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Bulgars (Proto-Bulgarians)

Συγγραφή : Popkonstantinov Kazimir (18/9/2008)

Για παραπομπή: Popkonstantinov Kazimir , "Bulgars (Proto-Bulgarians) ", 2008,
Εγκυκλοπαίδεια Μείζονος Ελληνισμού, Εύξεινος Πόντος
URL: <http://www.ehw.gr/l.aspx?id=10659>

Bulgars (Proto-Bulgarians)  (2/9/2011 v.1) Βούλγαροι (Πρωτοβούλγαροι) (4/6/2008 v.1) 
 

1. The Bulgars from Asia to Europe: the literary evidence

The question about the origin of the Bulgars arose already with the first references to them in contemporary written sources.1 The earliest evidence for the Proto-Bulgars can be found in the Chinese sources. According to them, around 2nd millennium B. C. some Turkic tribes established themselves in the Altai Mountains and precisely, in the western and northwestern area of the sources of the river Ob-Irtysh. The Chinese sources refer to that tribal union as Tingling (or Dinlin) and some scholars intend to identify it with the Ogour (i.e. Turkic-Bulgar) tribes.2

While the data for the earliest, so-called “Asian” period of the history of the Bulgars is still hypothetical, the evidence provided by the Greek and Latin sources for the period of the 4th-7th c. is considered much more reliable. It is generally accepted that the earliest reference to the Bulgars in that group of sources is the Anonymous Roman Chronograph of AD 354. There, in the list of the people in the Near and Middle East the Bulgars (vulgares) are mentioned last as descendants of Ziezi, the son of Shem (Zieziexquovulgares).3 The relevance of the reference in the Chronogrpahy is further confirmed by Moses of Choren in his “History of Armenia” (5th c.) in which he narrates about two waves of emigration of the Bulgars, the first to Armenia and the second to North Caucasus.4 Despite some doubts in the actual presence of the Bulgars in those regions,5 some hydronyms prove the settlement of the Bulgars there: for instance, a river in South Azerbaijan which runs through the Mugan steppe and flows into the lake of Mahmud-chala is called Bolgaru-chaj (the Bulgar river).6

The analysis of the literary sources of the 4th -7th c. and the mapping of the ethnonyms that appeared in them suggest that by that time an ethnic group called “Bulgars” (Bulgar, Bulkar) inhabited the area of the East European steppes except for the region of the Lower Volga.7 In light of the contemporary historical writing, the Bulgars and their related tribes appeared as a successor of the political legacy of the Huns and thus, they had been often referred as to “Huns” or the name of the Huns was added to those of the Bulgar tribes: for instance, Huns-Scythians, Scyhtians-Bulgars, Huns-Koutrigours, Huns-Onogours, Huns-Bulgars, etc., while in some of these cases the words ἢτοι (mean. "that is") or καλούμενοι (mean. "also called")are used to served to conjoin the ethnic names.8

2. The Bulgars from Asia to Europe: the archaeological evidence


In light of the archaeological evidence the migration of the Huns from the plateau of Ordos (Inner Mongolia) near the Great Chinese Wall to Europe took a long period of time and covered a vast territory. Their defeat in the war against Chine in the 2nd c. was in fact the strongest push in that process. According to the finds of graves and bronze cauldrons, typical for the Huns, now is clear that they followed two main routes in their migration to the West. The north route followed the northern foots of the Altai Mountains to the basin of the Kama river and the left bank of the Volga. The south route went by the northern shores of the Aral and Caspian Sea through Central and East Kazakhstan and the steppes south of Ural. Apparently, there was no a homogenous ethnic group on the way of the Huns to the West that might be considered a single predecessor of the Bulgarians as they appeared in the 5th-7th c.

3. The appearance of the Bulgars in the Balkans

At the end of the 4th c. and the beginning of the 5th c. Huns reached Central Europe and thus, some of the Bulgar tribes who followed that movement settled in Pannonia and the plains to around the Carpathians. The collapse of the Hunnic Empire of Attila gave a chance to the Bulgars to get better recognized by the contemporary historians. One of their most outrageous acts of that time, recorded later by Paul the Deacon (AD 720-790), was the brutal defeat of the Langobards of king Agelmund in the north foots of the Carpathians.9

The earliest reference to the appearance of the Bulgars in the Balkans dates to the time of the emperor Zeno (re. 474-491) who made an alliance with them against the Goths in AD 480.10 From this moment on the Bulgars appeared in the Byzantines sources either as an ally, or as invaders devastating the Balkan territories of the Byzantine Empire (AD 493, 499, 502 г).11 The Byzantine chroniclers John Malalas, Procopius, Theophanes the Confessor recorded frequent raids of the Bulgarians in Illyricum (i. e. the Western Balkans) and Thrace.12 After AD 550 while describing the raids of the Bulgars south of the Danube their name in the sources was gradually replaced by those of the Koutrigours and Outigours.13

