First Bulgarian Empire

Politics and institutions

The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681, when Asparuh's Bulgars crossed the Danube, defeated a Byzantine army and made the empire recognize their state with its capital at Pliska. The early khans ruled a pagan, Turkic court over a Slav majority, and their power was measured against Constantinople: Krum's victory in 811 — the emperor Nicephorus I's skull became his drinking cup — forced Byzantium to treat the khans as equals. The decisive change was dynastic and religious: Boris's baptism in 864 converted the state, and his son Simeon, educated in Constantinople, took the imperial title, moved to the new capital of Preslav and ruled as emperor in fact. Simeon's successors held less: Peter's long peace let the Bogomil heresy spread and the boyars intrigue, and after Samuel's last stand the empire ended in 1018 as a set of Byzantine provinces.

Economy and finance

The Bulgarian economy rested on the river: grain and herds from the Danube plain, iron and salt from the Balkan valleys, and the tolls of roads that ran from the steppe to the Aegean. Pliska and Preslav were built as real capitals — stone walls, palaces, water pipes and craft quarters — and Preslav's workshops produced ceramics and gilded icons that imitated Constantinople. Trade with Byzantium was the empire's commerce and its subsidy: treaties alternated peace and tribute, and coins struck in Byzantine style under Simeon circulated beside imports. The court consumed much of the surplus in war and building; when Basil II's armies came, the same plains fed the Byzantine garrisons instead.

Society and culture

Bulgaria's great gift to Europe was made of language. In 864 Boris accepted baptism from Constantinople, and when Moravia expelled the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, he welcomed them: Clement, Naum and their students taught in Slavonic, and the schools of Ohrid and Preslav turned the new letters into books. In 893 a council at Preslav made Old Bulgarian the language of church and state, the third liturgical tongue of Christendom after Greek and Latin. The Madara Rider, cut into a cliff a century earlier, kept the memory of the pagan khans; Preslav's round church and painted ceramics show a court thoroughly Byzantine in taste. The Bogomil heresy, born in these same villages, testified to how deeply the new faith had taken root.

Military and frontiers

The Bulgars fought as horsemen, and the empire's best moments were cavalry victories: the destruction of Nicephorus I's army at Pliska in 811, Krum's sieges of Constantinople in 813, and Simeon's great victory at Anchialos in 917, where a Byzantine army of tens of thousands was broken in the open field. The khans rebuilt their armies after every defeat — Krum recruited Slavs and even fugitive Byzantines — and the state's strength lay in cavalry, mountain fortresses and the labor of fortified camps. Simeon's successors, fighting Magyars, Pechenegs and Rus' as well as Byzantium, could no longer do both: Samuel's mountain kingdom held out for decades, until the blinding of fourteen thousand prisoners at Kleidion in 1014 ended its army.

Foreign relations

Bulgaria's foreign relations were anchored in one fact: it bordered Byzantium, and Byzantium could never leave it alone. Treaties of 681, 716 and 815 fixed frontiers and tribute; wars broke out whenever an emperor was strong or a khan was young. Boris weighed Rome against Constantinople and, after missions to both, settled for the Byzantine rite in 870 — a decision that gave Bulgaria the Cyrillic heritage rather than the Latin. The empire fought Magyars and set Pechenegs against them, and was itself destroyed in stages by the Rus': Svyatoslav came in 968 as Byzantium's hired sword and stayed as conqueror, leaving the empire broken for Basil II's twenty-year reconquest.

Legacy and influence

The First Empire's legacy outlived its state. Its conversion made Bulgaria the birthplace of Slavic letters: the Cyrillic script refined at Preslav spread with the liturgy to Serbia, Rus' and beyond, and Old Bulgarian became the Latin of the Slavic world. The memory of Pliska, Preslav and the golden age of Simeon anchored the identity of a people ruled for the next century and a half by others; the Asen brothers raised the second empire in 1185 with the first's history as their charter. Modern Bulgaria took its national day, its church and its alphabet from this period, and the Madara Rider — the khan on horseback carved in rock — still watches over the plain where the empire began.