"Hajdu-Bihar county" Debrecen by frankyboy5

Debrecen - This word had been put down for the first time around seven hundred and fifty years ago. Probably it could look something like "Debrecin" or "Dübricin" at that time and was the name of one out of more small settlements. Its meaning or origin has never been found out since then; and it is also mystical how this insignificant village became one of the biggest cities of Hungary, centre of spiritual and political movements after a few centuries - although she has neither mountains nor rivers.
This town had been the heart of the historical Hungary; it had been and is called "Calvin ist Rome" and was the capital of the country two times - in critical times when Hungary could be safely governed only from here.

Famous Debreceners set an example to the whole nation, its schools and scientific life were of European renown two hundred years ago, it was called the city of endurance a hundred years later; those who had left her always longed to be back, those who stayed felt the calling of far-away cultures.

The walls and people of the town are filled with immobility of the east and the restless spirit of the west; as Pal Gulys , one of the poets born here wrote : "Debrecen, old harbour, welding lands together!"

The area had been inhabited long before the appearance of the Hungarians. The oldest traces lead back to the Neolithic age. The age of migrations about four thousand years ago - the early Bronze Age - stays out of our range of knowledge but we have quite ample archaeological material from the late Bronze Age.
From the 6th century the region was probably the borderland of the Black-Sea Scythian cultural area till the Scythian population was assimilated into the Celtic community spreading east.

Remainders of the Celtic culture extending from the British aisles to Asia Minor - urns, brazen bracelets and iron appliances - were found in the cemeteries of the Tócó-vale. The Iranian origin Sarmatians succeeded to the weakening Celts, the Yazig tribe which had settled here separated from the Roxolans and turned to agriculture.

Various Germanic tribes occupied the territory in the 3rd-4th centuries - Gepids, Vandals, Western Goths. At the end of the 4th century the dreaded warriors of the East - the Huns - appeared and the area was located near the centre of the expanding empire. The Gepids survived the Hun rule; after the fall of the empire in 453 they established a kingdom in Transylvania. By that time the Avars were approaching - the nomadic equestrian people that had put an end to the rule of the Germanic tribes in the Carpathian Basin by 567 and created political unity in the Danube - Tisza region; thus one of the most important conditions of the formation of an integral European state is given. This state could not be born at that time. The Carpathian Basin disintegrated again and the Debrecen region fell under Bulgarian-Turkish administration. The abandoned areas are inhabited by Turkish and Slavic people.