Beginnings of Bulgaria
“Slavic” means “word” in the ancient Slavic language, and hence the “Slavs” are people speaking the same language, as opposed to foreigners who are called “people without a language”. Today there are close to 300 million Slavs in the world, divided into three groups: Southern Slavs in the Balkan region, Northern Slavs in Northern Europe (Poles, Moravians) and Eastern Slavs in the east (Russians, Ukrainians). They all have a similar language that came from a common source.
The original Slavs probably lived between the Dniester and the Vistula Rivers in Belarus and Ukraine for a thousand years. They were ruled alternately by the Huns, the Goths, the Scythians, and other peoples of the Russian and Asian steppes. After the Huns and Avars invaded the Balkans, the Slavs decided to improve their location and followed them to the Balkans in the 6th-7th centuries AD.
The Slavic tribes were experts in agriculture in wild forested areas and settled in the Mountains and plains of Bulgaria, united in a loose alliance without a formal kingdom of their own, until at the end of the 7th century AD, when a Turkish tribe called “Bulgarians” took over the Slavs living in Bulgaria, mixed with them, and created the first Bulgarian state.
The formation of the Slavic Bulgarian state was the swallow that heralded the spring of the Slavic peoples and kingdoms; In Russia, about 100 years later, the principality of Kyiv was created with the help of invaders from the north – Normans; And in the Balkans, about 200 years later, the kingdoms of the Serbs, Bosnians and Croats were created.
The Slavs had general assemblies called “Mir”, it was a form of democracy in which women also participated. In the 12th century, a monk named Helmond wrote a book called “Chronica Slavorum”, which provides information about the ancient Slavic religion and culture. Helmond asserts that the Slavs “do not doubt the existence of one God in the sky”, but that they think that this God deals exclusively with the affairs of the sky, having left the control of the world in the hands of inferior Gods whom he himself created. This is a hidden God who has no connection with the world. In other words, the Slavs were characterized by perceiving the world as having a dual nature, a motif that also appears in folk tales, which explained the suffering in human life — because the true God is not present.
Greater Bulgaria
The ancient “Bulgarians” were a union of nomadic tribes that was formed in the 5th century AD in the plains of the Russian steppe around the Volga, it was a confederation of warrior tribes and shepherds gathered from a number of different sources: Persian, Alani, Samartani (the inhabitants of the plains of the Volga who fought the Romans) and mainly Turkish, which took over The plains from the lower Volga to the Don and the Dnieper Rivers. They spoke a type of Turkish, some of whose words remained in the Bulgarian language (about twenty), worshiped the sky God Tangri and were led by a khan who was his representative on earth. The khan was assisted by a council of six tribal chiefs.
According to legend, the legendary founder of the Bulgarian nation was none other than Attila the Hun. He is called in their language Abitokhol, and appears first in the list of Bulgarian princes discovered in Russia. What was the secret of their power? What held a confederation of nations – these different tribes together? One can only speculate.
In the 6th century AD, the Bulgarian Union was successful and took control of large areas, on which the Great Bulgaria arose with its capital Taman near the Sea of Azov. The greatest khan was named Kubrat, and he ruled in the years 600-642 AD (7th century). It was the time of the wars of the Persians with the Byzantines under the leadership of Emperor Heraclius, and the beginning of the spread of Arab rule and the rise of Islam. The ancient Bulgarians were in contact with the Armenians, the Kingdom of Kushans to the east, Sassanian Persia to the southeast, the Byzantines to the south, and the Germanic tribes to the west. However, world events were not felt in the kingdom, which grew rich from trade between east and west. Kubrat was a contemporary of the last great Sassanid king, Yazdgard III, and a close friend of his. He traded with the kingdoms of Khorezm and Sogodia in Central Asia, and was on good terms with the Byzantine kingdom (where he probably grew up as a captive boy).
Kubrat had five sons, and despite his pleas to be united, they broke up the kingdom after his death, with each going in a different direction. One of the sons, later called Khan Asparuh, invaded the territories of today’s Romania and Bulgaria with 50,000 warriors. He defeated the Byzantines in 681 and established the first Slavic-Bulgarian state. His warriors intermarried with local Slavs and the remnants of the Thracian population, and all this mixture finally crystallized into a nation with the acceptance of Christianity in the 9th century AD.
Great Bulgaria, on the other hand, has reached its end and was conquered by the rising Khazar confederation and disintegrated. Remnants of its glorious past can be found in the name of the City of Bolgar on the Volga. In fact, the Tatars, the Kazans and the Chuvash people in today’s Russia are probably of Bulgarian origin, at least partially.
First Bulgarian Kingdoms
In 682 AD, Khan Aasparuh arrived with 50,000 mounted warriors at the mouth of the Danube and took control of the northern regions of Bulgaria. The Byzantine army that was sent against him was crushed. It turns out that after the weakening of the Byzantine Empire, because of the wars with the Persians and the invasions of the Arabs, its hold of the Balkans weakened, and into this space entered the brave Bulgarian Turkish warriors who made an alliance with the local inhabitants.
Unlike Byzantium, in the new Bulgarian kingdom there is no appearance of a developed urban culture in its beginning, and it is based on a decentralized organization and loyalties of tribal chiefs, but it is a new and fresh force.
The Bulgarians came to the aid of the Byzantines in their wars with the Arabs. In fact, the Bulgarian Khan Trevel saved the Byzantines at the beginning of the 7th century from Arab invasion and broke the siege of Constantinople. During his time, a statue of the rider from Madara was probably carved on a rock cliff, not far from the ancient capital Pliska.
At the end of the 8th century, a talented and cruel ruler named Khan Krum comes to power in Bulgaria. He makes the new entity the strongest power in the Balkans, fights the Byzantines, defeats them, besieges Constantinople, and obliges the rulers to pay an annual tax to his coffers. The Byzantines are protected by a line of Fortresses starting from Burgas and ending in Sofia controlling the passes of the Rhodope Mountains. Khan Krum conquers the Fortresses one by one; he defeats and kills the emperor Nicophoros, turns his skull into a silver-plated drinking vessel, and conquers the City of Nesbar on the shores of the Black Sea. The capital of Bulgaria at that time is Pliska in northeastern Bulgaria. Krum gathers a formidable army, conquers Adrianople, exiles its population (among them the later Byzantine emperor, Basil I), and plans to conquer Constantinople, but his early death saves the city.
The next khan in line is Omurtag, the great builder and man of peace who came after the man of war. He builds Preslav, which later becomes the new capital. Omurtag is an enlightened pagan ruler if he does not deal with Christians, which were persecuted. He signs a peace treaty with the Byzantines, returns territories to them and fortifies the border; He fights with the Frankish Germans advancing into Pannonia. He is considered the last of the great pagan kings, a philosopher who was supported by the priesthood of the God Perun – the thunder God after whom the Pirin Mountains were named.
