Balkans
The Balkans known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in southeastern Europe with various definitions and meanings, including geopolitical and historical. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria from the Serbian-Bulgarian border to the Black Sea coast; the Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, the Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south and southeast, the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined; the highest point of the Balkans is 2,925 metres, in the Rila mountain range. The concept of the Balkan peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea; the term of Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey in the 19th century, the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe.
It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, further promoted during the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan peninsula's natural borders do not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula and hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan peninsula, while scholars discuss the Balkans as a region; the term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization, hence the rather used alternative term for the region is Southeast Europe. The word Balkan comes from Ottoman Turkish balkan'chain of wooded mountains'; the origin of the Turkic word is obscure. From classical antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains were called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. A reverse name scheme has been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon,'mountain ridge'.
A third possibility is that "Haemus" derives from the Greek word "haema" meaning'blood'. The myth relates to a fight between the monster/titan Typhon. Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name; the earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the Haemus mountains are referred to as Balkan. The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Buonaccorsi Callimaco, an Italian humanist and diplomat; the Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, although other Turkic tribes had settled in or were passing through the Peninsula. There is a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion; the word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, Ungurus-Balkani̊, but it was applied to the Haemus mountain.
The name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. English traveler John Morritt introduced this term into the English literature at the end of the 18th-century, other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea; the concept of the "Balkans" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered it as the dominant central mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. During the 1820s, "Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers... Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term"; the term was not used in geographical literature until the mid-19th century because then scientists like Carl Ritter warned that only the part South of the Balkan Mountains can be considered as a peninsula and considered it to be renamed as "Greek peninsula".
Other prominent geographers who didn't agree with Zeune were Hermann Wagner, Theobald Fischer, Marion Newbigin, Albrecht Penck, while Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn in 1869 for the same territory used the term Südostereuropäische Halbinsel. Another reason it was not accepted as the definition of European Turkey had a similar land extent. However, after the Congress of Berlin there was a political need for a new term and the Balkans was revitalized, but in the maps the northern border was in Serbia and Montenegro without Greece, while Yugoslavian maps included Croatia and Bosnia; the term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey, the political borders of former Ottoman Empire provinces. The usage of the term changed in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century when was embraced by Serbian geographers, most prominently by Jovan Cvijić, it was done with political reasoning as affirmation for Serbian nationalism on the whole territory of the South Slavs, included anthropological and ethnological studies of the South Slavs through which were claimed various nationalistic and racistic theories.
Through such policies and Yugoslavian maps the term was elevated to the modern status of
Limes
The Latin noun līmes had a number of different meanings: a path or balk delimiting fields, a boundary line or marker, any road or path, any channel, such as a stream channel, or any distinction or difference. The term was commonly used after the 3rd century AD to denote a military district under the command of a dux limitis. Limes has sometimes been adopted in modern times for a border defence or delimiting system of Ancient Rome marking the boundaries and provinces of the Roman Empire, but it was not used by the Romans for the imperial frontier, fortified or not; some experts suggested that the so-called limes may have been called Munimentum Traiani, Trajan's Bulwark, referring to a passage by Ammianus Marcellinus, according to which emperor Julian had reoccupied this fortification in 360 AD. The limites represented the border line of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent in the 2nd century AD, it stretched more than 5,000 km from the Atlantic coast of northern Britain, through Europe to the Black Sea, from there to the Red Sea and across North Africa to the Atlantic coast.
The remains of the limites today consist of vestiges of walls, forts and civilian settlements. Certain elements of the line have been excavated, some reconstructed, a few destroyed; the two sections of the limes in Germany cover a length of 550 km from the north-west of the country to the Danube in the south-east. The 118 km long Hadrian's Wall was built on the orders of the Emperor Hadrian c. AD 122 at the northernmost limits of the Roman province of Britannia, it is a striking example of the organization of a military zone and illustrates the defensive techniques and geopolitical strategies of ancient Rome. The Antonine Wall, a 60 km-long fortification in Scotland, was started by Emperor Antoninus Pius in AD 142 as a defense against the "Barbarians" of the north, it constitutes the northwestern-most portion of the Roman Limes. The most notable examples of Roman limites are: Hadrian's Wall – Limes Britannicus Antonine Wall – in Scotland Saxon Shore, late Roman limes in South-East England Limes Germanicus, with the Upper Germanic & Rhaetian Limes Limes Arabicus, the frontier of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea facing the desert Limes Tripolitanus, the frontier in modern Libya facing the Sahara Limes Alutanus, the eastern border of the Roman province of Dacia Limes Transalutanus, the frontier in the lower Danube Limes Moesiae, the frontier of the Roman province Moesia, from Singidunum Serbia along the Danube to Moldavia.
