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Taktaharkány

(Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County)

The coat-of-arms of the municipality of Taktaharkány is part of the national list of the coats-of-arms of Hungarian settlements, compiled in 1904. In fact the settlement’s emblem is older, and it has been in use for over two centuries and Taktaharkány’s coat-of-arms was officially decribed by the Hungarian Arts and Crafts Council on 24, September, 1991.(Document No: 6/283).

The settlement’s coat-of-arms can be described as follows:

Shield erect, party per fess, azure and gules, its base is curved to a point. As charges ears of corn are borne in it, all or, which are flanked by pumpkins, also or. Below this charge a ploughshare is borne, argent.

A report on the judiciary decree No. 253 written by notary Sándor Tóth-Pápay on April 22, 1864 includes the description of the settlement as follows:

’This settlement is located near Szerencs in Zemplén County, in the district of Tokaj. The county seat is Sátoraljaújhely. The number of inhabitants is 940, the majority is Calvinists, only some are Roman Catholics or Orthodox. On the east the settlement borders on Szabolts (County). Nearby settlements are Prügy, Takta-Kenyizs and Tisza Dob, all rich in pastures. Land owners included Mihály Köntes and István Cseresznye, a fact known to us from a document of 1715, issued to Julianna Rákóczi and later, in 1724 confirmed by Count Károly Aspremont.’

The municipality of Taktaharkány is accessible via the Budapest-Miskolc-Sátoraljaújhely main railway line, by car it is accessible on trunk road No. 3 and then on road No. 37. The settlement is located at a distance of 30 kilometres from Miskolc and at 10 kilometres from Szerencs. Taktaharkány is located in northeastern Hungary, in the northern part of the Hungarian Great Plain, in the area, where the two smaller regions of Taktaköz and Harangod meet. The settlement can be found on the banks of the Takta River at a distance of eight kilometres northwest of the Tisza River. The settlement was formerly part of the Szerencs diastrict of Zemplén County, today it is a municipality in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County. The number of its inhabitants is 4,200.

The lower point near Taktaharkány is Lazár in the south, and the highest point is Upper Bazsi, part of the Harangod Hills, which can be found west of the settlement.

Taktaharkány is an ancient settlement. Its name was first mentioned in 1211 by the Registry of Várad. It was a habited area as early as the early 13th century and its first name was Horkyan. This ancient settlement belonged to the castle of Zemplén and since the castle serfs often had legal disputes with the inhabitants of Szerencs, Judge Gyula referred them the the Court of Várad.

The area near the Tokota got its name as early as the period of the Hungarian Conquest from Horka, Chief Töhötöm’s son. Later the area was renamed Királysziget (King’s island), because it was a popular hunting ground and fishing area for the members of the court and the court aristocracy.

Chronicler Anonymus wrote the following on this issue:

’Chief Árpád and his companions set off from the castle of Hung, then they camped on the Hill of Tarcal as well as in the fields by the Takta River. Their camp stretched as far as the Hills of Szerencs.’

The most significant event of the 14th and 15th centuries was that in 1352 King Lewis the Great bestowed Harkány, Bazsi and ten other villages on the Zudar family of Ónod and Bőcs. In 1405 the owners of the settlement included the members of the Izsépy, Cseley and Dobi families. In 1435 Harkány was bestowed on the Monoki and Dobai families. Around 1450 part of the settlement was pawned to the Kornis family. In 1496 this settlement is mentioned as Harkály, and it was in the same year that Bazsi was bestowed on the Pálos family of Diósgyőr. In the period of the reign of King Mathias the area was part of Borsod County.

The settlement got destroyed by the Turks first in 1561, then again in 1567. In 1598 Zsigmond Rákóczi I, the castellan of Eger and Szendrő becomes the owner of the area of Harangod and the settlement itself also became part of the huge Rákóczi estate. In the middle of the 17th century Harkány and several other settlements of the Lower Zemplén and Borsod regions were mentioned as Haiduk towns, meaning that the Rákóczis settled down their soldiers in the village, and, at the same time, granted a number of pivileges to them.

In 1687 both settlements of Bazsi and Harkány repeatedly got destroyed by the Turks and the inhabitants never returned to Bazsi after this event. Harkány also remained uninhabited for about 30-40 years and the inhabitants fled to the nearby swamps.

The Battle of Harangod took place near the village in July 1697, when the uprising led by Ferenc Tokaj was put down.

In the 1850s the area of the former Rákóczi estate was leased to Fülöp Koppely, who later purchased it . He adopted the name Harkányi. The owner developed his newly purchased lands into a model estate. He was raised to a baronial rank and until as late as 1945 the majority of local people lived from working on his estate as servants, craftsmen, or day labourers.

After the Turkish Conquest and Rákóczi’s War of Independence the former inhabitants, who had fled to the nearby swamps and the Nyírség region between 1668-1717, began to return. It was in 1715 that 17 families got the permission to settle down on the estate, which remained in the hands of Julianna Rákóczi . The local Calvinist congregation was organised in 1717. In 1722 the village had a minister and they began to use the village seal as well.

According to the Conscriptio Possessionis of 1773 there were 59 tax-paying families in the village and the number of inhabitants exceeded 300. In 1774 they were mentioned as the inheritors of Count Aspremont and the free villeins of the Almásy family. The status of the village inhabitants was determined by the regulations of the Urbary of the Village of Harkány. From 1787 onward the conditions the inhabitants of the village lived in are also described in documents and there are precise data available concerning the number of livestock, the size of agricultural ploughlands and pastures and the inhabitants’housing conditions.

Elek Fényes in his Dictionary of Statistics of 1837 mentioned 1,097 inhabitants at Harkány and the liberated villeind had 2,688 acres of land. On January 1, 1870 the number of inhabitants was 1,594.

The works to regulate the riverbed of the Tisza in the 1850s and the railway construction works of 1858 brought considerable growth and development to the area of Taktaharkány. The economic growth was reinforced by a period of relative political stability which followed 1867, the year of the agreement with the Habsburgs. The Takta River was also regulated between 1907-11, thus a large-size, formerly swampy area became ploughland.

In 1831 there was a major cholera epidemic in the area and it had many victims from the village. In 1834 a small-scale earthquake took place as well.The village was a military meeting point in 1848 and several of its inhabitants participated in the revolution and the war of independence. Baron Frigyes Harkányi was the governmental commissioner of the Paris World Exhibition of 1878 and another member of the family, Baron János Harkányi was appointed trade minister in 1916. Minister István Körössy was the bishop of the bishopric of Zemplén between 1867-1879 and the famous psalm writer, András Juhász also served here. Géza Ziegler, who became known as writer Géza Gárdonyi also lived here in 1874 and it was from Taktaharkány that he went to study at the famous Calvinist College of Sárospatak.