Ebook: The Bulgarians: From Pagan Times to the Ottoman Conquest

The Bulgarians are the inheritors of a rich and varied cultural tradition, deriving as they do from a fusion of ancient Balkan peoples, notably the Thracians, with later immigrants including Roman colonists, Slav farmers and proto-Bulgar nomads, not to mention Greeks and Ottoman Turks. Professor Lang concentrates on the formative period in Bulgarian history between the seventh and fourteenth centuries AD. This began when the Turkic Bulgar horde under Khan Asparukh settled south of the river Danube. Thereafter, in association with the more numerous Slavs, the Bulgars rapidly became one of the most powerful nations in Europe, able to set up and topple Byzantine emperors.

In the ninth century, the Bulgarians adopted Orthodox Christianity, as numerous extant ancient Slavonic inscriptions and manuscripts from Bulgaria and Macedonia, then united with the Bulgar realm, testify; Professor Lang traces the politically stormy but culturally fruitful relations of Bulgaria with Byzantium. Though the Greek emperors were never reconciled to Bulgaria’s independent existence, her Christian literature, art and architecture none the less form an integral element in the civilization of the 'Byzantine Commonwealth'.

After discussing the social and philosophical implications of the Bulgarian Bogomil heresy, which had a decisive influence on the Albigensians and Cathars of Western Europe, Professor Lang devotes his last two chapters to the Bulgarians’ cultural and artistic achievements, the quality and variety of which are brought out by a series of striking photographs, many never before reproduced in any Western publication. He ends his survey with the Ottoman Turkish conquest of Bulgaria in 1393-96.