The Arrival Of The Bulgars In The Balkan Peninsula 600-700

The progress of the Bulgars towards the Balkan peninsula, and indeed all

their movements until their final establishment there in the seventh

century, are involved in obscurity. They are first mentioned by name in

classical and Armenian sources in 482 as living in the steppes to the

north of the Black Sea amongst other Asiatic tribes, and it has been

assumed by some that at the end of the fifth and throughout the sixth

century they were associated first with the Huns and later with the Avars

and Slavs in the various incursions into and invasions of the eastern

empire which have already been enumerated. It is the tendency of Bulgarian

historians, who scornfully point to the fact that the history of Russia

only dates from the ninth century, to exaggerate the antiquity of their

own and to claim as early a date as possible for the authentic appearance

of their ancestors on the kaleidoscopic stage of the Balkan theatre. They

are also unwilling to admit that they were anticipated by the Slavs; they

prefer to think that the Slavs only insinuated themselves there thanks to

the energy of the Bulgars' offensive against the Greeks, and that as soon

as the Bulgars had leisure to look about them they found all the best

places already occupied by the anarchic Slavs.



Of course it is very difficult to say positively whether Bulgars were or

were not present in the welter of Asiatic nations which swept westwards

into Europe with little intermission throughout the fifth and sixth

centuries, but even if they were, they do not seem to have settled down as

early as that anywhere south of the Danube; it seems certain that they did

not do so until the seventh century, and therefore that the Slavs were

definitely installed in the Balkan peninsula a whole century before the

Bulgars crossed the Danube for good.



The Bulgars, like the Huns and the Avars who preceded them, and like the

Magyars and the Turks who followed them, were a tribe from eastern Asia,

of the stock known as Mongol or Tartar. The tendency of all these peoples

was to move westwards from Asia into Europe, and this they did at

considerable and irregular intervals, though in alarming and apparently

inexhaustible numbers, roughly from the fourth till the fourteenth

centuries. The distance was great, but the journey, thanks to the flat,

grassy, treeless, and well-watered character of the steppes of southern

Russia which they had to cross, was easy. They often halted for

considerable periods by the way, and some never moved further westwards

than Russia. Thus at one time the Bulgars settled in large numbers on the

Volga, near its confluence with the Kama, and it is presumed that they

were well established there in the fifth century. They formed a community

of considerable strength and importance, known as Great or White Bulgaria.

These Bulgars fused with later Tartar immigrants from Asia and eventually

were consolidated into the powerful kingdom of Kazan, which was only

crushed by the Tsar Ivan IV in 1552. According to Bulgarian historians,

the basins of the rivers Volga and Don and the steppes of eastern Russia

proved too confined a space for the legitimate development of Bulgarian

energy, and expansion to the west was decided on. A large number of

Bulgars therefore detached themselves and began to move south-westwards.

During the sixth century they seem to have been settled in the country to

the north of the Black Sea, forming a colony known as Black Bulgaria. It

is very doubtful whether the Bulgars did take part, as they are supposed

to have done, in the ambitious but unsuccessful attack on Constantinople

in 559 under Zabergan, chief of another Tartar tribe; but it is fairly

certain that they did in the equally formidable but equally unsuccessful

attacks by the Slavs and Avars against Salonika in 609 and Constantinople

in 626.



During the last quarter of the sixth and the first of the seventh century

the various branches of the Bulgar nation, stretching from the Volga to

the Danube, were consolidated and kept in control by their prince Kubrat,

who eventually fought on behalf of the Greeks against the Avars, and was

actually baptized in Constantinople. The power of the Bulgars grew as that

of the Avars declined, but at the death of Kubrat, in 638, his realm was

divided amongst his sons. One of these established himself in Pannonia,

where he joined forces with what was left of the Avars, and there the

Bulgars maintained themselves till they were obliterated by the irruption

of the Magyars in 893. Another son, Asparukh, or Isperikh, settled in

Bessarabia, between the rivers Prut and Dniester, in 640, and some years

later passed southwards. After desultory warfare with Constantinople, from

660 onwards, his successor finally overcame the Greeks, who were at that

time at war with the Arabs, captured Varna, and definitely established

himself between the Danube and the Balkan range in the year 679. From that

year the Danube ceased to be the frontier of the eastern empire.



The numbers of the Bulgars who settled south of the Danube are not known,

but what happened to them is notorious. The well-known process, by which

the Franks in Gaul were absorbed by the far more numerous indigenous

population which they had conquered, was repeated, and the Bulgars became

fused with the Slavs. So complete was the fusion, and so preponderating

the influence of the subject nationality, that beyond a few personal names

no traces of the language of the Bulgars have survived. Modern Bulgarian,

except for the Turkish words introduced into it later during the Ottoman

rule, is purely Slavonic. Not so the Bulgarian nationality; as is so often

the case with mongrel products, this race, compared with the Serbs, who

are purely Slav, has shown considerably greater virility, cohesion, and

driving-power, though it must be conceded that its problems have been

infinitely simpler.