KOMÁDI

Our town is located close to the Romanian border, it is in Hajdú- Bihar county, it is approximately 25 -35 km far from Berettyóújfalu- Biharkeresztes- Sarkad- Szeghalom. You can reach Komádi coming down from the 42, 44, 47, main roads or on the railway Gyoma- Körösnagyharsány.

The town is on the Great Plain of Hungary, it is 100-150 km far from the Bihar mountain, where severeal rivers and brooks flow. Earlier the area was under the sea. The sea had disappered, but there remained many swamps and reed fields. Only some islands came into existence in the land of water, possibly those areas were the habitation and the station of the prehistoric men. The town is in a characteristic area of foothills, it is 130 km far from the beautiful mountain range of Bihar.

The Sebes-Körös is the only river, which flows through the town from the east to the west on 12 km length. It has its origin in the Almási mountain, Kolozs county, from the village Körösfő. The  river turns the scenery of the Sebes-Körös valley into a picturesque landscape. It flows through Nagyvárad, and reaches to Hungary at the village Körösnagyharsány.  The Berettyó river is connected to the Sebes-Körös river at Szeghalom, then the rivers reach Körösladany, Köröstarcsa and flow into the south western directon to the Kettős- Körös (The Körös downstream from Gyula is also called the Kettős-Körös, Hungarian for “double Körös”). The old brooks have disappeared, these areas were in the boundary of  Zsadány, Okány and Vésztő.

The rivers, swamps and reed fields protected the town and isolated it and its neighbourhood in a positive way. The plain and the river valleys were occupied by the Hungarians since the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian basin. The river instability is caused by the precipitation and snowmelt.  It is quite visible that the level of the river increases with the snowmelt in spring. The river is as shallow in summer and autumn that you can go through it. The beautiful river has caused many damages to its own environment, the flood often reached the arable fields of Sárrét and Nagyszalonta.

The unpredictable weather of the Great Hungarian plain is very characteristic in our town and in the whole Bihar county. Winter comes quite late, the first winter month is December with foggy,  cloudy, moderate weather. The coldest months are January and February, when the cold front arrives from the Russian plain. The south wind blows quite often in February and changes the weather really fast, this is considered as the coming of spring. The cold weather is changed by the rise of the temperature, the snowy weather turns into rainy. The airflow from the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean  change the weather, northern, north eastern winds are not as powerful as during the winter.

The temperature begins to rise in the middle of March, the days are sunny and warm, but the nights are quite cold. The weather is quite unpredictable in April, until May the temperature is risen. The hot, sunny days are often accompanied with storms and heavy rains in July and August. The hot weather might cause drought, what is really harmful for the cereals and vegetables.  Autumn usually starts with September or October, the weather in autumn is cold and rainy, but sometimes quite warm.

In the first scripts from 1291- 1294 the name of the village appeared as Kumad, then in 1333 it was mentioned as Komad. In the documents of the Csáki family from 1351 the name of the village appeared as Kumady. From 1421 Komadi is Komady, than from 1561 there is a Kiskomady and a Nagykomady, its first heirs were the Komady family. In the XIII th century Béla Kálmán considered the word as being formed from a name and a dimminutive “d”. The dimminutive “d” was widely used in the Kingdom of Hungary, nowadays it is not used anymore. It is quite possible that the word stem “kuma” is in a strong relation with our Hungarian word “koma” with Slavic origins, meaning crony. In 1241 with the Mongol Invasion of Hungary the village got almost demolished. Only two years later the people began to rebuild the village. In 1605 István Bocskay named the town a free civil parish, but the Turkish ruined it in 1659.  About 1680 the returning inhabitants rebuilt the small town and they also built a church of reed and mud. In 1700 Lipót I took back the town rank.

The people first hid from the Tatars, Rascians in swamps. There were only two roads on land out of the village. The quick, capricious and effluent Sebes Körös river devastated the area for several times. The occupations of the people were in a strong realtionship with the natural endowments, like the field of the swamps.

The homogenouos image of the village had been being formed from the second half of the XVI th century until the second half of the XVIII th century. The names Kiskomádi and Nagykomádi went out of mind in the XVIth century. Nagykomádi was the “nest” of the nobles. The village was divided in three parts: the first Pernyésvég, was in the western part, the second Faluvég was in the eastern part and the third Derék was at the centre of the village. In the historical sources Komádi  is mentioned as a typical village with a single street, by the bank of a river. It was the biggest village in the boundary, its territory has increased with the draining. The natural endowment influenced the building customs of the time. The houses were built on tall bollards, the walls were twiggen and over plastered, the roofs were made of reed. Later the  people of Komádi built houses of pise brick, which is used as a building material nowadays too.

Komádi`s earlier institional forms: a country town, a civil parish, a village, and today it is a town. Komádi`s present image was formed in 1945, unfortunately damaging the meadows around the town. Large boondocks belonged to the town Komádi. It got back the town title on 1^st of July, 2001.