Abasár

Abasár is a village (population 2,593) in Heves county in Hungary, situated near Gyöngyös in the foothills of the Mátra mountains.

It was first attested as Saar in 1261 and 1271. Sár was a personal name meaning "blonde" (cf. sárga, meaning "yellow"). A Benedictine monastery here belonged to the Aba genus, that's where prefix comes from. According to the tradition, the monastery was founded by King Samuel Aba in 1042, and he was buried here.^[1]

The area was inhabited intermittently according to archaeological evidence as early as around 2500 BC and was first mentioned in writings from 1261. In 1950 the village merged with Pálosvörösmart and in 2006 split back into two separate villages.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, few Jews lived in the village. Most of them were murdered in the Holocaust.^[2]