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Revision as of 23:49, 9 September 2006

A landscape from the Pannonian Plain - Farm on the Hortobágy, Hungary
File:Sllika 015.jpg
A landscape from the Pannonian Plain - Canal Danube-Tisa-Danube near the village of Rumenka, close to Novi Sad, Serbia

The Pannonian Plain is a large plain in Central Europe that remained when the Pliocene Pannonian Sea (see below) dried out.

The river Danube divides the plain roughly in half. The Pannonian Plain is a geomorphological subsystem of the Alps-Himalaya system.

Characteristics

The plain is roughly bounded by the Carpathian mountains, the Alps, the Dinaric Alps and the Balkan mountains. Because of the long Carpathian border, it can also be referred to as the Carpathian Basin (especially in Hungarian texts). It consists mainly of the Great Alföld (in the south and east) and the Little Alföld (in the northwest).

The basin forms a topographically discrete unit set in the European landscape, surrounded by imposing geographic boundaries that have created a fairly unified cultural area that looks more towards the south and east than to the north and west.

Although rain is not plentiful, it usually falls when necessary and the plain is a major agricultural area; it is sometimes said that these fields of rich loamy loess soil could feed the whole of Europe. For its early settlers, the plain offered few sources of metals or stone. Thus when archaeologists come upon objects of obsidian or chert, copper or gold, they have almost unparalleled opportunities to interpret ancient pathways of trade.

History

See also: Pannonia

The plain was named after the Pannonians, a northern Illyrian tribe. Various different peoples inhabited the plain during the history. In the first century BC, the eastern parts of the plain belonged to Dacian state, and in the first century AD its western parts were included into Roman Empire. The Roman province named Pannonia was established in the area, and the city of Sirmium became one of the four capital cities of Roman Empire in the 3rd century.

In the Age of Migrations and the early Middle Ages, the region belonged to several realms such as the Hun Empire, the Kingdom of the Gepids, the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths, the Kingdom of the Lombards, the Avar Kingdom, the Slavic state of Samo, the Bulgarian Empire, the Frankish Empire, the Great Moravia, the Balaton Principality, and the Pannonian Croatia.

The Kingdom of Hungary established in 1000 by the Magyars was centered around the plain and included almost all of it (as did the former Avar Kingdom as well). After the Battle of Mohács in 1526 the central and eastern parts of the plain were included into Ottoman Empire, and the remains of the Kingdom of Hungary in the north-west joined the Habsburg Monarchy, where they were called Royal Hungary. The administrative units of the Ottoman Empire organized in the plain were the Eyalet of Budim, the Eyalet of Egri, the Eyalet of Sigetvar, and the Eyalet of Temeşvar. The eastern parts of the plain belonged to semi-independent Principality of Transylvania, which was under Ottoman suzereignty.

The Pannonian Plain became the scene of clash of the two empires. At the end of the 17th century the Habsburgs won against the Ottomans, and most of the plain became Habsburg possession. The administrative units of the Habsburg Monarchy organized in the plain were the Kingdom of Hungary, the Banat of Temeswar, the Military Frontier, the Kingdom of Croatia, and the Kingdom of Slavonia.

The Habsburg Monarchy was subsequently transformed into Austrian Empire (in 1804) and Austria-Hungary (in 1867). Most of the plain was located within the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary, since all other Habsburg possessions in the plain were integrated into Kingdom of Hungary until 1882. The autonomous Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, which was one of the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen, comprised the south-western parts of the plain.

Since 1918, the region was divided between Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed to Yugoslavia in 1929).

Countries

Today the plain is divided among Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Ukraine. The peripannonian lands, areas around this plain but not elevated like the surrounding mountains, also spread into Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Division

Pannonian plain is divided into two parts along the Transdanubian Medium Mountains (Hungarian: Dunántúli-középhegység), which is sometimes considered part of it. The northwestern part is called Western Pannonian plain (or province) and the southeastern part Eastern Pannonian plain (or province). They build up from the following sections:

Note: The Transylvanian Plateau and the Lučenec-Košice Depression (both parts of the Carpathians) and some other lowlands are sometimes also included in the Pannonian Plain in non-geomorphological or older divisions.

Regions

Relatively large or distinctive areas of the plain that do not necessarily correspond to national borders include:

Pannonian Sea

The precursor to the present plain was a shallow sea that reached its greatest extent during the Pliocene, when three to four kilometres of sediments were deposited.

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