AVARS of Europe, sometimes called "pseudo-Avars," were probably a Turkish tribe, named Uigurs, who were subjected by the true Avars—a nation akin to the Huns, perhaps identical with the Yuan-Yuan, when the latter were driven out of Central Asia about A.D. 461. The Avar confederation dominated the Volga steppes till 555, when the Avars were defeated and almost anni hilated by the Turks. The Uigurs, flying westward under Avar chiefs, took the name of Avar. In 555 they reached the country of the Alani, north of the Caucasus, whence they sent envoys to Con stantinople, offering their services. The Emperor Justinian offered them Lower Pannonia for settlement, and, on their refusing this, paid them a tribute to combat the Slays and Bulgars on his eastern frontier. The Avars overcame the Antae and the Bulgarian Utiguri and Kutriguri, and moved westward to the present Galicia, where they subdued the Slavonic Dubledy, and extended their suzerainty from the Volga to the Elbe and the Baltic. In 565 Justinian discon tinued the tribute ; the Avars then allied themselves with the Lombards against the Gepidae, who occupied the present Transyl vania, bargaining for a share of the spoil and the conquered terri tory. The Gepidae were crushed in 567, and, the Lombards migrat ing to Italy, the Avars occupied the Danube-Theiss basin. At this time, the Avars were perhaps the greatest power in Europe. Their Khagan, Baian, appears to have been a military leader of extra ordinary genius. He exacted from the Byzantine emperors, whom he treated with supreme arrogance, an annual tribute of 120,000 gold pieces, besides gifts such as an elephant, a bed of pure gold, and enormous subsidies. Baian took Sirmium, the Roman fortress on the Save, in 58o; for the next 20 years he was alternately at peace and war with the Empire. He besieged Thessalonica in 597, and only pestilence in his ranks saved the city. After his death, the Avar power declined, although in 617 they ravaged the suburbs of Constantinople, carrying off 270,000 prisoners, and in 626, assisted by Slays, Bulgars and Gepidae, and co-operating with the Persians, besieged the city itself. In 6o1, however, Priscus inflicted a series of defeats on them ; in 6o3 the Slays on their north-west frontier revolted, and later the kingdom of Moravia was formed; in Bulgaria became independent ; then the Croats. In the 7th and 8th centuries the Avars no longer troubled Byzantium, although they ravaged both Germany and Italy, sometimes in conjunction with the Lombards. In 791 Charlemagne attacked their western fron tier on the Enns. After a bloody war of five years, Pippin took their chief ring and destroyed their power. The remnants of the nation were settled near the present Petronel, near the eastern frontier of modern Austria. Their Khagan swore fealty to the Franks, and was baptized. Two revolts, in 799 and 803, were suppressed, and soon after, the name of Avar vanished from history. The downfall of this once mighty nation was so complete and spectacular that it became proverbial among the Russians. The Avars were probably never more than a small ruling caste, and were absorbed by the Slays : the theory that they were the ancestors of the mediaeval Vlachs and the modern Rumanians is untenable. On the other hand, the influence of their empire on the ethnographical distribu tion of modern Europe is immense, most of the western Slays having either been driven to their present habitats before the advancing Avars, or settled by them to guard their frontiers. They lived in rings, or fenced enclosures, the largest of which was said to be 38 miles round. Here they kept their vast treasures; but they have left not a single monument.
See the account by Sir H. H. Howorth in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1880 ; also Prof. Bury's annotated edition of Gib bon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1909). (C. A. M.)