History of Bulgaria

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History of Bulgaria

Prehistory
Odrysian kingdom
Roman Thrace
Old Great Bulgaria
First Bulgarian Empire
Byzantine Bulgaria
Second Bulgarian Empire
Early Ottoman Bulgaria
National Awakening
Tsardom of Bulgaria
People's Republic of Bulgaria
Republic of Bulgaria

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The History of Bulgaria as a separate country began in 681 AD. After Old Great Bulgaria disintegrating due to Khazar expansion from the east, one of the the Bulgar leaders Asparuh crossed south of the Danube, into the territory of present-day Bulgaria, and defeated the armies of the Byzantine Empire. In 680/681, the East Roman Emperor was forced to sign a peace treaty recognizing the First Bulgarian Empire as an independent state situated on the conquered Byzantine lands with their local Slavic populations.

A country in the middle of the ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse Balkan Peninsula, Bulgaria has seen many twists and turns in its long history and has been a prospering empire stretching to the coastlines of the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Seas. The First and Second Bulgarian Empires served as cultural centres of Slavic Europe, but the land was also dominated by foreign states twice in its history, once by the Byzantine Empire (1018 - 1185) and once by the Ottoman Empire (1422 - 1878).

Prehistory

Further information: Neolithic Europe and Bronze Age Europe

Prehistoric cultures include the neolithic Hamangia culture and Vinča culture (6th to 3rd millennia BC), the eneolithic Varna culture (5th millennium BC, Varna Necropolis), and the Bronze Age Ezero culture. The Karanovo chronology serves as a gauge for the prehistory of the wider Balkans region.

The Thracians

Indo-European tribes Thracian and Daco-Getic population, lived on the territory of modern Bulgaria before the Slavic invasion. Their ancient languages had already gone extinct before the arrival of the Slavs^{[dubious – discuss]}, and their cultural influence was highly reduced due to the repeated barbaric invasions on the Balkans during the early Middle Ages by Huns, Goths, Celts and Sarmatians, accompanied by persistent hellenization, romanisation and later slavicisation.

The Slavs

The Slavs emerged from their original homeland (most commonly thought to have been in Eastern Europe) in the early 6th century, and spread to most of the eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, thus forming three main branches - the West Slavs, the East Slavs and the South Slavs. The easternmost South Slavs settled on the territory of modern Bulgaria during the 6th Century.

Bulgars

The Bulgars (also Bolgars or proto-Bulgarians[1]) were a seminomadic people, probably of Turkic descent[2], originally from Central Asia, who from the 2nd century onwards dwelled in the steppes north of the Caucasus and around the banks of river Volga (then Itil). A branch of them gave rise to the First Bulgarian Empire. The Bulgars were governed by hereditary khans. There were several aristocratic families whose members, bearing military titles, formed a governing class. Bulgars were monotheistic, worshipping their supreme deity Tangra.

Old Great Bulgaria

In the 632, the Bulgars, led by Khan(also Han and Kan) Kubrat formed an independent state, often called Great Bulgaria (also known as Onoguria), between the lower course of the Danube river to the west, the Black Sea and the Azov Sea to the south, the Kuban river to the east, and the Donets river to the north. The capital was Phanagoria, on the Azov.

One Bulgar tribe, led by Khan Asparuh, the successor of Khan Kubrat, moved west, occupying today’s southern Bessarabia. Another Bulgar horde, led by Asparuh's brother Kuber came from Ukraine to settle in Syrmia and Pannonia. After a successful war with Byzantium in 680, Asparuh’s khanate conquered east part of Moesia and Dobrudzha and was recognised as an independent state under the subsequent treaty signed with the Byzantine Empire in 681. That year is usually regarded as the year of the establishment of present-day Bulgaria and Asparuh is regarded as the first Bulgarian ruler.

But another theory suggests that the date may be considered 632, since the state of Great Bulgaria may have been continuous within the Dunabian Bulgarian state. The theory is that although Great Bulgaria lost much territory to the Khazars, it managed to defeat them in the early 670s, and Khan Asparuh conquered Moesia and Dobrudzha from Byzantium in 680.

There is not enough information about Kuber and his people following the settlement in the western Balkans but there is evidence to suggest that Asparuh's son, Tervel, in the beginning of the 8th century, have cooperated with "his uncles" from Macedonia. [3] By the early 9th century the lands, settled by the Kuber's horde, were incorporated into the First Bulgarian Empire.

First Bulgarian Empire

During the late Roman Empire, the land of present-day Bulgaria was organised in several Roman provinces: Scythia (Scythia Minor), Moesia (Upper and Lower), Thrace, Macedonia (First and Second), Dacia (Coastal and Inner, both south of Danube), Dardania, Rhodope and Hemimont, and had a mixed population of Greeks, Thracians and Dacians, most of whom spoke either Greek or a Latin-derived language known as Romance. Several consecutive waves of Slavic migration throughout the 6th and the early 7th century led to a dramatic change of the demographics of the region and its almost complete Slavicisation.

Under the warrior Khan Krum (802-814), Bulgaria expanded northwest and south, occupying the lands between the middle Danube and Moldova rivers, all of present-day Romania, Sofia in 809 and Adrianople in 813, and threatening Constantinople itself. Krum implemented law reform intending to reduce poverty and strengthen social ties in his vastly enlarged state.

During the reign of Khan Omurtag (814-831), the northwestern boundaries with the Frankish Empire were firmly settled along the middle Danube. A magnificent palace, pagan temples, ruler's residence, fortress, citadel, water-main and bath were built in the Bulgarian capital Pliska, mainly of stone and brick.

Under Boris I, Bulgarians became Christians, and the Ecumenical Patriarch agreed to allow an autonomous Bulgarian Archbishop at Pliska. Missionaries from Constantinople, Cyril and Methodius, devised the Glagolitic alphabet, which was adopted in the Bulgarian Empire around 886. The alphabet and the Old Bulgarian language that evolved from Slavonic[4] gave rise to a rich literary and cultural activity centered around the Preslav and Ohrid Literary Schools, established by order of Boris I in 886.

In the early 10th century, a new alphabet — the Cyrillic alphabet — was developed at the Preslav Literary School, based on the Greek and the Glagolitic cursive. An alternative theory is that the alphabet was devised at the Ohrid Literary School by Saint Climent of Ohrid, a Bulgarian scholar and disciple of Cyril and Methodius.

By the late 9th and early 10th centuries, Bulgaria extended to Epirus and Thessaly in the south, Bosnia in the west and controlled all of present-day Romania and eastern Hungary to the north. A Serbian state came into existence as a dependency of the Bulgarian Empire. Under Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria (Simeon the Great), who was educated in Constantinople, Bulgaria became again a serious threat to the Byzantine Empire. Simeon hoped to take Constantinople and become emperor of both Bulgarians and Greeks, and fought a series of wars with the Byzantines through his long reign (893-927). The war boundary towards the end of his rule reached Peloponnese in the south. Simeon proclaimed himself "Tsar (Caesar) of the Bulgarians and the Greeks," a title which was recognised by the Pope, but not of course by the Byzantine Emperor.