Ajtony, Ahtum or Achtum (, , , ) was an early-11th-century ruler in the territory now known as Banat in present Romania and Serbia. His primary source is the Long Life of Saint Gerard, a 14th-century hagiography. Ajtony was a powerful ruler who owned many horses, cattle and sheep and was baptised according to the Orthodox rite in Vidin. He taxed salt which was transferred to King Stephen I of Hungary on the Mureș River. The king sent Csanád, Ajtony's former commander-in-chief, against him at the head of a large army. Csanád defeated and killed Ajtony, occupying his realm. In the territory, at least one county and a Roman Catholic diocese were established. Historians disagree on the year of Ajtony's defeat; it may have occurred in 1002, 1008 or between 1027 and 1030. His ethnicity is also a subject of historical debate; he may have been Hungarian, Kabar, Pecheneg or Romanian. In Romanian historiography Ajtony is viewed as the last member of a Romanian ruling family founded by Glad, lord of Banat around 900 according to the Gesta Hungarorum. Background The Magyars (or Hungarians), who had lived on the Pontic steppe for decades, invaded the Carpathian Basin after their defeat by a coalition of Bulgarians and Pechenegs about 895 AD. Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus wrote that the seven Magyar tribes formed a confederation with the Kabars. Although the Kabars had originally lived in the Khazar Khaganate, they rebelled against the Khazars and joined the Magyars on the Pontic steppe. According to churchman Regino of Prüm, Constantine Porphyrogenitus and other contemporary sources, the Magyars fought the Bavarians, Bulgarians, Carinthians, Franks and Moravians in the Carpathian Basin. Among the Magyars' opponents the same sources noted many local rulers, including Svatopluk I of Moravia, Luitpold of Bavaria and Braslav, Duke of Lower Pannonia. The Gesta Hungarorumthe earliest extant Hungarian chronicle, written after 1150instead mentioned Glad, lord of the lands between the Danube and the Mureș (now known as the Banat in Romania and Serbia) and other local rulers absent from the earlier sources. Therefore, the credibility of the Gesta reports is a subject of scholarly debate. Although Vlad Georgescu, Ioan Aurel Pop and other historians describe Glad as one of the local Romanian rulers who attempted to resist the invading Hungarians, other scholarsincluding Pál Engel and György Györffycall him one of the dozen "imaginary figures" invented by Anonymus (author of the Gesta) as