Avars
The Avars are first known living in Mongolia under the
rule of the Mongols, in the 400's AD. The
Chinese , who lived near them,
called them the Juan-Juan. When the Turks
revolted against the Mongols
in 552, the Avars took the side of the Mongols, and lost. After they lost
to the Turks, the Avars fled to the west, and ended up in the grasslands
of Russia.
When the Roman Emperor Justinian
noticed that the Avars had arrived, he got the idea to pay them to fight
his enemies, the Huns and the Slavs,
who had been raiding Roman land in the Balkans (modern Eastern Europe).
The Avars agreed, and they were able to use the Roman gold
and their own military skill to conquer a large empire covering most of
modern Ukraine and Eastern Europe, and in fact they themselves ended up
taking over a good bit of the Roman Empire they had been hired to protect
from invaders. Around 568, they also pushed the Lombards
out of their home and south into northern Italy. The height of this empire
was around 600 AD. In 626 AD, the Avars made an alliance with the Sassanians
and attacked Constantinople itself,
though their attack failed.
By the 700's, though, the Avar kings were fighting among themselves, and
this civil war weakened them so much that Charlemagne
and the Bulgarians were able to make an alliance and destroy the Avar empire.
The end of the Avar empire was around 800 AD, and by the 870's people had stopped using the
name Avar, and had been absorbed into other cultures.
