The Little Hungarian Plain or Little Alföld ( Hungarian: ''Kisalföld'', Slovak: ''Malá dunajská kotlina'',

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

: ''Kleine Ungarische Tiefebene'') is a

plain In geography, a plain is a flat expanse of land that generally does not change much in elevation, and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains, as coastal plains, and as plateaus or uplands ...

(tectonic basin) of approximately 8,000 km² in northwestern

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

, south-western

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

(''Podunajská nížina'' – Danubian Lowland), and eastern

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. It is a part of the

Pannonian plain The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large basin situated in south-east Central Europe. The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense, with only the ...

which covers most parts of Hungary.

Geography

Its borders are the

Carpathians The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at and the Scandinavian Mountains at . The range stretches ...

on the north, the

Bakony Bakony () is a mountainous region in Transdanubia, Hungary. It forms the largest part of the Transdanubian Mountains. It is located north of Lake Balaton and lies almost entirely in Veszprém county. The Bakony is divided into the Northern and ...

- Vértes Hills in the south, the Gerecse Hills in the east, and the

Leitha Mountains The Leitha Mountains or, less frequently, Leitha Hills (german: Leithagebirge; hu, Lajta-hegység), are a range of hills in Austria lying on the boundary between Lower Austria and Burgenland. The range is an offshoot of the Alps and forms a conn ...

and the foothills of the

Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Swi ...

in the west. In Hungary, it includes most of Győr-Moson-Sopron and Vas counties, and the western part of Komárom-Esztergom and Veszprém (county), Veszprém. The plain is roughly cut in half by the Danube which is split up into many arms between Bratislava and Komárno, forming large islands. Its main tributaries are the Váh, the Rába, the Rábca and the Marcal rivers. Smaller microregions of the Little Alföld are Hanság, Seewinkel, Neusiedl Basin, Rábaköz, Szigetköz, Marcal Basin, Moson Plain, Komárom-Esztergom Plain and Žitný ostrov. The neighbouring regions of Kemeneshát, Sopron-Vas Plain and Steirisches Hügelland are sometimes classified as belonging to the Little Alföld, but Hungarian and Austrian geographers use the term in a more narrow meaning.

History

The plain has been an important area of agriculture since the Neolithic Age. The southern part of it belonged to the Roman province of Pannonia between the 1st and 5th centuries and later was inhabited by Germanic peoples, Germanic and Slavic peoples and since about 900 also by Hungarians. Since about 1000, the region became part of the Kingdom of Hungary. After World War I the Little Alföld was divided between Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria. In the 1990s Slovakia built a Gabčíkovo - Nagymaros Dams, large dam and power plant at Gabčíkovo.

Population

Country borders don't closely follow linguistic boundaries, especially in the case of the northern part of the plain where Hungarians are a majority in the two southernmost districts Dunajská Streda and Komárno and a minority in the remaining districts. There are also smaller groups of Croats in the tri-state border region. Important cities in the region are Győr (HU), Komárom (HU), Komárno (SK), Dunajská Streda (SK), Nové Zámky (SK), and Mosonmagyaróvár (HU).

Geography

History

Population

See also