 In the 1230s , Friar Julian went to search for the Magyars ' legendary homeland Magna Hungaria after reading about it and a group of Magyars who had remained there in a Hungarian chronicle . He met a Hungarian @-@ speaking group " beside the great <unk> river " ( the Volga or the Kama ) in the land of the Volga Bulgars , in or in the wider region of present @-@ day Bashkortostan in Eastern Europe . Whether Magna Hungaria was the original homeland of the Magyars , or whether the Magyars ' ancestors settled in Magna Hungaria after their migration to Europe from their Western Siberian original homeland is still subject to scholarly debates . According to a third scholarly theory , Magna Hungaria was neither the Magyars ' original homeland nor their first homeland in Europe . Instead , the ancestors of the Eastern Magyars whom Friar Julian met had moved to Magna Hungaria from the south . 
