Tsardom of Vidin

The Tsardom of Vidin was a medieval Bulgarian state centred on the Danube port of Vidin, in the far north-west of the country. Since the middle of the thirteenth century the region had been an autonomous lordship under the ineffective overlordship of the Bulgarian tsars, ruled by the Shishman family, whose heads bore the title of despot. In 1365 Hungarian crusaders occupied Vidin, and Ivan Sratsimir was reinstalled as its ruler only in the autumn of 1369, the date from which the tsardom is counted. It maintained a separate court, coinage and church organisation, and manoeuvred between the Kingdom of Hungary, the Serbian princes and the advancing Ottomans. After Tarnovo fell in 1393, Vidin was the only territory still held by Bulgarians, and its independence did not last long: in 1396 Sratsimir sent soldiers to the Christian coalition that was defeated at Nicopolis, and Bayezid I then brought Vidin under Ottoman rule. Some historians hold that his son Constantine II continued as a vassal tsar until 1422, but the tsardom as an independent state ended in 1396.