Bulgarians first contact with the Balkan Peninsula

Still farther west, four other cultural-historical zones have been confirmed. The lands, which the settling Bulgarians turned into their new homeland, are consistent with the distinctive Bulgarian environment. In the post-Kubrat period of Old Great Bulgaria, the Bulgarians of Kan Asparuh, the heir of the ancient rulers’ dynasty of Dulo, conquered the lands to the south of the Dnepar River and in the east part of the Balkan Peninsula between Lower Danube, the Balkan Range and the Black Sea. They transferred the centre of the state to Lower Moesia and established the so-called Danube Bulgaria. It was the one, which made real the most essential achievements during the later development of the Bulgarian civilization.

The large literary source Deeds of St Dimitar Solunski, speaks of the settling of Bulgarians in the region of the “Keramisia Field” (present Bitola Field) in the 670s, i.e. in present-day Republic of Macedonia. The Panonian Bulgarians lived and fortified themselves in the plains of present-day Hungary, along the Tisa River and in the Carpathian foothills. Bulgarian warriors and their families settled in the Italian Peninsula between the mountains and the sea, to the east of the Apennines and along the Adriatic coast in the region of Benevento. In a short period they turned the area from a desolate to a blessed land.

The Bulgarians’ first contact with the Balkan Peninsula is dated to the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th centuries. They settled gradually in the regions of the former Roman provinces of Moesia, Dacia and Macedonia. The territories had suffered invasions of the Barbarians in the 3rd—5th centuries but the Bulgarians revived them, bringing economic, political and cultural prosperity. The following expressive statement refers to such a prospering country:

“They say that the land of Alexandaros Ogal Sosmanoz [Tsar Yoan Shishman (1371—1395)], son of Alexandar [Tsar Yoan Alexandar (1331—1371)], is on the bank of the river Tuna [Danube] and belongs to the region of Edirne [Odrin]…

It [the land of the Bulgarians] was a very fertile region. It exported honey, butter and sheep across the world. In general, there were all kinds of goods in it, more than in other regions.”

From Book of Description of the World by Mehmed Neshri. Translated by I. Tataria. Kitab-I Gihan numa, Mehmed Nesri, Ankara, 1949, pp. 244-245.

The medieval Bulgarian state in Southeastern Europe occupied the lands to the south of the Balkan Mountains in the direction of Constantinople. The dream of conquering the Byzantine metropolis was alive until the death of Tsar Simeon I the Great (893-927). The policy of inhabiting the lands in the south-southwest turned out however to be more productive. The territories south of the Rhodope Mountains to the Aegean Sea and in the west to Morava River, present-day Macedonia and parts of Northern Thessaly, Albania, Kosovo were joined at the time of Kan Presian (836-852). These regions and the whole of Moesia and Thrace formed the historical ethnic-cultural space of the Bulgarians in Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages.