribes", and each had its own "prince". The tribal leaders most probably bore the title úr (now "lord"), as it is suggested by Hungarian terms deriving from this word, such as ország (now "realm") and uralkodni ("to rule"). The Emperor noted the Magyars spoke both Hungarian and "the tongue of the Chazars" (a powerful steppe people), showing that at least their leaders were bilingual.
  The Magyars lived a nomadic or semi-nomadic life but archaeological research shows that most settlements consisted of small pit-houses and log cabins in the 10th century. Tents in use are only mentioned in 12th-century literary sources. No archeological finds evidence fortresses in the Carpathian Basin in the 10th century, but fortresses were also rare in Western Europe during the same period. A larger log cabinmeasuring which was built on a foundation of stones in Borsod was tentatively identified as the local leader's household.