Jasz-Nagykun-Szolnok

Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok exists because two groups of nomadic refugees negotiated century autonomy, then had to buy it back. In the mid-13th century, as Mongol armies swept westward, two distinct peoples fled to Hungary: the Jász (Jassic people, Iranian-speaking Alans from the Caucasus steppe) and the Kun (Cumans, Turkic-speaking pastoralists). King Béla IV, desperate for military reinforcements against the same Mongol threat, granted both groups land and extraordinary privileges. They would govern themselves, maintain their languages and customs, pay reduced taxes, and owe only military service. The Jász settled in Jászság around Jászberény; the Kun split into Nagykunság (Greater Cumania) east of the Tisza and Kiskunság (Little Cumania) west of it. For four centuries, these regions functioned as self-governing enclaves within the Kingdom of Hungary—Iranian shepherds and Turkic horsemen preserving steppe customs in Central Europe.

Then in 1702, Emperor Leopold I sold them. The Habsburg treasury, bankrupted by Ottoman wars, pawned Jászság and Kunság to the Teutonic Order for 500,000 Rhenish gulden. Overnight, people who had lived free for 450 years became serfs owing feudal obligations to German knights. It took 43 years of appeals, but in 1745 Empress Maria Theresa allowed the Jász and Kun to buy back their freedom collectively. They raised the redemption price, and the Act of Redemption restored their medieval privileges. The autonomy lasted another 131 years. But the Hungarian state-building project of the 1870s couldn't tolerate enclaves with separate laws. Law XXXIII of 1876 dissolved the Jászkun District's autonomy and merged Jászság, Nagykunság, and the administrative district of Szolnok into a single county with a hyphenated name that announces its composite nature.

The Tisza River defines everything. Flowing south through the county's center, it created the loess plains and chernozem soil that made the region Hungary's breadbasket. East of the river, Nagykunság spreads across black earth where wheat and corn yields reach the highest in the country. Rice grows in irrigated areas along the riverbanks. The county remains Hungary's least-industrialized region—no socialist steel mills, no automotive plants, just agriculture and small-scale food processing. Szolnok, the county seat, sits where the Zagyva River joins the Tisza, a transportation node that never developed beyond regional administrative center. Population stands at 370,000, down from 379,897 in 2015, with Szolnok at 65,011 in 2025. Young people leave for Budapest or abroad; the plains empty slowly.

In 2025, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok confronts the question of what autonomy meant and what it means. The Jász and Kun fought for 600 years to govern themselves, paying ransom to escape serfdom. They lost that fight in 1876 when Hungarian nationalism demanded uniformity. Today, the county produces grain for export, thermal water for spas, and natural gas from fields between Szolnok and Berekfürdő. Over 150 thermal springs bubble up—water heated by the same geological forces that created the flat land. The region that once hosted Iranian and Turkic nomads now hosts agricultural monoculture: wheat, corn, sunflowers repeating across horizons. The ethnic distinctiveness eroded generations ago; most residents don't know their towns' names reference medieval privileges. But the hyphenated county name remains—Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok—three fragments that wouldn't cohere except by administrative decree, announcing that this place was assembled rather than grown.

By 2026, the county exemplifies what happens when autonomy becomes obsolete. The Jász and Kun maintained separate governance because medieval kingdoms allowed corporate privileges—groups could negotiate collective rights. Modern nation-states don't work that way. The 1876 abolition was inevitable once Hungary committed to standardized administration. The county that resulted is agriculturally productive but economically peripheral, demographically declining but ecologically stable, politically integrated but symbolically fragmented. The Tisza still flows south, as it has for millennia. The chernozem soil still produces wheat. But the people who bought their freedom in 1745 would barely recognize what freedom became: participation in a unitary state, governed by uniform laws, with historical autonomy preserved only in a hyphenated name that most Hungarians mispronounce.