Tiszaalpár Summary
Tiszaalpár
Summary
Summary
The village of Tiszaalpár, which was established by merging Alpár and Tiszaújfalu in 1973, lies in the middle of the Carpathian basin, in the beautiful natural landscape of the catchment area of the Tisza. The archaeological findings in the area of the village today witness about early human settlement in this region. The field of the castle hill and the church hill, significant from an archaeological point of view, has preserved the relics of an interim settlement from the Bronze Age, which was organized around the earthwork built by the people of the Vatya culture. The tenants of the Bronze age earthwork were dealing with fishery, hunting, plant-gathering, but also land cultivation and animal husbandry.
The historic fame of Alpár is mainly attributable to Anonymus, a writer with an unknown name, who worked in the royal court. He wrote his chronicle around 1200 about the age of the Hungarian Settlement, in which he assigned great historical significance to the earthwork built on today’s castle hill, and its vicinity. According to the descriptions of Gesta Hungarorum, during the arrival of the Hungarians, chieftain Árpád asked Salán, the Bulgarian chieftain controlling the central and southern parts of the Great Plain, and having his seat in the “castle of Alpár”, to give him a symbolic handful of the grass of the sand of Alpár. Anonymus also pointed out the fields around Alpár as the scene of the decisive battle between the Hungarians and the Bulgarians, supported by the Greeks. The authenticity of the legendary description by Anonymus is not very probably in the light of the most recent excavations and historic research.
The original big land area of Alpár was distributed to three parts: its southern part got into the hands of the Bor-Kalán dynasty, the middle part got into the ownership of the bishopric in Vác, and the northern part into the ownership of the Benedictine abbey of Garamszentbenedek. The first mention of the name of the settlement can be found in a royal charter in 1075, in which king Géza I. donated its northern part to the abbey of Garamszentbenedek. Next to the villages of the northern Felsőalpár (Upper Alpár), and the middle Alsóalpár (Lower Alpár) owned by the bishop of Vác, by the end of the Middle Ages, the southern Újfalu (New Village) (later Tiszaújfalu) was also known.
Around the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries, the three villages became a puszta, sharing the fate of many of the settlements under Turkish rule. Today’s Alpár was restored to life in the area of the former Alsóalpár after being a puszta for a whole century.
The settlement of this Alpár in the modern age, which started in 1727, took place slowly, in the course of a lengthy process. During this process, the first inhabitants of the village came in several waves from the northern counties. Some of them moved on, others, however, stayed and became the aboriginal people of Alpár.
The inhabitants of Alpár, who belonged under the landowning authority of the bishopric in Vác, were serfs. Their lives were mainly determined by the contracts that were issued by the estate in Vác to set out feudal services, encumbrances, liabilities and rights. After the end of the XVIII century, the people of the village owed regular socage to their landlords that replaced the contribution of work earlier redeemed for money. Apart from land cultivation and animal husbandry as the basic branches of agriculture, the people of Alpár also joined the commercial life of the region by trading, and they also carried out quite a significant handicraft industry. The closeness of the Tisza played an outstanding role in the economic life of the village, which resulted in the local flourishing of fishery, ferry service, wood trading, water milling, and basket-making.
The changes after 1848, bringing along the abolishment of socage, the advance made in bourgeois development, and economic development, opened new directions for the village. On the negative side of changes at that time, impoverishment gained a dramatic speed, and the lack of land became more severe. The regulation of the Tisza also made a very unfavorable impact on Alpár, the result of which was that the live Tisza was re-directed several kilometers away from the settlement. Only fishery and basket-making remained from the earlier benefits provided by the river earlier. Basket-making, at the same time, became the most important domestic industry in the XX century, and the products made here became famous and demanded high and low.
In the first half of the XX century stricken with the world wars, the most important elements of economic and social infrastructure came into being in Alpár, and cultural institutions and communities were established, and flourished. The second world war and the political changes afterwards, basically changed the earlier direction of economic and social growth.
The new age history of Alpár merged with Újfalu in 1973 took a slightly different turn. Its land got into the hands of Count Károlyi at the beginning of the XVIII century. The Károlyi dynasty first leased the puszta out to the town of Kecskemét, and later to Csongrád. There was a big fluctuation among the inhabitants of the tobacco field established in the middle of the XVIII century. In the XIX century, several landowners’ manors were created in this area. The distribution of a part of the Károlyi estate of Újfalu facilitated the emergence of small farms, and the increase of the population of “Puszta-Újfalu”.. The growth in the number of people living in the peripheral areas, however, did not go parallel with the process of socialization. Therefore, Tiszaújfalu, which officially became a village in the XX century, was lagging behind the neighboring Alpár in its economic, social and cultural development.
The most important scene of holidays for the Roman Catholic population of the Alpár of the new age was the church built between 1752 and 55. The parsons heading the parish established in 1760, became an integral part of the everyday life of the village until the first half of the XX century due to their pastoral and liturgical activity. The presence of the church – by the administration of the sacraments - intertwined the lives of the people of Alpár from birth to death. In spite of the accelerated secularization, and move away from religion, due to the political conditions of the second half of the XX century, the religious life of Alpár was still significant at the time of the millennium.
The people of Újfalu belonged to the parish of Alpár until the middle of the XX century. This fact largely facilitated the inter-dependence of the two villages from a social point of view. To create a religious life in the farms of Újfalu, a monastic order of Benedictine sisters started its operation here in the 1920-ies, whose cloister and church became the center of the spiritual and cultural mission in the region. The cloister church, and the church of Újfalu built around the same time were brought to life by the local followers, who exemplified their individual religious belief by making financial and physical contribution to their building.
When an alien comes to Tiszaalpár to walk on the castle hill that preserves the memory of the Bronze Age earthwork, and holds the baroque church that looks like a tiny jewel, and looks down to the catchment area of the Tisza, the landscape rich in natural treasures so nice to the observing eyes, he may store unforgettable and eternal feelings in his soul. And one of the most important opportunities in the future of the village is exactly tourism built on the natural environment and historic traditions.