4. The territories of the Bulgarian tribes: the 6th c.

According to Zacharias Rhetor, in the 6th c. the Bulgars lived together with the Alans beyond the Caspian Gates known also as Derbent (a narrow region at the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea). They were pagans with their own language, lived in jurts and made their living out of hunting and war.14

5. The territories of the Bulgarian tribes: the 7th c.

The name of (Old) Great Bulgaria (Παλαιά Μεγάλη Βουλγαρία) appeared in the sources for the first time in the 7th c. and it refers to the territories at the Lower Kuban to the river Dnieper to the west.15 Its alternative name employed in the sources, Onoguria/Onoghuria, sheds some light on the origin of the people living there by that time under Khan Kubrat (re. 632-680). More precisely, Onoguria/Onoghuria is apparently related to the composite ethnonym Onogoundours (Ounogoundours)-Bulgars the first part of which reproduces the tribe name of Onogours, who settled in the East European steppes together with Saragours and Ougors already in AD 463.16 Initially they settled in the area of the Caspian Gates where they became known under the name of Hailandours.17 The Ravenna Cosmography (ca. 7th c.) informs that Onoghoria is situated in the area of the Black Sea and the Azov Sea, where the local people lived by fishing of a rich variety of fishes.18

The Armenian geographer Anania Shirakatsi (7th c.) places the Bulgars to the north of Sarmathia and mentions four double tribe names composed according to the names of the rivers where the Bulgars lived or came from: Kupi-Bulgar, Duchi-Bulkar, Oghondor (Olhontor)-blkar, Chdar-Bolkar.19 The first two tribe names sound very closely to the names of the rivers of Kuban (Kufis) and Dnieper (Kucho). The third tribe name can be identified with the Onogours-Bulgars who lived to the east of the Azov Sea known also as Ounogoundours. The fourth tribe noted by Anania Shirakatsi can be placed in the area of the river Don or Severski Donets.20 As can be seen, the tradition each tribe to have its own name yet bonded to the common tribe name of the Bulgars (Bulgar, Bolkar, Blkar) was still followed by the 7th c.21 Such a tradition indicates a strong relationship between the various tribes that identify themselves with the well-known ethnonym of the Bulgarians.

6. The Bulgars in Italy

In AD 569 the Langobard king Alboin and his multiethnic army of Langobards, Gepids and Pannonian Bulgars conquered the greatest part of North Italy (Lombardy, Etruria, and Liguria). As a result a lot of new settlements including those of the Bulgars appeared on that territory.22 That was the beginning of the Bulgarian resettlement in Italy that left traces in the toponyms, hydronyms, anthroponyms and eponyms with the stem of Bulgari that survived not only in the historical sources, but also in now days.23

7. Bulgars and Avars

A new movement of the peoples in Southeastern and Central Europe had been recorded in the second half of the 6th c. The main factor was the appearance of the Avars the homeland of whose is generally localized in Central Asia. In the course of their movement they conquered most of the tribes living in the Caucasian region (present Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia), namely Sabirians, Alans, Onogurs, and later, Koutrigours, Outigours and Bulgars.24 At the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 7th c. the Avars passed through present Romania and reached the basin of the Rivet Tisza in Pannonia where they established their tribe union. According to Theophylaktos Simokates and Menander Protector, the Bulgars and the Koutrigours participated in that union and certainly took part in the sieges of Thessalonike in AD 619 and Constantinople in AD 626 as subjects of the Avar Khaganate.25

8. Aspects of historical and cultural development

The complex material and spiritual culture of the Bulgarian was shaped through their long way from Central Asia to Europe as a result of their interaction with numerous tribes and peoples. In fact, the retrospective method of analysis of the archaeological evidence establishes a number of similarities in the burial rites of the ethnic groups assimilated by the Huns on both routes on one side, and the Bulgarian cemeteries from the 8th -9th c. on the Lower Danube, on the other: the parallel practice of inhumation and cremation (characteristic for the Sarmatians) the north-northeastern orientation of the graves; burials containing remains of a horse and weapons (characteristic for the nomadic groups in East-Central Kazakhstan); remains of sacrificial animal food; the artificial deformation of the skulls (characteristic for the Sarmatians); the anthropological type of Europeids with small Mongoloid admixture.26 Thus, it can be assumed that by the 5th c. the Bulgars included three main groups of peoples: Iranians from the steppes of Asia and Europe; Ugors from the forest-steppe zone of West Siberia; and, Huns from Central Asia who were Turkic-speaking. The three ethnic components of the Bulgars have been further established on the basis of the etymology of the Bulgarian tribe, kin and personal names (e.g. Asparukh=Pers. asp- (horse) and -ruk, -rok, Iran. rouka (light), Kardam=Iran. Kartham).27 As argued recently, the group of the Bulgars that settled on the Lower Danube and founded the First Bulgarian Empire by the 680s was dominated by the Iranian ethnic component, speaking mostly Slavic, while the Turkic elements could have been recognized only in the culture of the military elite.28 All those cultural influences were mixed up yet not lost in the culture of the medieval Bulgarians since in the 10th c. one could still find a tiny Chinese trace brought into Cyrillic inscriptions as a Hunnic legacy.29

