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Bulgarian Empire: A Visual History

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Visual history of an empire

Bulgar khans and Slavic subjects who fought Byzantium for centuries, took the Cyrillic alphabet, and twice built an empire in the Balkans.

Existed
681 to 1396
Duration
715 years
Existed
681 to 1018; 1185 to 1396
Peak area
About 400,000 km2 (Simeon, c. 925)
Capitals
Pliska, Preslav, Ohrid; Tarnovo (Second Empire)
Notable rulers
Krum, Boris I, Simeon the Great, Ivan Asen II
Ended by
Byzantium (1018); the Ottomans (1396)

The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681 when the Bulgar khan Asparuh defeated Byzantium and settled south of the Danube among the Slavs. Khan Krum killed Emperor Nicephorus I in 811, Boris I converted to Christianity in 864, and Simeon the Great (893-927) made Preslav a centre of Slavic letters, took the title tsar and reached the walls of Constantinople; Basil II 'the Bulgar-slayer' destroyed the state by 1018. The Second Empire (1185-1396) under the Asen dynasty and Ivan Asen II ruled from Tarnovo and dominated the Balkans again before Ottoman conquest.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Bulgarian Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

200400600800100012001400160018002000Bulgarian Empire (681 to 1396)Open: HunsHuns (370 to 469)Open: Byzantine EmpireByzantine Empire (395 to 1453)Open: Avar KhaganateAvar Khaganate (567 to 822)Open: Khazar KhanateKhazar Khanate (650 to 969)Open: Kievan RusKievan Rus (882 to 1240)Open: CrusadesCrusades (1096 to 1291)Open: Latin Empire of ConstantinopleLatin Empire of Constantinople (1204 to 1261)Open: Mongol invasions and conquestsMongol invasions and conquests (1206 to 1368)Open: Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire (1299 to 1922)Open: Ottoman-Venetian warsOttoman-Venetian wars (1396 to 1718)

Bulgarian territory

0100200300400681: 100811: 250925: 4001000: 2001018: 01185: 501241: 3501300: 1501396: 070080090010001100120013001396thousand km2 (approximate)

Timeline of the Bulgarian Empire

  1. 681
    Asparuh founds Bulgaria
  2. 811
    Krum kills Nicephorus I
  3. 864
    Boris I baptised
  4. 893
    Simeon the Great
  5. 917
    Acheloos
  6. 1014
    Kleidion
  7. 1018
    First Empire falls
  8. 1185
    Asen revolt; Second Empire
  9. 1230
    Klokotnitsa
  10. 1396
    Vidin falls to the Ottomans

Khans on the Danube

Asparuh's Bulgars, Turkic nomads from the Volga-Don steppe, crossed the Danube and forced Constantine IV to cede Moesia in 681. Krum (803-814) crushed the Avars in the west and destroyed Nicephorus I's army in the Varbitsa Pass, lining the emperor's skull with silver as a cup. Omurtag built Pliska in stone; the Bulgar elite gradually merged with the Slavic majority.

Simeon and the Golden Age

Boris I accepted baptism from Constantinople in 864 and welcomed the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, whose schools at Preslav and Ohrid created the Cyrillic alphabet and Old Church Slavonic literature. His son Simeon, educated in Constantinople, fought Byzantium for 30 years, was crowned 'emperor of the Bulgarians and Romans' by a patriarch of his own, and won at Acheloos in 917. After him Samuel resisted from Ohrid until Basil II blinded 15,000 prisoners after Kleidion in 1014; Bulgaria was annexed in 1018.

The Second Empire

The brothers Peter and Asen revolted at Tarnovo in 1185; Kaloyan destroyed the Latin Empire's army at Adrianople in 1205 and captured Emperor Baldwin. Ivan Asen II (1218-1241) defeated Epirus at Klokotnitsa and ruled from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. Mongol tribute, Serbian rivalry and civil war followed; the Ottomans took Sofia in 1382 and Tarnovo in 1393, and the last tsar of Vidin fell in 1396. Bulgaria re-emerged as a state only in 1878.

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

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Wars of the same era and region

8 surprising things about the Bulgarian Empire

  1. The Cyrillic alphabet was created in Bulgaria, at the Preslav school, not by Cyril himself.
  2. Krum reportedly drank from the skull of the emperor he had killed, in the old steppe fashion.
  3. Basil II earned the name Bulgaroktonos, 'Bulgar-slayer', for blinding thousands of prisoners; Tsar Samuel died of shock on seeing them return.
  4. Simeon's title 'tsar', from Caesar, was the first use of the word by a Slavic ruler.
  5. The Bulgars were a Turkic people who left almost no linguistic trace; Bulgarian is a Slavic language.
  6. Kaloyan called himself 'Romaioktonos', Roman-slayer, in reply to Basil's title.
  7. The Madara Rider, a rock relief of a khan on horseback, dates from about 710 and is on Bulgaria's coins.
  8. The Second Empire's capital Tarnovo was called 'the third Rome' by Bulgarian writers.

Sources

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