Solar calendar

The Bulgars had travelled a long way before they reached the Balkans. Thousands of kilometres in terms of distance; thousands of years in terms of time. Although there are quite a number of written sources about them, their original homeland is still enshrouded in mystery. Historians have come up with dozens of hypotheses about their origin. Recently, the most prevalent theory is that they lived in the lands around Pamir in the beginning of the first millennium AD and they were an Iranian people with substantial Turkic admixtures. Then they headed west long before the so-called Volkerwanderung. It seems that even in the 2nd century some groups of Bulgars had settled in Europe north of the Danube.

The Bulgarian calendar was of the solar type, subordinate to a 12-year cycle. There were 364 days in a year, divided into four seasons, each consisting of three months. There were 31 days in every first month of a season, the remaining ones numbering 30. The introduction of a special additional day permitted the equalizing of the solar and the astronomic year. The problem of the essence and origin of the Bulgarian solar calendar has become a fashionable subject of debate in recent years. Some attribute its creation to the emulation of ancient Chinese models. Others, on the contrary, consider it an original Bulgarian creation and claim that other peoples borrowed it from our forefathers.

In fact, it is difficult to speak of Bulgars as a separate people. It is not by chance that for nearly two centuries the problem of their ethno genesis has been the subject of endless arguments between historians. There was a group of peoples who spoke a similar language, who had similar traditions and felt they belonged to one ethnic centre. Ancient chroniclers mention different Bulgarian tribes with the provision that they were all part of the Bulgarian people. Bulgarian hordes participated in Attila’s marches on Europe. Some of them probably settled in Panonia, which was to become Hungary centuries later. Others returned to the steppes of Eastern Europe. They also made incursions into the land of Byzantium and on one occasion even reached the walls of Constantinople. It was against them, and in defense of his capital that Emperor Anastasius I built the so-called Long Wall from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora. The wall did not help, and contemporaries maliciously called it the Wall of Fear.

For some time the Bulgarians were parts of large state organizations of peoples of the steppes. They themselves laid the foundations of their statehood around the middle of the 2nd century AD. They were part of the South Western Turkic Khanate. It seems they participated in the internal conflicts, which tore it apart, and were among those aspiring after the supreme power in it. After the khanate disintegrated, they established their own state, which covered the lands along the nether flow of the Dnepr and the Don rivers, the northern shores of the Black Sea, and the territory around the Sea of Azov. This so-called Old Great Bulgaria was not long-lived but it left a deep trace in history. The fact that they were a people with a state inspired more confidence in the Bulgarians.

Unlike most of the nomadic tribes they had experience in permanent settlement from the very beginning. They built well-fortified cities of stone wherever the winds of history carried them. Travelers described the brilliance of their capital, Phanagoria on the sea of Azov, surrounded by its walls of stone. In the middle of the 7th century, the Bulgarians maintained good relations with Byzantium. Their greatest ruler, Khan Kubrat (570-632), probably traveled to Constantinople in his youth. It seems that there he adopted Christianity, was granted the title of patrician, and was declared an ally of the empire - honors usually showered on those who could be of use to Constantinople. Regrettably, the territory of the country he ruled lay right in the way of the barbarian incursions from the east. It was not for centuries that a stable state organism could be established there. Wave upon wave of new attacks inevitably passed through the territory of Bulgaria. It seems that Khan Kubrat himself fell in battle, marking the end of a life deemed rather long for those distant times…..

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