1. An extensive survey on the literary and the material evidence related to the Bulgarians before the formation of the First Bulgarian Empire on the Lower Danube, see in V. Beševliev, Die protobulgarische Periode der bulgarischen Geschichte (Amsterdam, 1981); В. Бешевлиев, Първобългарите: Бит и култура (Sofia, 1981); V. Gjuzelev, The Protobulgarians: Pre-History of Asparouhian Bulgaria (Sofia, 1979).

2. Н. Я. Бичурин, Собрание сведений о народах обытавших в Средней Азии в древние времена, І (Moscow - Leningrad, 1950-1953), pp. 50, 82; F. Hirth, “Hunnenforshungen“, Keleti Szemle 2 (1901), pp. 81-91; В. Н. Златарски, История на българската държава през средните векове. І/1. (reprint Sofia, 1972), p. 21; Б. Симеонов, “Източни извори за историята и названието на Аспаруховите българи”, Векове 1 (1979), pp. 49-54.

3. Chronographus anni CCCLIIII. Liber generationis, , MGH, AA, IX, rec. Th. Momsen (1850), p. 105.

4. История Армении Мойсея Хоренского, ІІ изд. Пер. Н. О. Эмина (Moscow, 1893), p. 62.; Д. Ангелов, В. Гюзелев, “Известия в арменски извори за средновековната история на България”, Исторически преглед 1 (1966), p. 121. See also the English translation: Moses Khorenats'i, History of the Armenians, trans. R. Thomson (Washington, D. C.: Harvard University Press, 1978).

5. А. В. Гадло, Этническая история Северного Кавказа V-Х вв. (Leningrad, 1979), pp. 40- 41.

6. Цв. Кристанов, “Към въпроса за етногенезиса на българския народ,” Исторически преглед 3 (1966), p. 43.

7. G. Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica. Sprachreste der Türkenfölker in den byzantinischen Quellen, I-II (Berlin 1958); V. Gjuzelev, The Protobulgarians: Pre-History of Asparouhian Bulgaria (Sofia 1979).

8. G. Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica. Sprachreste der Türkenfölker in den byzantinischen Quellen II (Berlin 1958), passim.; Р. Рашев, Прабългарите през V-VІІІ век (V. Turnovo, 2000), pp. 7-10.

9. Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum (ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS rerum Langobardicarum, Hannover 1878), pp. 12-187 (ed. Lidia Capo, Milano 1992), Book I, chapter 16. According to V. Beševliev, the Bulgar assault on the Lombards happened in AD 422: В. Бешевлиев, Първобългарите: Бит и култура (Sofia, 1981), p. 9.

10. Ioannis Antiochiensis, Fragmenta, Excerpta de insidiis, ed. C. de Boor (Berlin, 1905), p. 135.

11. Marcelini Comitis Chronicon, MGH-AA, XI (Berlin, 1894), pp. 94-95, 99-100, 103 (http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/marcellinus1.html).

12. Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, rec. L. Dindorf (Bonn, 1831), pp. 97, 402, 437-438; Theophanis Chronographia, rec. J. Classen (Bonn, 1839), pp. 424-426.

13. Procopii Caesarensis Opera omnia, rec J. Haury, I-III (Leipzig, 1905-1913), Book VIII, pp. 162-164, 501-507, 508; 581-589; 602-603.

14. Н. В. Пигулевская, Сирийские источники по истории народов СССР (Moscow, 1941), p. 81.

15. И. С. Чичуров, “Эксурс Феофана о протоболгарах,” in Древнейшие государства на территории СССР (Москва, 1976), pp. 65-80.; Д. Ил. Димитров, Прабългарите по Северното и Западното Черноморие (Varna, 1987), pp. 101-110; Ив. Божилов, Хр. Димитров, “Protobulgarica (Заметки по истории протобулгар до середины ІХ в.),” Byzantinobulgarica 9 (1995), pp. 7-61; Цв. Степанов, “О локализации «Великой Булгарии”, BHR 2 (1995), pp. 5-11.

16. Nicephori archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani Opuscula historica, rec. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1880), p. 24; G. Moravcsik (1958), p. 100; М. И. Артамонов, История хазар (Leningrad, 1962), pp. 62-64.

