not a member of the Khan's family) in marriage to their first voivode Levedi. Then, because of the courage of the Hungarians and their alliance, the chagan-prince (Khazar khan) gave a noble Khazar lady (i.e. They are said to have fought in alliance with the Khazars in all their wars. In the De administrando imperio Levedi is said to be one of the voivode of one of the seven clans of Hungarians, who lived together with the Khazars for a period of time. However, Kristó says that this would be in contrast with the source and the Hungarian practice of giving names. Thus, the voivode had gotten his name from the land. It has also been put forward that the land, Lebedi, did not derive its name from the chieftain, but the other way around. It derives from "the participle of the old lesz ('will be') verb lës (meaning levő - 'being') with the diminutive suffix -di." A similar proper name (Lewedi) was recorded in a Hungarian charter, issued in 1138. Other scholars agree that the origin of the name is probably Finno-Ugric. The Hungarian historian Gyula Kristó, who refuses Pritsak's theory, says that Levedi's name is connected to the Hungarian verb "lesz" ("be"). According to historian Omeljan Pritsak, Levedi's name―which was actually a title―derived from the Turkic expression "alp edi", or "brave lord". According to one theory, the name is derived from the common Slavic word "Lebedi", swan. The only source of Levedi's life is the De administrando imperio, a book written by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus around 950. The Magyar settlement between the Volga river and the Urals the mountains were named Lebedia, soon to become Levedia, after Levedi. Instead, Constantine claims, Levedi proposed another Hungarian voivode, Álmos or his son Árpád as prince of the Hungarians.
Levedi, however, refused, because he wasn't "strong enough for this rule". Thus, according to Constantine, the Khazar khagan initiated the centralization of the command of the Hungarian tribes in order to strengthen his own suzerainty over them. Later, after the Khazars defeated the Perchengs and forced them to resettle in the land of the Hungarians, whom they defeated and split in two, the Khazars picked Levedi, the "first among the Hungarians" and sought to make him the prince of the Hungarian tribes so that he "may be obedient to the word and command". However, as it turned out, Levedi did not produce offspring with this lady. Īccording to Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus' De administrando imperio, because of the alliance and the courage shown by the Hungarian people in all the wars they fought with the Khazars, Levedi, the first voivode of the Hungarians, who was also famous for his valor, was given a Khazar princess in marriage "so that she might have children by him". Levedi, or Lebed, Levedias, Lebedias, and Lebedi was a Hungarian chieftain, the first known chieftain of the Hungarians.