2.: EARLY HISTORY OF THE BULGARIANS — ( P. 27 sqq. )

Bulgaria and Russia are Slavonic countries, Bulgarian and Russian are Slavonic languages; but it is an important historical fact that the true Bulgarians and the true Russians, who created these Slavonic states, were not Slavs themselves and did not speak Slavonic tongues. The Russian invader was a Teuton; he belonged, at all events, to the same Indo-European family as the Slavs whom he conquered. But the Bulgarian invader was a Tartar, of wholly different ethnic affinities from the people whom he subdued. In both cases the conqueror was assimilated, gradually forgot his own tongue, and learned the language of his subjects; in both cases he gave the name of his own race to the state which he founded. And both cases point to the same truth touching the Slavs: their strong power of assimilation, and their lack of the political instinct and force which are necessary for creating and organising a political union. Both Bulgaria and Russia were made by strangers.

(1) We first met Bulgarians in the fifth century, after the break-up of the Empire of Attila. We then saw them settled somewhere north of the Danube — it is best to say roughly between the Danube and the Dnieper — and sometimes appearing south of the Danube. (2) We saw them next, a century later, as subjects of the Avar empire. We saw also (above, vol. vii. Appendix 7) that they were closely connected with the tribes of the Uturgurs and Kotrigurs. (3) The next important event in the history of the Bulgarians is the break-up of the Avar empire. In this break-up they themselves assisted. In the reign of Heraclius, the Bulgarian king Kurt revolts against the chagan of the Avars and makes an alliance with Heraclius, towards the close of that emperor’s reign (c. 635-6). 1 At this time the Bulgarians and their fellows the Utigurs seem to have been united under a common king; Kurt is designated as lord of the Utigurs. (4) The next movement seems to have been a westward migration of part of the Bulgarians. Crossing the Danube, some of the emigrants settled in Pannonia, in the now reduced realm of the Avars; and others went farther afield and found their final abodes in Italy on the shores of the Adriatic (see above, p. 28, note 5). (5) Kurt died in the reign of Constans II. His successor Bezmêr reigned only three years, and was succeeded by Isperich, who crossed the Danube and established the Bulgarian kingdom in Moesia in the reign of Constantine IV. (c. AD 679).

The Bulgarians on the Danube had kinsfolk far to the east, who in the tenth century lived between the Volga and the Kama. They are generally known as the Bulgarians of the Volga; their country was distinguished as Black Bulgaria 2 from White Bulgaria on the Danube. The city of the eastern Bulgarians was destroyed by Timour, but their name is still preserved in the village of Bolgary in the province of Kasan. They must have migrated northwards to these regions from the shores of the Lake of Azov, between the Dnieper and Don. For in the eighth century they were certainly in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Azov, 3 and were on the west side of the Don, while the kindred tribe of the Kotrags or Kotrigurs were over against them on the east bank. Towards the end of the ninth century the Mohammedan religion began to take root among the Bulgarians of the Volga, and the conversion was completed in the year AD 922. We have a good account of their country and their customs from the Arabic traveller Ibn Foslan. 4

Thus, about the end of the seventh century, there were five settlements of the Bulgarians and their kinspeople in Europe. (1) The Bulgarians between the Don and Dnieper. (2) The Kotrags or Kotrigurs, their neighbours on the other side of the Don. (3) The Bulgarian kingdom of the Danube, in which the Utigurs had been merged. (4) The Bulgarian settlement in Pannonia. (5) The Bulgarian settlements in Italy.

The existence of these five lots of Bulgarians was accounted for by a legend which must have arisen soon after the foundation of the Bulgarian kingdom in Moesia. According to this legend King Kuvrat (Kurt) had five sons. When his death approached he enjoined upon them not to separate. But they did not obey his command. The first, Batbaian, remained in his native land, according to his father’s will; the second, Kotrag, crossed the Don and dwelled over against his brother; the third, Isperich, settled in Bessarabia; 5 the fourth migrated to Pannonia; the fifth to Italy. This story had been written down in some Greek book in the course of the eighth century; for Theophanes and Nicephorus derived it independently from the same written source. 6

It is easy to separate the fact from the fiction. Both Kurt and Isperich are historical; Isperich may well have been Kurt’s son (for only one short reign intervened between them); and their chronological relation corresponds to fact. Moreover the westward migration to Pannonia and Italy probably happened after Kurt’s death, about the middle of the 7th century. The legendary parts of the tale are: (1) the five sons of Kurt and his deathbed commands; (2) the representation of the eponymous Kotragos as a son of Kurt, and the belief that the people of Kotragos branched off from the Bulgarians in the 7th century; (3) the chronological error of making the Bulgarians first come to the regions between the Dniester and the Danube under Isperich in the 7th century; and thus representing Kurt as a king reigning over Bulgarians east of the Dnieper.

Roesler, Hunfalvy, and others have sustained that the Bulgarians were not of Turkish, but of Finnish race. But they have not proved their case. 7

For the customs of the Danubian Bulgarians, which point to their Tartar origin, see the Responses of Pope Nicholas (in the ninth century) to the matters on which they consulted him. 8