The resettlement of people be ongoing to the Bulgarian branch actually had quite old traditions. After deflecting the advance of the Huns, part of the Bulgarians headed for Central Europe as early as the beginning of the 6th century. For some time they lived in what are today Bavaria and southern Germany. It is unclear how they came into conflict with the local lord who ordered them killed to the last man. Those who survived turned south. They lived on the territory of present-day Italy for centuries and gradually mixed with the local population to the point where only names like Bulgar and Bulgarelli remind of their centennial presence there. After the fall of Old Great Bulgaria part of the people crossed half of Europe and settled in Italy. After three or four centuries they had blended entirely into the local population.

Continue reading The Fate of the Bulgarians

The edifice of the state fell after Kubrat’s death and the Bulgarians followed a tradition they had kept from time immemorial. They split into several large groups and sought deliverance and happiness elsewhere.

A large portion of the Bulgarians, led by the youngest son of Kubrat, Asparuh /or Ispor/, headed west along the familiar route to Europe. They settled in the so-called Ongul, in the delta of the Danube. There they encountered both Slavs and Byzantines.

The culture of the Bulgarians was quite different from that of the Slavs and on a higher level in many respects. They had long left behind familial community relations. Their traditions in statehood were impressive. They had been making attempts to establish a stable state structure for hundreds of years. They had both familial hereditary aristocracy, and an administrative apparatus. They were proud of their past. They drew up genealogical lists of their rulers, which went back to time immemorial.
Continue reading An Ancient Horseman Clad In Iron part II

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.
Continue reading An Ancient Horseman Clad In Iron part I

After the 5th century, barbarian peoples, blinded by the aura of Roman magnificence, began to establish their own states on the territory of the Roman Empire. They carefully copied Roman laws and institutions; their nobles proclaimed themselves patricians and their rulers called themselves kings, minting coins in imitation of Roman models. The short-lived kingdoms of Vandals, Suevi, Ostrogoths and Langobards inspired terror and awe in their contemporaries. None of them survived the Early Middle Ages. It was almost at the same time, however, that a state, which continues to exist in one form or another to this very day, was established on the Balkans. Present-day Bulgaria has existed for more than thirteen centuries in the lands south of the Danube. With centuries of grandeur and decline behind them, Bulgarians have deep roots in their land and have managed to preserve the tradition of their statehood, while much more powerful peoples faded in the past like shadows.

Continue reading The Ragged Shining Armour of the Bulgarian Middle Ages pretalk

Two other important Thracian megalithic sanctuaries have been discovered near the rock city of Perperikon. On of them is the temple of the Great Goddess-Mother, located high in the mountains. This is natural horizontal cave, 22 m long, with south-north orientation, additionally shaped by the human tools. The cave was cut in the shape of a gigantic womb. A semicircular altar niche that represents the symbolic uterus is cut from the north.
Continue reading The Temple-Womb of the Great Goddess-Mother and the Tomb of Orpheus

Khan Malamir was the youngest son of Omurtag and ruled between 831 and 836. He maintained the peace with Byzantine and continued the persecution of Christians. Khan Presiyan succeeded his uncle Malamir to the throne, his right-hand man was the old Kav-Khan Isbul who had been the indispensable aide of his grandfather Omurtag. Perssian put an end to the peace with the Roman empire. The Slavic tribes within the empire were rebelling and their chiefs were looking north to Bulgaria where they could find protection together with other Slavs. Now that tells you how successful the policy of the Bulgar ruling elite was and how good relations were between the Slavs and Bulgars, even Slavs outside Bulgaria rebelled just to get to join Bulgaria!

As soon an he ascended the throne in 837, Presiyan sent his army under the command of Kav-Khan Isbul to the Aegean coast of Macedonia. There, they aided the Smolyans, whose revolt had shaken Byzantine rule in the Western Rhodopes and Aegean Thrace. When the emperor sent an army against the rebels, his forces were met by the Kav-Khan-led Bulgarian army. Inscriptions on stone plates tell of fierce battles at Philippi and Siar, the elation of the victories reflected in the engraved words: “Presiyan, through the will of God ruler of many Bulgarians…
Continue reading Khan Presiyan the successor of Khan Malamir