Limes Norici, the frontier of the Roman province Noricum, from the River Inn along the Danube to Cannabiaca in Austria. Limes Pannonicus, the frontier of the Roman province Pannonia, along the Danube from Klosterneuburg Austria to Taurunum in Serbia. Fossatum Africae, the southern frontier of the Roman Empire, extending south of the Roman province of Africa in North-Africa. A mediaeval limes is the Limes Saxoniae in Holstein; the stem of limes, limit-, which can be seen in the genitive case, marks it as the ancestor of an entire group of important words in many languages, for example, English limit. Modern languages have multiplied its abstract formulations. For example, from limit comes the abbreviation lim, used in mathematics to designate the limit of a sequence or a function: see limit. In metaphysics, material objects are limited by matter and therefore are delimited from each other. In ethics, men are wise if they do. An etymology was given in some detail by Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch.
According to him, it comes from Indo-European el-, elei-, lei-, "to bow", "to bend", "elbow". The Latin meaning was discussed in detail by W. Gebert; the sense is. The limes was a cross-path or a cross-wall, which the Romans meant to throw across the path of invaders to hinder them, it is a defensive strategy. The Romans never built limites; as the emperor had ordered the army to stay within the limites, except for punitive expeditions, these were as much a mental barrier as material. The groups of Germanic warriors harrying the limes during summer used the concept to full advantage, knowing that they could concentrate and supply themselves outside the limes without fear of preemptive strikes. In a few cases, they were wrong; the limit concept engendered a sentiment among the soldiers that they were being provoked by the Germanic raiders and were held back from just retaliation by a weak and incompetent administration: they were being sold out. So they mutinied; the best remedy for a mutiny was an expedition across the limes against the enemy.
Toward the empire, the soldiers assassinated emperors who preferred diplomacy and put their own most popular officers into the vacant office. Roman writers and subsequent authors who depended on them presented the limes as some sort of sacred border beyond which human beings did not transgress, if they did, it was evidence that they had passed the bounds of reason and civilization. To cross the border was the mark of a savage, they wrote of the Alemanni failing to respect the limes as if they had passed the final limitation of character and had committed themselves to perdition. The Alemanni, on the other hand, never regarded the border as legitimate in the first place, they viewed the Romans as foreigners, who changed native place names and intruded on native homes and families. They were only to be tolerated because they were willing to pay cash for the privilege and offered the blandishments of civilized life. According to Pokorny, Latin limen, "threshold"
Pliska
Pliska is the name of both the first capital of the First Bulgarian Empire and a small town situated 20 km Northeast of the provincial capital Shumen. In 680 CE, Bulgars crossed the Danube and invaded lands now part of modern-day Bulgaria, at that time inhabited by Slavic farmers; the Bulgar army was led by Asparukh, who according to Byzantine chroniclers was one of the five sons of Kubrat, the Onogur chief who revolted against his Avar rulers and succeeded in uniting the various Bulgar groups living north of the Black Sea. When Asparukh and his warriors entered the region south of the Danube, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IV was upset and led an army to prevent the Bulgars from remaining there; the Byzantine expedition against the Bulgars ended disastrously and after defeating the imperial forces, Asparukh forced the nearby Slavic tribes to pay tribute to him, while leaving their tribal organization intact. As a result of this defeat, the empire was forced to sign a treaty recognizing the Bulgar state in 681.
