The story
In 681 the Byzantine emperor Constantine IV signed a treaty accepting a Bulgar state south of the Danube and agreed to pay it tribute. Its founder was Khan Asparukh, whose Turkic-speaking Bulgars came from the steppe north of the Black Sea and had defeated a Byzantine army near the Danube delta in 680. The treaty marks the birth of the First Bulgarian Empire, which lasted until 1018.
The Bulgars arrived while Byzantium, the surviving eastern half of the Roman Empire divided in 395, was stretched by wars with Arabs and Slavs. Asparukh settled among the Slavic tribes already south of the Danube, and the two peoples merged, with the language of the state eventually becoming Slavic. The empire grew strong enough to threaten Constantinople, adopted Christianity under Boris I in the 860s, and peaked under Simeon the Great (893 to 927). Byzantium's Basil II finally conquered it in 1018.
Why it mattered
- Bulgaria's adoption of Christianity and the Cyrillic script, developed in its schools, spread Slavic literacy across Eastern Europe.
- The empire's rivalry with Byzantium shaped the politics of the Balkans for centuries.
- The merging of Bulgars and Slavs created the Bulgarian nation that exists today.
- Medieval Bulgaria became the cultural model for Serbia and Kievan Rus, which adopted Slavic liturgy and writing from it.
Sources
- First Bulgarian empire Britannica
- Asparukh Britannica
- Bulgaria: The first Bulgarian empire Britannica
- Nikephoros I World History Encyclopedia
Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made
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