Jasz people

The main church in the center of Jászberény

The cultural and political center of Jászság is the town of Jászberény.

Jászság is sometimes, erroneously, known as "Jazygia", after a somewhat related Sarmatian people, the Iazyges, who lived in a similar area in ancient times.

The Jász people descend from nomadic Alanic tribes who settled in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary during the 13th century following the Mongol invasions.[1] Their language, which belonged to the east Iranian group that includes modern Ossetian, died out by the 16th century, since which time the Jász speak Hungarian.

Their name is almost certainly related to that of the Iazyges, one of the Sarmatian tribes which, along with the Roxolani, reached the borders of Dacia during the late 1st century BC (the city of Iași is named for them). Residual elements of these tribes, ancestors of the Jász people, remained behind in the central North Caucasus, mingling with Caucasian peoples to form the present-day Ossetes.

The Jász people came to the Kingdom of Hungary, together with the Cumanians (Hungarian: Kun people) when their lands to the east, in some in the later Moldavia (see Iași or Jászvásár) were invaded by the Mongol Empire in the mid-13th century. They were admitted by the Hungarian king, Béla IV Árpád, who hoped that the Jászs would assist in resisting the Mongol-Tatar invasion. Shortly after their entry, the relationship worsened dramatically between the Hungarian nobility and the Cumanian-Jász tribes, which then abandoned the country. After the end of the Mongol-Tatar invasion they returned and settled in the central part of the Pannonian Plain, near the rivers Zagyva and Tarna.

Jazygia (in red-violet) in the eighteenth century within the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary

Initially, their main occupation was animal husbandry. Over the next two centuries they were assimilated into the Hungarian population; yet although their language disappeared, they preserved a distinct Jász identity. The Hungarian rulers granted the Jász people special privileges. Thus, the Jász were able to be more or less self-governing in an area known as Jászság in which Jászberény developed into the regional, cultural and administrative center.

In the 16th–17th centuries, areas populated by the Jász people were under Ottoman administration, but at the end of the 17th century they were recaptured and returned to the Kingdom of Hungary, which was then part of the Habsburg monarchy. Habsburg Emperor Leopold I sold the area to the Knights of the Teutonic Order. This saw the end of the privileged position of Jászberény. However, the Jász people did not want to accept this situation and started to collect money with which they could buy their freedom. By 1745, they had collected half a million Rhenish gold florins, a considerable sum for those days. However, in this time the famous 'Act of Redemption' took place: the Empress Maria Theresa restored the Jász land and Jász hereditary privileges. From this point onwards, Jászberény flourished. The Jász regional autonomy was preserved until the year 1876, when the area populated by the Jász was administratively included into the Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County.

Map of Jászság (Jazygia)

Jászság (Jazygia) within modern Hungary

After dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, areas populated by the Jasz people were included into an independent Hungary. Over a dozen settlements in the Great Hungarian Plain (e.g. the names Jászberény, Jászárokszállás, Jászfényszaru, Jászalsószentgyörgy) still include a link to the Jász. In 1995, the 250th Anniversary of the Act of Redemption was celebrated in Jászberény with the President of Hungary as guest of honor as well as with numerous foreign dignitaries.

Jassic is the common name in English for the original language of the Jász. It was a dialect of Ossetian, an Eastern Iranian language. Jassic became extinct and was replaced by Hungarian. The only literary record of the Jász language was found in the 1950s in the Hungarian National Széchényi Library. The language was reconstructed with the help of various Ossetian analogies.

Genetic studies on people from various Jász regions, have established a firm link towards other Hungarian ethnic groups, while simultaneously having shown a significant shift towards Iranian peoples, and especially Turkic ethnic groups with significant Sarmatian-related ancestry such as the Bashkirs of Bashkortostan.[2]

Y-DNA haplogroups among people from Jász regions have been shown to be more diverse than those of other Hungarian people.[2]

• Sándor Csányi[3]
• István Csukás

• Alans
• Hungarians
• Székelys
• Saka
• Scythians
• Iron people

• Jaszbereny, Hungary. Yazd, Iran