Bulgarian History

The First Bulgarian Empire
Bulgaria emerged and received official recognition following two victories over the cosmopolitan Byzantine empire. The first battles took place in the Danube delta area in the year 680 A.D. The conflicts continued in the following year, spreading south of the Balkan Range. This is cited in the Acts of the Sixth Oecumenical Council of the Christian Church in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). This council, over the course of almost a year, debated and asserted - in opposition to the monotheistic heresy - the official thesis that Christ had two wills, one divine and the other human. 

On March 18th, 681, the Byzantine emperor Constantine IV Pagonatus departed from the Council to curb the incursions of the Proto-Bulgarians into Thrace, which violated the wholeness of the empire. But he failed to break their dauntless will and strength. The sixteenth sitting of the Council took place on August 9th of the same year and this is how presbyter Constantine of Apameia in Second Syria addressed the Council: 'I have come to your holy council to tell you that if I had been let to come and speak, we should have suffered what we have been through in the war with the Bulgarians. Because I wanted, from the very beginning of this council, to come and ask that peace be made, so that something be done to unite the two sides, and either be spared the misery, that is to say, both those who preach the single will and those who uphold the two wills'. It is asserted on the basis of this source that the decisive event occurred not earlier than March 18th and no later than August 9th of  the year 681. (see the map)

The formation of the state was not the result of a single act. The western chronicler Siegebert added to his notes on the year 680: 'Henceforth the Bulgarian kingdom must be noted'. This statement was fully justified, for Khan Asparouh's Bulgaro-Turks had united with the Seven Slav tribes who inhabited the territory north of the Balkan Range from as early as the first battles with Byzantium. The Byzantine chroniclers Patriarch Nicephorus (8th century) and Theophanes the Confessor (late 8th and early 9th century) gave a more detailed account of the occurrences of the time. To quote Theophanes on the treaty of the Byzantine empire with the new state, forced by the actions of the Proto-Bulgarians, 'the emperor made peace with them, undertaking to pay an annual tax to the disgrace of the Byzantines and because of our numerous sins. It is a wonder for all people, both far and near, to hear that the man who had made all people to the East, West, North and South pay taxes to him, was defeated by this new people'.

Among domestic sources on the foundation of the Bulgarian state the most important is the Book of the Bulgarian Khans - the first Bulgarian chronicle, compiled at two different times: initially during the rule of the founder of the Bulgarian state Khan Asparouh (680-701), and during the second half of the eighth century.

The new Bulgarian state united Proto-Bulgarians, Slavs and the native population, which consisted mainly of Thracians. Its borders in the centuries that followed varied between the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Adriatic Sea. Included into its border for a long time were the central and north-eastern parts of the Balkan Peninsula where traces of human life have been found from the end of the early Palaeolithic period, dating 200,000 years. A centre of civilization, considered to be the earliest in Europe and comparable to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, has been found in this region and mainly in the plains to the north and south of the Balkan Range during archaeological excavations. It has been established that the people who lived in the farming communities of the Early and New Stone Age were familiar with metal casting and applied it independently of other early civilizations.

In the late 9th and early 10th centuries, Bulgaria became the strongest nation of Eastern Europe during the reign of Boris's son Simeon the Great. A brilliant administrator and military leader, Simeon introduced Byzantine culture into his realm, encouraged education, obtained new territories, defeated the Magyars (Hungarians), and conducted a series of successful wars against the Byzantine Empire. (see the map)

In 925 Simeon was proclaimed as a tsar (emperor) of the Greeks and Bulgars. He conquered Serbia in 926 and became the most powerful monarch in contemporary Eastern Europe. Simeon's reign was marked by great cultural advances led by the followers of the brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. During this period Old Church Slavonic, the first written Slavic language, and the Cyrillic alphabet were adopted.

Weakened by domestic strife and successive Magyar raids, Bulgarian power declined steadily during the following half-century. In 969 invading Russians seized the capital and captured the royal family. The Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimisces, alarmed over the Russian advance into south-eastern Europe, intervened in 970 in the Russo-Bulgarian conflict. The Russians were compelled to withdraw from Bulgaria in 972, and the eastern part of the country was annexed to the Byzantine Empire.

Samuel, the son of a Bulgarian provincial governor, became ruler of western Bulgaria in 976. Samuel's armies were annihilated in 1014 by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, who incorporated the state into his empire in 1018.

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