Ancient Bulgaria

Ancient Bulgaria

The Mist of the Ages
(2137 BC. – 668 AD.)
Prologue
The Bulgarians – people who had everything wished; they believed that the world is open to them; and they never doubted in their victory; that is the nation that took wonders of the world.

To begin with there isn’t another nation which doesn’t know its history. Bulgaria is the oldest European country which has not changed its name over the centuries. Almost all countries have changed their names. There are many assumptions that the Bulgarians had had not only one but twelve countries. Also it is supposed that the Great Chinese wall was built to protect the Chinese from the Bulgarian attacks.
Bulgaria was known in a lot of places but the other nations couldn’t pronounce the (∂) sound so they simply changed the name in a suitable for them way.
A lot of rivers, valleys, hills, seas, lakes and mountains were named after Bulgaria and they still can be found on the world maps.
The Bulgarian motto is” The Union makes the Power”. It comes from the great Bulgarian khan (similar to king) Kubrat who explained it to his five sons. And one of them set up Bulgaria in 681A.D.

The First Bulgarian Empire
In 632A.D. the Bulgars, originally from Central Asia, formed under the leadership of Khan Kubrat an independent state that became known as Great Bulgaria. Pressure from the Khazars led to the subjugation of Great Bulgaria in the second half of the 7th century. That’s why Kubrat’s successor, Khan Asparuh moved with some of the people to the course of the river Ongal. After a while he made a peace treaty with Byzantium in 681A.D. and established the First Bulgarian Empire with a capital city Pliska.


Ruins of Pliska, capital of the First Bulgarian Empire from 680 to 890A.D.

In 864 Bulgaria under Boris I accepted Christianity. Bulgaria became a major European power in the ninth and the tenth centuries.

The Bulgarian Empire in 893 in dark green, with its territorial gains up to 927 in light green.

The Byzantines then began campaigns to conquer Bulgaria. In 971 they seized the capital Preslav and captured Emperor Boris II. The Byzantines destroyed the Bulgarian state in 1018 after their victory at Kleidion.
Bulgarian nobles ruled the province in the name of the Byzantine Empire until two of the liberators started a rebellion in 1185 which led to the establishment of the Second Bulgarian Empire. By the end of the 14th century, factional divisions between Bulgarian boyars had gravely weakened the cohesion of the Second Bulgarian Empire. And this lead to the split into three small kingdoms. In the period 1365–1370, the Ottomans conquered most Bulgarian towns and fortresses south of the Balkan Mountains. In 1393, the Ottomans captured Tarnovo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, after a three-month siege because of the traitor who had opened a secret gate to the fortress. In 1396, the Vidin Tsardom(Kingdom) fell after the defeat and with this, the Ottomans finally subjugated and occupied Bulgaria.
In the period of the ottoman rule many manuscripts with the Bulgarian history were lost.
In 1876 the April uprising broke out: the largest and best-organized Bulgarian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately ,it was brutally repressed. And that attracted the attention to Russia to seek a solution by force. In the Russian-Turkish War, 1877-1878, the Russian soldiers together with a Romanian expeditionary force and volunteer Bulgarian troops defeated the Ottoman armies. The Treaty of San Stefano (3 March 1878), set up an autonomous Bulgarian principality.

Bulgarians overrun a Turkish position at bayonet-point during the First Balkan War of 1912–1913.

However, Bulgaria did not become a people's republic until 1946. Bulgaria took part in many wars in the nineteenth century, including WW1 and WW2.
Todor Zhivkov dominated the country from 1956 to 1989, becoming one of the most established Eastern leaders.
Opposition forced Zhivkov and his right-hand to give up the power on 10 November 1989. After that the government was taken by Petar Mladenov. And it is considered the beginning of the democracy.