Kunság (Kumania) is a historical region in the central part of the Central Danube Plain, between the Danube, Tisza and Körös. The region got its name from the Cumans who settled in this area in the early 13th century and were later assimilated by the Hungarians.
The first of the Deshti-Kipchak tribes (Kumans, Sars/Cowboys, Kuns and Kai) that Hungarians «met» were the Kuns, whose ethnonym became in Hungary the nominal name of all the nomadic Turkic tribes that followed them into Hungary. Later the area of settlement of the Kuns was called Kunszag.
The first raid of the Kuns on the Hungarian kingdom dates back to 1070, but in 1087 the Kuns as part of the troops of the Hungarian king Szolomon took part in a campaign against Byzantium. Since 1091 their first groups settled in Hungary and further separate tribal associations of nomads continue to settle in Hungary with the permission of kings.
At the beginning of the XIII century Cumans tribes inhabited the territory of the Northern Black Sea coast, but under the influence of the Mongol onslaught they were forced to migrate to the Carpathians. In 1223 the united Cuman-Russian army was defeated by Mongol commanders of Genghis Khan in the battle on the river Kalki. After this defeat, the Cumans, with the remnants of the Pechenegs and Yasses joining them, moved to the Balkans and Central Europe. In 1238, Khan Kuthen Sutojevic (Kuthen, Kötöny), who headed his Kuni clan and several other clans, entered the Kingdom of Hungary. Hungarian King Béla IV, struggling with the sharply strengthened magnates and in need of additional military forces to repel the Mongol threat and strengthen royal power, in 1239 concluded an alliance with Kuthen and his khans, giving them refuge in Hungary in exchange for a promise to convert to Catholicism and henceforth remain loyal to the Hungarian throne. The agreement was secured by the engagement of the Kuman princess (the future Elizabeth) and the Hungarian prince Istvan (Stefan), the eldest son of Béla IV. Apparently, the agreement and engagement took place when Istvan was still an infant. And Elizabeth of Cumann was hardly significantly older than her future husband.
In 1241, the Mongol invasion of Europe began, under the leadership of Batyi Khan and the commander Subedei. Following Great Hungary in the Urals, — Danube Hungary was one of the most important targets of the Mongols. The Hungarian aristocracy, remembering the former fickleness of Khan Kotyan, treated the Kipchaks with great distrust. Literally on the eve of the Mongol invasion of Hungary, noblemen conspirators killed Kotyan and his sons in Pest (suspecting, probably without reason, that Kotyan might defect to Batu). After the death of their favorite ruler, the majority of the Cumans (Kumans, Kuns) in March 1241 renounced Catholicism and went into subjection to the Bulgarian tsar Koloman I.
A few weeks after the murder of Kotyan, Mongol-Tatar troops defeated the royal army at the Battle of Mokha and brutally devastated the country. Bela IV was again forced to turn to the Cumans. In 1246, several Cuman clans, as well as a number of Jazyg, returned from Bulgaria to Hungary and were finally settled in the area from the Danube to Debrecen. This area was called Kunság (Cumania). And the area of the Yazygs was called Jászág (also called Jazygia, Jazygia).
According to the Hungarian historian György Györgyffy, the total number of Kipchaks who migrated to Hungary was about 40,000 people. Istvan Mandoki Kongur gives slightly different data: from 40 to 60,000 people. During the period of migration, the social differentiation of the Kipchaks had already gone far enough, there were nobility, princes and commoners, as well as the division of the people into seven clans. The Kipchak princes swore allegiance to the King of Hungary, promising to defend his kingdom with arms against the Tatars and other invaders, in exchange for which they received guarantees of preserving their rights and customs and wide privileges in the field of self-government. At first, the Kipchaks continued their usual way of life, roaming with their herds through the Alföld. The first permanent settlements in Kunshag appeared only by the end of the XIV century. At the same time the gradual Christianization of the Kipchaks began.
The greatest influence of the Cumans of Kunshag reached during the reign of Laszlo IV (1272-1290), son of Elizabeth of Kuman. The Kipchaks were the king’s main support in the fight against rebellious magnates. In 1279, László IV confirmed the autonomy of three areas of the Kipchaks’ settlement in Hungary: Kunság, Mezőföld and the interfluves of the Tisza, Maros and Körös. However, in 1280s, under the pressure of the Catholic Church and Hungarian magnates, the Kipchaks were removed from power and defeated. Nevertheless, the special status of Kunszag was preserved. In spite of periodic attempts of the kings of Hungary to liquidate the Cumans’ autonomy (1514, 1526, 1702), Kunszag continued to remain outside the comitatus system and enjoyed wide rights of self-government.
By the 15th century, the settlements of the Cumans in Kunszag did not differ much from other Hungarian settlements. By this time, centers of judicial and administrative power, subordinate to the palatinate, had emerged from the residences of the Kipchak tribal leaders. The patrimonial nobility of the Cumans adapted to the feudal structure of the Hungarian kingdom and transferred the communal lands of Kunshag into private property. At the same time, the Cumans were assimilated by Hungarians: the Cumans’ language was practically supplanted by the Hungarian language, and the descendants of the Cumans nomads joined the social structure of Hungary on an equal footing with other nationalities of the kingdom. The most important factor in the assimilation of the Cumans was the Turkish conquests of the 16th century. By the middle of the 16th century Kunszag was subordinated to the Ottoman Empire. The wars with the Turks and the struggle between the Habsburgs and Transylvania led to a 55-60% drop in the population of Kunshag and a convergence of the socio-economic status of the remaining Cumans with the Hungarians. As a result, the Cumans language completely disappeared from use in the 17th century. In 1668 the lands of the Cumans and Yasses became a single entity (in Latin documents of that time: Districtus Iazygum et Cumanorum).
The autonomy of Kunshag was finally liquidated only in 1876.