Bulgars

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Bulgars were a Turkic people of the steppe north of the Black Sea. The Greek sources also know part of them as Onogurs. When the western steppe broke apart in the middle of the seventh century, it left two states behind: the Bulgar union and the Khazars.^[1]

The Bulgars matter here for what they took with them from the Göktürk order. The rank the khaganate knew from the sixth century turns up in the Byzantine reports as the title of the Bulgar prince. Testimony of this kind is sufficient for the point.^[1] One branch went north to the middle Volga. It held a state there into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Another branch went to the Danube.

How far the union stood under Göktürk overlordship before 630 is not settled. In 576 Türk-shad claimed the Onogurs as slaves of the khaganate. He made this claim to a Roman envoy.^[2] Such a claim does not measure what was collected.

Runiform inscriptions

Runiform inscriptions have been found in the lands where the Bulgars lived. One survey names the Karachay and Balkar mountains of the North Caucasus, the old town of Bilyar on the Volga, Sarkel and the Don sites of Mayaki and Mayatskoye, Murfatlar in Romania and Nagyszentmiklós in Hungary.^[3] The texts have been ascribed to the Khazars, the Avars, the Pechenegs and the Bulgars. No proposed decipherment has been satisfactory.^[4] The inscriptions of the Khazar lands on the Don and in the Caucasus have their own article. So do the marks of the first Bulgar state on the Danube.

One scholar identifies the runiform inscriptions of the Danube, the Volga, the Don and the North Caucasus as monuments of Bulgar dialects.^[5] He points to the initial sounds c- and dz- and to numerals formed with -em as in Bulgar. He also calls Bulgar a vocabulary of burial, names, kinship, trades and the calendar.^[5] Another scholar holds that Turkic-speaking tribes brought the script west to the Volga, the Don and the Danube. In general these were the Tele, whom this scholar calls Proto-Bulgars.^[6] Both are positions. The ascription of the texts to the Bulgars therefore stays open.

References

^ a b Golden 1992
^ Menander Protector
^ Bayçorov 1990, p. 13
^ Erdal 2004, p. 4
^ a b Bayçorov 1990, p. 15–16
^ Vasilʼev 1993, p. 65–66

Sources

Menander Protector

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Josef Marquart, Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge (1903)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
Soslanbek Y. Bayçorov, Avrupa’nın Göktürk Harfli Eski Anıtları. Göktürk Harfli Eski Yazının Kuzey Kafkasya, Volga-Don ve Tuna Bölgeleriyle İlişkisi (1990)
D. D. Vasilʼev, Göktürk Yazı Kültürünün Asya’nın Merkezinden Doğu Avrupa’ya Yolu (1993)