Despite the area having been for some time under the de facto control of various Slavic tribes, the emperors of Byzantium had kept up the fiction that the area was still imperial, as up to 681 no true state had replaced imperial rule. This was the first time that the Byzantine empire acknowledged another state in the Balkans. Pliska was the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire between 681 and 893 AD. According to a Bulgarian chronicle, it was founded by Khan Asparukh. At its greatest extent, it was surrounded by earthen ramparts. A smaller stone fortification was built inside these ramparts and this contained a palace and buildings belonging to the aristocracy. While Pliska experienced nearly a century of growth following its selection as the capital of the new Bulgarian state, this was not a peaceful era; the Bulgars and Byzantine Empire were in an constant state of war during the eighth century and into the early ninth. Emperor Constantine V oversaw nine campaigns against the Bulgars between 741 and 775, Emperor Nikephoros I's campaign in 811 resulted in the burning of the royal residence in Pliska.
In this last instance the emperor led a massive army to Pliska in retaliation for the Bulgarian capture of Sardika and massacre of its garrison that occurred in an earlier set of hostilities. The Bulgarian leader Krum was not prepared to face the emperor's army and thus abandoned Pliska and the Byzantines plundered the palace and town there and burned it to the ground as it was at this time made of wood. Soon after, the invaders were driven out by Khan Krum. In the ninth century, during the reign of Boris I, the pagan temples in Pliska began to be converted to Christian churches. In 886, Boris founded the Pliska Literary School, moved to Preslav when Boris relocated the capital; when Boris fell ill and retired to a monastery, his son Vladimir succeeded him and attempted to reestablish paganism. During this period the large stone basilica at Pliska built under Boris was damaged. Boris left his monastery to overthrow his son, after succeeding, relocated the capital to the nearby town of Preslav which seems to have been a centre of Christianity in the state.
Following this Pliska's relevance in Bulgar governance declined until the Bulgarian state was destroyed by the Byzantine general turned emperor John Tzimiskes defeated the Russian forces that had occupied Bulgaria) and annexed the Bulgarian lands all the way to the Danube, ending the rule of the first Bulgarian state in these territories. During this Russian and Byzantine war over Bulgaria, Pliska was destroyed between 969 and 972 and was not rebuilt; the construction of an earthen rampart was started shortly after the Bulgars settled in the Pliska plain, the territory inside of this is known as the Outer Town, which consisted of multiple groupings of modest cottages with space in between for flocks of livestock and horses. This unusual layout may have been chosen as the Bulgars had been nomadic prior to building their capital at Pliska, when they began to cooperate with the local Slavs a mixed pastoral and agricultural economy developed; the Inner Town, built in the settlement's existence, consisted of a palace and aristocratic buildings inside a stone fortification.
The Inner Town was surrounded by the Outer Town, in turn surrounded by the earthen rampart. Overall, far less is known about the layout and contents of Pliska prior to the conversion to Christianity than afterwards. No stone buildings have been dated with certainty from before the Bulgars converted to Christianity in 864/5, many wooden buildings appear to have been built on. It's not clear which buildings were built in the decades after 681; when the earthen rampart was built, Pliska had a low population. Dimitrov's map based on the 1989 to 1991 dredging works in the Outer Town suggests that there were no more than six to twelve hamlet sized settlements there, while there might have been thirty or so by the tenth century. There is however still no plausible explanation for why the earthen rampart and ditch built around Pliska encircled such a large area. A few areas appear to have been inhabited by people who provided services or took part in craft production for the palace centre, agriculture took place within the earthen rampart around the Outer Town.
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Khazars
The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people with a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes that in the late 6th century CE established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia. The Khazars created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Khaganate. Astride a major artery of commerce between Eastern Europe and Southwestern Asia, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading emporia of the medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East and Kievan Rus'. For some three centuries the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus. Khazaria long served as a buffer state between the Byzantine Empire and both the nomads of the northern steppes and the Umayyad Caliphate, after serving as Byzantium's proxy against the Sasanian Persian empire.
