Great Moravia

Great Moravia was the first great state of the Western Slavs, centred on the Morava river between 833 and 907. Mojmir I gathered the Slavic tribes into a realm strong enough to defy the East Frankish kings, and his successors Rostislav and Svatopluk turned it into the power of Central Europe, stretching at its height from Bohemia toward the Balkans. Its fame rests on letters as much as arms: at Rostislav's request the Byzantine brothers Cyril and Methodius arrived in 863, devised the Glagolitic alphabet, the first script for a Slavic tongue, and preached and judged in Old Church Slavonic, giving the Slavs a literary language centuries before their neighbours. Svatopluk, who ruled from 870 to 894, carried Moravia to its greatest extent, but his sons quarrelled over the inheritance, and the feud opened the gate to the Magyars. Around 907 the Hungarians overran the realm, and Great Moravia vanished so completely that scholars still argue where its capital stood, while Slovaks and Czechs both claim its glory.