Glad (duke)

Glad (Bulgarian: Глад, Hungarian: Galád, Romanian: Glad, Serbian: Глад) was the ruler of Banat (in present-day Romania and Serbia) at the time of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin around 900, according to the Gesta Hungarorum. The Gesta, which was written by an author known in modern scholarship as Anonymus in the second half of the 12th century or in the early 13th century, is the earliest extant Hungarian chronicle. The Gesta did not refer to the enemies of the conquering Hungarians, or Magyars, who had been mentioned in earlier annals and chronicles, but wrote of a dozen persons, including Glad, who are unknown from other primary sources of the Hungarian Conquest. Therefore, modern historians debate whether Glad was an actual enemy of the conquerors or only a "fictitious person" made up by Anonymus. In Romanian historiography, Glad is described as one of the three Romanian dukes who ruled a historical region of present-day Romania in the early 10th century.

According to the Gesta, Glad came from Vidin in Bulgaria. He occupied his duchy with the assistance of "Cumans" before the arrival of the Magyars. Anonymus wrote that Cumans, Bulgarians, and Vlachs, or Romanians, supported Glad against the invading Magyars, but the latter annihilated their united army in a battle near the Timiș River. The Gesta presents Ahtum, who ruled the Banat at the beginning of the 11th century, according to the longer version of the Life of St Gerard, as Glad's descendant.