 As such, he has argued that Theophylact borrowed information from Menander's accounts of Byzantine–Turk negotiations to meet political needs of his time – i.e.to castigate and deride the Avars during a time of strained political relations between the Byzantines and Avars (coinciding with Emperor Maurice's northern Balkan campaigns).According to some scholars the Pannonian Avars originated from a confederation formed in the Aral Sea region, by the Uar, also known as the "Var" or "Warr" (who were probably a Uralic people) and the Xūn or Xionites (also known as the "Chionitae", "Chunni", "Hunni", "Yun" and similar names); the Xionites were maybe Iranian or Turkic-speaking or both.