The Middle Ages in the Banat (a historical region in Central Europe which is now divided among Romania, Serbia and Hungary) started around 900. Around that time, Duke Glad ruled Banat, according to the Gesta Hungarorum, a late 12th-century chronicle of debated reliability. Archaeological finds and 10th-century sources evidence that Magyars (or Hungarians) settled in the lowlands in the early 10th century, but the survival of local Avar, Slav and Bulgar communities can also be documented. A local chieftain, Ajtony, converted to Eastern Orthodoxy around 1000, but his attempts to control the delivery of salt on the Mureș River brought him into conflict with Stephen I of Hungary. Ajtony died fighting against the royal army in the first decades of the 11th century.