AHistoryIndependent states
The Pechenegs (889-1091)
A union of Turkic tribes that ruled the Black Sea steppe from the Volga to the Danube for two centuries, neighbours of Byzantium and the Rus.
The Pechenegs first lived between the Syr Darya and the Volga. Around 889 the Oghuz and the Khazars pushed them west. The Pechenegs crossed the Volga into the Black Sea steppe and forced the Magyars who lived there to move further west, into Pannonia.
The Byzantine emperor Constantine VII wrote that the Pechenegs were divided into eight great tribes, each led by its own chief. Byzantium valued them as allies against the Rus principalities and the Bulgars. The Pechenegs controlled the crossings of the lower Dnieper.
In the 11th century the Oghuz and the Kipchaks arrived from the east and drove the Pechenegs towards the Danube. In 1091, at the Battle of Levounion, the emperor Alexios I and his Kipchak allies dealt them a crushing defeat. The remaining Pechenegs merged with the Hungarians, Bulgarians and Kipchaks.
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Updated: November 10, 2026