The alliance was dropped around 900. Byzantium began to encourage the Alans to attack Khazaria and weaken its hold on Crimea and the Caucasus, while seeking to obtain an entente with the rising Rus' power to the north, which it aspired to convert to Christianity. Between 965 and 969, the Kievan Rus' ruler Sviatoslav I of Kiev conquered the capital Atil and destroyed the Khazar state. Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is bound with theories of their languages, but it is a matter of intricate difficulty since no indigenous records in the Khazar language survive, the state was polyglot and polyethnic; the native religion of the Khazars is thought to have been Tengrism, like that of the North Caucasian Huns and other Turkic peoples. The polyethnic populace of the Khazar Khaganate appears to have been a multiconfessional mosaic of pagan, Jewish and Muslim worshippers; the ruling elite of the Khazars was said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century, but the scope of the conversion within the Khazar Khanate remains uncertain.
Proposals of Khazar origins have been made regarding the Bukharan Jews, the Muslim Kumyks, the Cossacks of the Don region, the Turkic-speaking Krymchaks and their Crimean neighbours the Karaites to the Moldavian Csángós, the Mountain Jews and others. In the late 19th century, a theory emerged that the core of today's Ashkenazi Jews descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora who had migrated westward from modern Russia and Ukraine into modern France and Germany; this theory still finds occasional support. The theory is sometimes associated with anti-Zionism. Gyula Németh, following Zoltán Gombocz, derived Xazar from a hypothetical *Qasar reflecting a Turkic root qaz- being an hypothetical velar variant of Common Turkic kez-. In the fragmentary Tes and Terkhin inscriptions of the Uyğur empire the form'Qasar' is attested, though uncertainty remains whether this represents a personal or tribal name other hypotheses emerged. Louis Bazin derived it from Turkic qas- on the basis of its phonetic similarity to the Uyğur tribal name, Qasar.
András Róna-Tas connects it with the Pahlavi transcription of the Roman title Caesar. D. M. Dunlop tried to link the Chinese term for "Khazars" to one of the tribal names of the Uyğur Toquz Oğuz, namely the Gésà; the objections are that Uyğur Gesa/Qasar was not a tribal name but rather the surname of the chief of the 思结 Sijie tribe of the Toquz Oğuz, that in Middle Chinese the ethnonym "Khazars", always prefaced with the word Tūjué, is transcribed with characters different from those used to render the Qa- in the Uyğur word'Qasar'. After their conversion it is reported that they adopted the Hebrew script, it is that, though speaking a Türkic language, the Khazar chancellery under Judaism corresponded in Hebrew. In Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, Gazari Khazars, are referred to as the Hunnic people living in the lands of Gog and Magog and said to be circumcised and omnem Judaismum observat, observing all the laws of Judaism. While the Khazar language went extinct centuries ago, modern Turkic languages still refer to the Caspian Sea as the "Khazar Sea".
Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is bound with theories of their languages, but it is a matter of intricate difficulty, since no indigenous records in the Khazar language survive, the state was polyglot and polyethnic. Whereas the royal or ruling elite spoke an eastern variety of Shaz Turkic, the subject tribes appear to have spoken varieties of Lir Turkic, such as Oğuric, a language variously identified with Bulğaric and Hunnish. One method for tracing their origins consists in analysis of the possible etymologies behind the ethnonym "Khazar"; the tribes that were to comprise the Khazar empire were not an ethnic union, but a congeries of steppe nomads and peoples who came to be subordinated, subscribed to a core Turkic leadership. Many Turkic groups, such as the Oğuric peoples, including Šarağurs, Oğurs, Onoğurs, Bulğars who earlier formed part of the Tiĕlè confederation, are attested quite early, having been drive
Kubrat
Kubrat was the "ruler of the Onoğundur–Bulgars", credited with establishing the confederation of Old Great Bulgaria in ca. 632. In the Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans Kubrat is mentioned as Kurt, being a member of the Dulo clan and reigning for 60 years having succeeded Gostun of the Ermi clan; the Bulgars, a Turkic nomadic people, originated in the 5th-century Hunnic confederation and considered Attila their first ruler. Upon Attila's death, the tribes that formed the Bulgars had retreated east into the Black Sea-Caspian Steppe; the western Bulgar tribes joined the Avar Khaganate, while the eastern Bulgars came under the Western Turkic Khaganate by the end of the 6th century. Theophanes the Confessor called him "king of the Onogundur Huns". Patriarch Nikephoros I called Kubrat "lord of the Onuğundur" and "ruler of the Onuğundur–Bulğars". John of Nikiu called him "chief of the Huns". D. Hupchick identified Kubrat as "Onogur", P. Golden as "Oğuro-Bulğar", H. J. Kim as "Bulgar Hunnic/Hunnic Bulgar".
