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The Lendians (Polish: Lędzianie) were a West Slavic tribe who lived in the area of East Lesser Poland and Cherven Towns between the 7th and 11th centuries.
Contents
Since they were documented primarily by foreign authors whose knowledge of Eastern European geography was often vague, numerous speculations have accrued to their name, which include Lendzanenoi, Lendzaninoi, Lz’njn, Lachy, Landzaneh and Lendizi.
Name
The name "Lędzianie" (*lęd-jan-inъ) derives from the Proto-Slavic and Old Polish word "lęda", meaning "field". In modern Polish, the word "ląd" means "land". The Lędzianie tribe's name comes from their use of slash-and-burn agriculture, which involved cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields. Accordingly, in this meaning a Lendian was a woodland-burning farmer.
The Lendians also left their mark in Polish names such as Lachy Sądeckie, which is an endonym used by Poles in south-eastern Poland. The north-eastern region of Podlaskie (Podlasie) signifies "under the Poles", with the Lithuanian name for the region Palenkė having the same meaning.
Tribal area
Constantine VII reports that in the year 944 Lendians were tributaries to the Rus and that their monoxylae sailed under prince Wlodzislav downstream to Kiev to take part in the naval expeditions against Byzantium. This may be taken as an indication that the Lendians had access to some waterways leading to the Dnieper, e.g., the Styr River. These "Lendians" may have been the Radimichi, who lived between the Sozh and Dnieper river upstream from Kyiv. The Primary Chronicle twice describes them as being "of Lyakh (Lendian) origin". They migrated to the Dnieper basin sometime during the 8th century.
Based on Constantine's report, it appears likely that the Lendians occupied the historical region of Chervona Rus, centred on Przemyśl. This conclusion is at variance with the Primary Chronicle which implies that the region was settled by the White Croats. In order to remove the perceived discrepancy, some Polish historians proposed alternative readings of the text in question, which would move the location of the White Croats considerably to the east, for instance, to the Vorskla River basin.
The uncertainty of extant 10th-century descriptions of the upper Dniester and Bug River region makes it plausible to infer that the White Croats, Lendians and probably some other peoples shared this vast territory along the border of modern-day Ukraine and Poland. Attempts to positively identify the Lendians with the Buzhans or Dulebes lose in probability in light of these considerations.
Lendians vs Liakhy
Lendians are often considered to be a tribe that the Ruthenian chronicles referred to as Liakhy (Лѧховѣ).
The Hypatian Codex however states the following:
which translates as "the Slavs who came and settled along Wisla and were called Liakhove from whom descended Lechitic Polans, Lutici, Masovians, and Pomeranians".
After the Polish Piast dynasty united many West Slavic tribes, the ethnonym Liakhy was used to refer to all those tribes and subsequently to the newly established Polish people. It was mainly an exonym — rarely used by Poles themselves in historic times, with the exception of the Lachy Sadeckie — though one of the Old Czech Chronicles states that a legendary person named Lech was the founder of Poland (see Lech, Čech, and Rus). According to Šafárik, the word Liakh has its origin in a generic name, Lech, deriving from a Slavic word for furrow, trough, or field.
According to Pyotr Lavrovsky, the contemporary "я" in the word Liakh ("лях") replaced a former nasal "ѧ" (Polish: ę, en). He links "лѧх" with "лѧдина" (hence Lendians) which in Russian means clearing or pochinok (type of a settlement). Clearing activities, during which sowing was conducted in places of cut down and burned forest, were common among the northwestern Slavs, hence, Lavrovsky concludes that in ancient times the words Liakh=Lech (лѧх = лях = лех) referred to a person who conducted clearings, a farmer, or a landowner.
History
In pre-Slavic times the region was populated by the Lugii and Anarti, associated with the Przeworsk and Puchov cultures. They were followed by East Germanic tribes, the Goths and Vandals. After these vacated the territory, the West Slavs (Lendians and Vistulans) moved in.
Around 833 the land of the Lendians was incorporated into the Great Moravian state. Upon the invasion of the Hungarian tribes into the heart of Central Europe around 899, the Lendians submitted to their authority (Masudi). In the first half of the 10th century, they paid tribute to Igor I of Kiev (Constantine VII).
From the mid-950s onward, the Lendians were politically anchored in the Bohemian sphere of influence. Cosmas of Prague relates that the land of Krakow was controlled by the Přemyslids of Bohemia until 999. His report is buttressed by the foundation charter of the Archdiocese of Prague (1086), which traces the eastern border of the archdiocese, as established in 973, along the Bug and Styr (or Stryi) rivers.
Abraham ben Jacob, who travelled in Eastern Europe in 965, remarks that Boleslaus II of Bohemia ruled the country "stretching from the city of Prague to the city of Krakow". At one point around 960, the region seems to have been taken over by Mieszko I of Poland. This may be inferred from the Primary Chronicle which reports that Vladimir I of Kiev conquered the "Cherven towns" from the Poles in 981.
The region returned to Polish sphere of influence in 1018, when Boleslaw I of Poland took the Cherven towns on his way to Kiev. Yaroslav I of Kiev reconquered the borderland in 1031, but was again ruled by Poland in 1069-1086; t remained part of Kievan Rus and its successor state of Halych-Volhynia until 1340 when it was once again taken over by Kingdom of Poland under Casimir III of Poland. It is presumed that the Lendians were assimilated by East Slavs by that period. The most important factors contributing to their fate could be: