Pop and Alexandru Madgearu, the existence of a ninth-century Vlach polity in the Carpatho-Danubian region is verified by the Gesta Hungarorum and contemporary sources. Alfred the Great's translation of the Historiae Adversus Paganosa fifth-century work by Orosiusreferred to "the Dacians, who were formerly Goths" and lived east of the Moravians and the "Vistula country". The 11th-century Persian scholar Gardizi, who studied the works of the late ninth-century Abu Abdallah al-Jayhani, wrote about the Nandars"a people of Rûm who are all Christians"who inhabited the lower Danube and the Carpathians. Pop identifies them as Romanians, but Bóna and Kristó consider them Bulgarians because nándor was the Bulgarians' Hungarian exonym. Vladimir Minorsky also does not consider the "Nandars" to be Romanians, but "Onogur-Bulgarians", since the text mentions them in two places, south of the country of the Hungarians and the Danube, and above the Khazars, and west of the Volga, roughly where the state of the Volga Bulgarians was, and there were certainly never any Romanians living near the Volga. It is also important to note that the Persian scholars did not use this name for the Vlachs, but the word "ulagh". An Armenian geographical work mentions "an unknown country called Balak" north of Bulgaria. According to Pop and Georgescu, this demonstrates that a Vlach country existed in the region at the end of the ninth century. Manuscript studies indicate that the reference to Balak was interpolated after 1000, with the original text describing the "large country of Dacia" and its 25 Slavic tribes. According to the early-12th-century Russian Primary Chronicle, although the Slavs were the first settlers west of the Carpathians, the Volokhs seized their territory. The Volokhs were expelled in turn by the Magyars, who "took their lands and settled among the Slavs". Many scholars, including Georgescu and Madgearu, identify the Volokhs as Vlachs fighting the invading Magyars. Although the majority of non-Romanian scholars consider the "Volokh" in the text to be the Franks, not the Vlachs, as they appear in other parts of the text and their state is described as being close to even England. (quote from the original text: "...do zemlĕ Agnjanski i do Vološ'ski..." "...to the English and Voloh lands...").Since the Vlachs never reached Normandy, which was also the territory of the Volokhs mentioned in the text, it is highly probable that the text refers to the Franks, who were indeed driven out of the Carpathian Basin