Danube Bulgaria

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

Asparuch, a son of Kubrat, crossed the Dnieper and the Dniester and settled near the Danube after the Khazars had attacked the divided Bulgars. The move is traditionally dated about 679, though his following may have stood on the Danube well before.^[1] The Bulgars have been counted as a branch of the Kutrigurs. In the second half of the seventh century they had formed a strong union north-west of the Caucasus. Pressure from the Khazars split it in two. One part came under Khazar rule and became the Volga Bulgars. The other crossed to Bessarabia under Asparuch and went on to the Danube, and it became the Danube Bulgars.^[2] Asparuch’s forces entered the northeastern Balkans and defeated a Byzantine army. By treaty in 681 they were recognised as masters of the land, over a Slavic union of seven tribes that had submitted to them or come to terms.^[3] In 689 a Bulgar force destroyed the army that Justinian II had led into Thrace. The capital stood at Pliska.^[3] In 811 Krum, who came from the Pannonian Bulgars, trapped and killed the emperor Nikephoros I. According to Theophanes, the emperor’s skull was made into a drinking cup.^[4] The Bulgars spoke Oguric, worshipped Tengri and kept the twelve-year animal cycle.^[5] The language of the Danube Bulgars is known from very little material.^[6] The material is the list of the Bulgar khans, which survives in an Old Russian text in Cyrillic script, with animal names of the Turkic calendar, numerals, titles and personal names. It also includes the inscriptions on the gold vessels of the treasure of Nagyszentmiklós, in runes and in Greek letters. A third source is the personal names and titles in Protobulgar inscriptions in Greek and in Byzantine sources. The fourth is a few words that passed into Church Slavonic.^[6] The material shows an r- and l-dialect.^[6] The titles include boyla, kan and tarkan. The personal names include Bagatur, Bayan, Sivin, Turdagi and Omurtag.^[7]

Many marks that look like runic letters stand on the stone blocks, tiles and pottery of the first Bulgar state. At Pliska, Madara, Preslav and other sites more than a thousand have been counted, and about thirty of them recur.^[8] Most belong to the ninth century, above all to the time of Omurtag.^[9] Whether they are letters, property marks or magic signs is not settled. The commonest is a Y between two upright strokes. It stands on stone, on clay and on pendants, and on a lead seal from Preslav, and it was used for more than three centuries.^[10] It has been understood as the name of Tengri, as Greek letters meaning “great”, as a cryptogram of the name of Jesus, as “Supreme God” and as the sign of the ruling house. Each of these interpretations has been rejected by others.^[10] The sign alone therefore cannot be cited for the Tengri cult. Several scholars derive the signs from the Old Turkic runic script. Some scholars take the texts of Pliska, Byala, Murfatlar and Šudikova for Greek texts with signs of Asian origin among the Protobulgars.^[11] A study of the lands from the Danube to the North Caucasus takes the runiform inscriptions there for monuments of dialects of Bulgar.^[12]

The rock monastery of Murfatlar, south of Constanța in the Dobruja, then Bulgar land, has some sixty runiform inscriptions on the rock walls of its churches. It is dated to the second half of the ninth century and the first half of the tenth.^[13] Beside them stand about thirty Cyrillic inscriptions and two each in Old Bulgar and Greek.^[14] The runiform texts of Murfatlar use some forty-four signs, those of the vessels of Nagyszentmiklós twenty-two. Half of the signs of the second set have a counterpart in the first.^[15]

Boris took baptism as an Orthodox Christian in 864. He and his son Symeon used the disciples of Cyril and Methodius to build an Orthodox Bulgaro-Slavic culture. The Bulgars were slavicized in a fairly short time and became, together with their Slavic subjects, the Bulgarians.^[16]

The name of Asparuch has been set beside the title ïšbara of the Göktürks, and the title has been derived from Sanskrit, Tocharian and Turkic roots. None of the derivations is settled.^[17]

Rulers

References

^ a b Golden 1992, p. 246
^ Ögel 1984, p. 239–240
^ a b c d e Golden 1992, p. 247
^ Theophanes the Confessor; Golden 1992, p. 249
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 250
^ a b c Tekin 2003, p. 29
^ Tekin 2003, p. 29–30
^ Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 176–177
^ Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 176
^ a b Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 179–180
^ Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 178
^ Bayçorov 1990, p. 15–16
^ Kavrikova 2000, p. 241–242
^ Kavrikova 2000, p. 245–246
^ Kavrikova 2000, p. 243
^ Golden 1992, p. 252–253
^ Erhan 2011, p. 15
^ Golden 1992, p. 248
^ Golden 1992, p. 169
^ Golden 1992, p. 249
^ Golden 1992, p. 252

Sources

Theophanes the Confessor (after Theophylact Simocatta)

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Bahaeddin Ögel, İslâmiyetten Önce Türk Kültür Tarihi. Orta Asya Kaynak ve Buluntularına Göre (1984)
Talât Tekin; Mehmet Ölmez, Türk Dilleri: Giriş (2003)
Lüdmila Dončeva-Petkova, Orta Çağ Bulgaristanı'ndan Runik İşaretler ve Birleşmeler (2000)
Soslanbek Y. Bayçorov, Avrupa’nın Göktürk Harfli Eski Anıtları. Göktürk Harfli Eski Yazının Kuzey Kafkasya, Volga-Don ve Tuna Bölgeleriyle İlişkisi (1990)
Svetlana Venelinova Kavrikova, Murfatlar ve Nad Sent Mikloş Yazıtlarının Paleografik Karakteristiği (2000)
Aydın, Erhan, Yenisey Yazıtlarında Geçen Unvanlar ve Unvan Niteleyicileri (2011)