Bulgaria

Bulgaria – Republic of Bulgaria

History

Prehistoric cultures in the Bulgarian lands include the Neolithic Hamangia culture and Vinča culture (6th to 3rd millennia BC), the eneolithic Varna culture (5th millennium BC; see also Varna Necropolis), and the Bronze Age Ezero culture. The Karanovo chronology serves as a gauge for the prehistory of the wider Balkans region.

The Thracians, one of the three primary ancestral groups of modern Bulgarians, lived separated in various tribes until King Teres united most of them around 500 BC in the Odrysian kingdom. They were eventually subjugated by Alexander the Great and later by the Roman Empire. After migrating from their original homeland, the easternmost South Slavs settled on the territory of modern Bulgaria during the 6th century and assimilated the Hellenized or Romanised Thracians. Eventually the Bulgar élite incorporated all of them into the First Bulgarian Empire. By the 9th century, Bulgars and Slavs were mutually assimilated. 

First Bulgarian Empire

Asparukh, heir of Old Great Bulgaria's khan Kubrat, migrated with several Bulgar tribes to the lower courses of the rivers Danube, Dniester and Dniepr (known as Ongal) after his father's state was subjugated by the Khazars. He conquered Moesia and Scythia Minor (Dobrudzha) from the Byzantine Empire, expanding his new kingdom further into the Balkan Peninsula. A peace treaty with Byzantium in 681 and the establishment of a Bulgarian capital at Pliska south of the Danube mark the beginning of the First Bulgarian Empire.

Succeeding khans strengthened the Bulgarian state — Tervel (700–721) established Bulgaria as a major military power by defeating a 26,000-strong Arab army during the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople; Krum (802–814) doubled the country's territory, killed emperor Nicephorus I in the Battle of Pliska, and introduced the first written code of law; Boris I (852–889) abolished Tengriism in favor of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 864, and introduced the Cyrillic alphabet. Simeon the Great's rule (893–927) saw the largest territorial expansion of Bulgaria in its history,along with a golden age of Bulgarian culture and a military supremacy over the Byzantine Empire, demonstrated in the Battle of Achelous (917).

After Simeon's death, Bulgaria declined during the mid-10th century, weakened by wars with Croatians, Magyars, Pechenegs and Serbs, and the spread of the Bogomil heresy. This resulted in consecutive Rus' and Byzantine invasions, which ended with the seizure of the capital Preslav by the Byzantine army. Under Samuil, Bulgaria somewhat recovered from these attacks and even managed to conquer Serbia, Bosnia and Duklja, but this ended in 1014, when Byzantine Emperor Basil II ("the Bulgar-Slayer") defeated its armies at Klyuch. Samuil died shortly after the battle, on 15 October 1014,and by 1018 the Byzantine Empire conquered the remaimed parts of the First Bulgarian Empire, putting it to an end.
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