Historic Zala county used to be
considerably larger, stretching from east to west. Besides its present territory it also
included the Balaton Uplands as far as Balatonfüred and Felsőörs, and in the east the
area around Lendva/Lendava, and Csáktornya/Cakovec, and the Mura river area as well,
which were assigned to the Serbo-Croat-Slovenian Kingdom as set out in the Treaty of
Trianon, 1920.
More extensive archaeological research throughout several decades has
found traces of man of all historic eras. In Zala, one can see finds from the prehistoric
age and those from Roman times, and the "migration period". The earliest
buildings that survived to be discovered by succeeding generations were constructed by the
Romans. The so-called Amber Road, one of the most important roads of their excellent road
network, led across Zala county.
Amber, a contemporary
luxury item of commerce was transported on this road from the Baltic region to Aqilea on
the Adriatic coast. The present-day Alsólendva/Lendava, Zalalövő - the ancient Salla -
as well as Szombathely and Sopron were all situated along this road. Also, the road to the
contemporary Aquincum, now Óbuda, crossed the county near Letenye and Nagykanizsa, where
archaeologists found remains of the original Roman road. |
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The short periods of rule by the Huns, the Gepids, and the Langobards in turn was followed by the 200 -year rule of the Avars, whose empire was destroyed by the Franks in 803. At the same time Slavic peoples were moving in from several directions. Pribina, one of the Slavic leaders, coming from the Nyitra region, who settled with his people on the islands of the River Zala, near the present Zalavár, created a political unity of these peoples with the help of the Franks. Pribina started large scale construction work, raising a fortress, and churches on the "safe" moor land. Cyril and Method, two important Slav clerics who devised the Cyrillic alphabet, stayed there in 866-867.
The Hungarians/Magyars appeared here at the end of the first millennium. The predominantly Slavic native people probably stayed and integrated with the settling Magyars. Settlement names of Slavic origin also prove this.
Our first king, Szent István/Saint Stephen formed the present administration structure, the system of counties, and he nominated local administrators. The first seat of the royal county of Zala was Kolon, but to remind us of this there is only one place name between Balatonmagyaród and Zalakomár.
| The seat of the county was later moved, probably by King Saint László, to Zalavár, where Saint Stephen had founded a Benedictine monastery. According to contemporary practice, first it was the king who founded monasteries, then the landowners followed his example. After the king had founded the abbeys of Zalavár and Tihany, Benedictines were invited by the Gutkeled clan to Csatár, by the Kador clan to Nagykapornak, Premonstrants by Dénes from the Türje clan to Türje, and Franciscans by the Lackfi family to Keszthely. In the Middle Ages, there were several hundred settlements, but most of them were inhabited only by five to ten families. |  |
In the 13th century the royal "serviens" appeared, whose charter published in Kehida in 1232 is an important piece of evidence of our social and legal history. It is the document that set out the territorial grouping of middle-ranked noblemen. It marks the beginning of our present system of counties.
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Our county inherited a number of buildings
of historical interest from the Middle Ages. Besides churches and monasteries, castles
were also built in Kanizsa, Egervár, Rezi and Lenti. In the 15th century big landowners became stronger, and market towns, which played a special role in the development of Hungarian towns, became dominant. In the times of the Hunyadis, already 34 market towns were mentioned in contemporary documents. Their population had become diversified, and besides farmers craftsmen appeared in ever-growing numbers.
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