17. Егишэ, О Вардане и войне армянской. Перевод с древнеармянского акад. И. А. Орбели, подготовка к изданию, предисловие и примечания К.Н. Юзбашяна (Ереван, 1971), pp. 31, 127, 139.

18. Ravenate anonymos Cosmographia, ed. M. Pinder et G. Parthey (Berlin, 1860), p. 170.

19. К. Патканов, “Из нового списка географии приписываемой Мойсею Хоренскому,” Журнал Министерства народного просвещения ССХХVІ (1883), pp. 21-32.

20. V. Gjuzelev, The Protobulgarians: Pre-History of Asparouhian Bulgaria (Sofia 1979), pp. 32-33.

21. В. Стоянов, Етнонимът “българи” за българо-тюркските отношения (Sofia, 1997), pp. 2-51.

22. Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, (ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS rerum Langobardicarum, Hannover 1878), pp.86-87.

23. For a more detailed study, see K. Popkonstantinov, “Die Verbreitung des altbulgarischen Schrifttums. Auf Grund von Inschriften,” Die Slawischen Sprachen (Salzburg) 8 (1985), рp. 167-200; id., “Българските имена в "Liber confraternitatum vetustior” в манастира “Св. Петър” в Залцбург,” Годишник на Софийския университет "Св. Климент Охридски". Център за славяно-византийски проучвания "Иван Дуйчев" 1 (1987), pp. 123-135.; id., “Латинската мисия през 866-870 г. и отражението й в старобългарската култура (по археологически и епиграфски данни),” Die Slawischen Sprachen 11 (1987), рp. 115-121. The name of a certain Chuchinadpulgar can be seen in the list of the guest names from the last quarter of the 9th c. in the "Liber confraternitatum vetustior" in the monastery of St Peter in Salzburg. It is interesting to note, that in the course of construction works in the village of Pulgari (Vulgari) in Upper Austria the remains of 6000 massacred men that can be related to the Bulgarians of Altsiok: http://www.bulgarlar.com/Toponim/Toponim.html

24. Theophylaktos Simokates Historiae, ed. C. de Boor, revised P. Wirth (Stuttgart, 1972), Book VII.7, pp. 256-257; German translation: Thephylaktos Simokates Geschichte. Übersetzt und erläutert von P. Schreiner (Anton Hiersemann: Sttutgart, 1985), pp. 186-187.

25. Theophylaktos Simokates, VI.4, pp. 226-227; German trans., pp. 166-167; Menander Protector Excerpta de legationibus, ed. C. De Boor (Berlin, 1903), pp. 170-171.

26. For studies on the various aspects of the material culture of the Bulgarians, see J. Werner, Beiträge zur Archäologie des Attila Reiches (Munich 1956); Ст. Ваклинов. Формиране на старобългарската култура (VІ-ХІ в.) (Sofia, 1977); Д. Ил. Димитров (1987); V. Beševliev (980); Cs. Bálint, Archäologie der Steppe. Hrsg. F. Deim (Wien-Köln, 1989); U. Fiedler, Studien zu Gräberfeldern des 6. bis 9. Jahrhunderts an der unteren Donau (Bonn, 1992); Р. Рашев (2000), pp. 7-78.; id., Българската езическа култура VІІ-ІХ в. (Sofia, 2008).

27. Р. Рашев, Прабългарите през V-VІІІ век (V. Turnovo 2000), pp. 10-16; В. Бешевлиев, Първобългарите: Бит и култура (Sofia 1981), pp. 24-38.

28. Р. Рашев, “За произхода на прабългарите,” in Studia protobulgarica et mediaevalia europensia. In honour of Prof. V. Beševliev (Veliko Turnovo, 1993), pp. 23-33 (English translation on http://www.kroraina.com/bulgar/rashev.html); id., “Две групи прабългари и две прабългарски култури,” in Историко-археологически изследвания. В памет на проф. д-р Станчо Ваклинов (V. Turnovo, 1994); Р. Рашев, Прабългарите през V-VІІІ век (V. Turnovo, 2000), pp. 10-16.

29. К. Попконстантинов, “Прабългарските имена от манастирите при Мурфатлар и Равна,” in Българите в Северното Причерноморие. 5 (V. Turnovo, 1996), pp. 101-109; id., “Поклоннически надписи от скалния манастир при Мурфатлар (Басараби), Румъния,” in Палеобалканистика и старобългаристика. Втори есенни международни четения “Проф. Иван Гълъбов” (V. Turnovo, 2001), pp. 47-79; K. Popkonstantinov, O. Kronsteiner, Altbulgarische Inschriften (Die Slawischen Sprachen 36) (Wien - Salzburg, 1994), pp. 79, 227.

     
 
 
 
 
 

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