Bulgars
The Bulgars probably originated as a Turkic tribe of Central Asia and arrived in the European steppe west of the Volga River with the Huns about AD 370; retreating with the Huns, they resettled about 460 in an arc of country north and east of the Sea of Azov. Hired by the Byzantines in 480 to fight against the Ostrogoths, the Bulgars subsequently became attracted by the wealth of the Byzantine Empire. In the 6th century the Bulgars continually attacked the Danubian provinces of the Byzantine Empire until, in the 560s, they were themselves threatened by the Avars, who were then advancing from Asia into central Europe. The Avars destroyed one Bulgar tribe, but the rest saved themselves by submitting, for two decades, to another horde of Turkic newcomers, most of whom then retreated back into Asia.
Unified under a single ruler, Kurt, or Kubrat (reigned c. 605–c. 642), the Bulgars constituted a powerful khanate known to the Byzantines as Great Bulgaria, with the Kuban River as its southern frontier. After Kurt's death his five sons split the people into five hordes. One of these five, remaining on the coast of the Sea of Azov, was absorbed into the new empire of the Khazars; another migrated to central Europe and was merged with the Avars; and another disappeared into service under the Lombards in Italy. Two of the five hordes, however, had longer futures.
Kurt's son Bezmer, or Bat-Bayan, avoided the Khazars by leading his horde far to the north, where it eventually occupied an ill-defined country around the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers. Subdivided there into three groups (probably through mergers with indigenous peoples or with other immigrants), the horde maintained itself in prosperity for some 600 years. These Volga Bulgars formed not so much a state as a seminomadic confederation, but they had two cities, Bulgar and Suvar, which profited as transshipment points in the trade between the fur-selling Ugrians and Russians of the far north and the southern civilizations—Byzantium, the Muslim Caliphate of Baghdad, and Turkistan. The Volga Bulgars were converted to Islam about 922. In 1237 they were made subject to the Mongol Golden Horde, and, though the city of Bulgar flourished for a long time afterward, the people gradually lost their identity and were mingled with the Russians.
The fifth product of the breakup of Great Bulgaria was the horde that Kurt's son Asparukh led westward across the Dniester River and then southward across the Danube. There, on the plain between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains, they established the kernel of the so-called first Bulgarian empire—the state from which the modern nation of Bulgaria derives its name. In the 7th century the Danubian region was nominally controlled by the Byzantine Empire, and it was inhabited by Vlachs (ancestors of the modern Romanians) and also very largely by recently arrived Slavs. The conquering Bulgars were soon permeated by Vlach and, even more thoroughly, by Slavic elements. At the same time, their conquests were carrying them deeper into the ambit of Byzantine Christianity. Territorial expansion into Serbia and Macedonia under Krum (khan 803–814) and under Pressian (836–852) was followed by the conversion of the Bulgars to Christianity under Boris I.
The conversion of the Bulgars became a competition between the two churches and was ably exploited by the Bulgar king Boris until, in 870, he opted for Orthodox Christianity on condition of having an archbishop of his own.
Bulgarian wars
The trade with Constantinople that followed the missionaries whetted the appetites of the Slavs and Bulgars for a larger share in the material wealth of Byzantium. Simeon (Symeon) I of Bulgaria, who succeeded his father Boris in 893 and who had been educated at Constantinople, proved to be an even more dangerous enemy than the Arabs. His efforts to become emperor dominated Byzantine history for some 15 years. In 913 he brought his army to the walls of Constantinople, demanding the imperial title. The patriarch, Nicholas Mysticus, appeased Simeon for a time, but it was Romanus Lecapenus who, by patience and diplomacy, undermined the power of the Bulgars and thwarted Simeon's ambitions. Simeon died in 927, and his son Peter I came to terms with Byzantium and married a granddaughter of Romanus.
The new church's liturgy was in the Slavic language as spoken in the Bulgars' Macedonian possessions, and this language, now known as Old Church Slavonic, proved to be a powerful agent in creating a common culture among the Bulgars and Slavs. By the time Bulgaria was incorporated into the Byzantine Empire early in the 11th century, the Bulgars and Slavs had melded into a Slavic-speaking, Christianized people essentially identical to today's Bulgarians.
Boris I's son Simeon I, who was acknowledged as tsar, or emperor, of the Bulgars, brought the first empire to its acme as a Balkan power, even though he had to give up the lands north of the Danube to fresh invaders from the Eurasian steppe. As invasions of the Balkan Peninsula from the north continued intermittently over the next four centuries, the Turkic element in the Bulgarians' ethnic makeup was somewhat reinforced against the Slavic by strains derived from the Pechenegs, Kipchaks, and Cumans—all Turkic peoples.
The Bulgars, however, were not content to be vassals of Byzantium and rebelled under Samuel, youngest of the four sons of a provincial governor in Macedonia. Samuel made his capital at Ochrida and created a Bulgarian empire stretching from the Adriatic to the Black Sea and even, for a while, into Greece, though Thessalonica remained Byzantine. The final settlement of the Bulgar problem was worked out by Basil II in a ruthless and methodical military campaign lasting for some 20 years, until, by 1018, the last resistance was crushed. Samuel's dominions became an integral part of the Byzantine Empire and were divided into three new themes. At the same time the Slav principalities of Serbia (Rascia and Dioclea) and Croatia became vassal states of Byzantium, and the Adriatic port of Dyrrhachium came under Byzantine control. Not since the days of Justinian had the empire covered so much European territory. But the annexation of Bulgaria meant that the Danube was now the only line of defense against the more northerly tribes, such as the Pechenegs, Cumans, and Magyars.
After Simeon's death the first Bulgarian empire was undermined by internal divisions and invasions of Magyars, Pechenegs, Rus, and Byzantines. In 1018 Bulgaria was incorporated into the Byzantine Empire. An anti-Byzantine revolt of the Balkan peoples in 1185 produced the second Bulgarian empire, and by 1241 the Bulgarian tsars of the house of Asen (1185–1280) were supreme in most of the lands from the Danube River to the Aegean Sea and from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. But Mongol attacks from the north, Serbian encroachment on the west, and internal rivalry among the successors of the Asens eroded this second empire, and in 1396 it fell to the Ottoman Turks, who were overrunning the Balkans from the south.
Throughout the long period of direct Ottoman rule (1396–1878), the Bulgarians' obstinate Christianity prevented their being merged completely with the Muslim Turks, while their retention of a Slavic language kept them from absorption by the Greeks predominant in the Eastern Orthodox church as recognized by the Ottomans. In 1878 an autonomous Bulgarian principality under Ottoman suzerainty was established. Bulgaria was declared independent, as a tsardom or kingdom, in 1908.
"Bulgar." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2004. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
Copyright H. David Marshak