According to H. J. Kim the Onogundur/Onogur were evidently part of the Bulgar confederation. Kubrat spent his early life at the Byzantine Empire imperial palace in Constantinople; as the 7th-century Byzantine historian John of Nikiu narrates: This project is concerned with Kubratos, chief of the Huns, the nephew of Organa, baptized in the city of Constantinople, received into the Christian community in his childhood and had grown up in the imperial palace. And between him and the elder Heraclius great affection and peace had prevailed, after Heraclius's death he had shown his affection to his sons and his wife Martina because of the kindness had shown him, and after he had been baptized with life-giving baptism he overcame all the barbarians and heathens through Virtue of holy baptism. Now touching him it is said that he supported the interests of the children of Heraclius and opposed those of Constantine. Whether he was a child or a young adult during his time in Constantinople is unclear; the exact time of this event is unknown but coincided with the reign of Emperor Heraclius.
His or Organa's conversion to Christianity is placed circa 619 AD. It seems that young Kubrat was part of the pre-planned coalition, initiated by Heraclius or Organa, against the Sasanian–Avar alliance; this coincides with other alliances by Heraclius with steppe peoples, all in the interest of saving Constantinople. Kubrat, in 635, according to Nikephoros I, "ruler of the Onoğundur–Bulğars revolted against the Avars and concluded a treaty with Heraclius"; the state Old Great Bulgaria was formed. Kubrat died "when Konstantinos was in the West", somewhere during the reign of Constans II. According to Nikephoros I, Kubrat instructed his five sons to "never separate their place of dwelling from one another, so that by being in concordance with one another, their power might thrive". However, the loose tribal union broke up under internal tensions and Khazars pressure from the East; the Pereshchepina Treasure was discovered in 1912 by Ukrainian peasants in the vicinity of Poltava, in village Malo Pereshchepyne.
It consists of diverse gold and silver objects of total weight of over 50 kg from the migration period, including a ring which led scholars to identify the site as Kubrat's grave. The ring was inscribed in Greek "Chouvrtou patrk", indicating the dignity of patrikios that he had achieved in the Byzantine world; the treasure indicates close relation between the Bulgars and Byzantines, e.g. the bracelets were influenced or made by a Byzantine goldsmith. The first treasure coins were issued after 629, by Heraclius, the last c. 650 AD, by Constans II, which can be associated with the upcoming Khazar conquest. Kubrat is mentioned in the Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans, according which his birth is given the sign of the ox in the Bulgar calendar, it says his rule was 60 years. Presuming lifespan is meant, this would place his death in 653 or 665 AD. Thus, the date of Kubrat's death according historical and archaeological sources is placed between 650 and 665 AD. Correspondingly his birth could have been between 615 if Somogyi's theory is correct.
Kubrat Knoll on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Kubrat of Great Bulgaria. Kubrat was portrayed by Vassil Mihajlov in the 1981 Bulgarian movie Aszparuh, directed by Ludmil Staikov. Bulgars Onogurs Utigurs Kutrigurs Charles, Robert H.. The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu: Translated from Zotenberg's Ethiopic Text. Merchantville, NJ: Evolution Publishing. Fiedler, Uwe. "Bulgars in the Lower Danube region: A survey of the archaeological evidence and of the state of current research". In Curta, Florin; the Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars and Cumans. Brill. Pp. 151–236. ISBN 9789004163898. Golden, Peter B.. Studies on the Peoples and Cultures of the Eurasian Steppes. Editura Academiei Române. ISBN 9789732721520. Golden, Peter Benjamin. An introduction to the History of the Turkic peoples: ethnogenesis and state formation in medieval and early modern Eurasia and the Middle East. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. ISBN 9783447032742. Hupchick, Dennis P.. The Bulgarian-Byzantine Wars for Early Medieval Balkan Hegemony: Silver-Lined Skulls and Blinded Armies.
Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-56206-3. Kim, Hyun Jin; the Huns and the Birth of Europe. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-06722-6. Somogyi, Péter. "New remarks on the flow of Byzantine coins in Avaria and Walachia during the second ha
Bulgars
The Bulgars were Turkic semi-nomadic warrior tribes that flourished in the Pontic–Caspian steppe and the Volga region during the 7th century. Emerging as nomadic equestrians in the Volga-Ural region, according to some researchers their roots can be traced to Central Asia. During their westward migration across the Eurasian steppe the Bulgars absorbed other ethnic groups and cultural influences, including Hunnic and Indo-European peoples. Modern genetic research on Central Asian Turkic people and ethnic groups related to the Bulgars points to an affiliation with Western Eurasian populations; the Bulgars spoke a Turkic language, i.e. Bulgar language of Oghuric branch, they preserved the military titles and customs of Eurasian steppes, as well as pagan shamanism and belief in the sky deity Tangra. The Bulgars became semi-sedentary during the 7th century in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, establishing the polity of Old Great Bulgaria c. 635, absorbed by the Khazar Empire in 668 AD. In c. 679, Khan Asparukh conquered Scythia Minor, opening access to Moesia, established the First Bulgarian Empire, where the Bulgars became a political and military elite.
They merged subsequently with established Byzantine populations, as well as with settled Slavic tribes, were Slavicized, thus forming the ancestors of modern Bulgarians. The remaining Pontic Bulgars migrated in the 7th century to the Volga River, where they founded the Volga Bulgaria; the Volga Tatars and Chuvash people claim to be originated from the Volga Bulgars. The etymology of the ethnonym Bulgar is not understood and difficult to trace back earlier than the 4th century AD. Since the work of Wilhelm Tomaschek, it is said to be derived from the Common Turkic bulğha, bulga- or bulya, which with the consonant suffix -r implies a noun meaning "mixed". Other scholars have added that bulğha might imply "stir", "disturb", "confuse". and Talat Tekin interpreted bulgar as the verb form "mixing". Both Gyula Németh and Peter Benjamin Golden advocated the "mixed race" theory, but like Paul Pelliot, considered that "to incite", "rebel", or "to produce a state of disorder", i.e. the "disturbers", was a more etymology for migrating nomads.
According to Osman Karatay, if the "mixed" etymology relied on the westward migration of the Oğurs and merging with the Huns, north of the Black Sea, it was a faulty theory, since the Oghurs were documented in Europe as early as 463, while the Bulgars were not mentioned until 482 – an overly short time period for any such ethnogenesis to occur. However, the "mixing" in question may have occurred before the Bulgars migrated from further east, scholars such as Sanping Chen have noted analogous groups in Inner Asia, with phonologically similar names, who were described in similar terms: during the 4th Century, the Buluoji, a component of the "Five Barbarian" groups in Ancient China, were portrayed as both a "mixed race" and "troublemakers". Peter A. Boodberg noted that the Buluoji in the Chinese sources were recorded as remnants of the Xiongnu confederation, had strong Caucasian elements. Another theory linking the Bulgars to a Turkic people of Inner Asia has been put forward by Boris Simeonov, who identified them with the Pugu, a Tiele and/or Toquz Oguz tribe.
The Pugu were mentioned in Chinese sources from 103 BC up to the 8th century AD, were situated among the eastern Tiele tribes, as one of the highest-ranking tribes after the Uyghurs. According to the Chronicle by Michael the Syrian, which comprises several historical events of different age into one story, three mythical Scythian brothers set out on a journey from the mountain Imaon in Asia and reached the river Tanais, the country of the Alans called Barsalia, which would be inhabited by the Bulgars and the Pugurs; the names Onoğur and Bulgar were linked by Byzantine sources for reasons that are unclear. Karatay interpreted gur/gor as "country", noted the Tekin derivation of gur from the Altaic suffix -gir, related to the word yir, meaning "earth, place". Modern scholars consider the terms oğuz or oğur, as generic terms for Turkic tribal confederations, to be derived from Turkic *og/uq, meaning "kinship or being akin to"; the terms were not the same, as oq/ogsiz meant "arrow", while oğul meant "offspring, son", oğuš/uğuš was "tribe, clan", the verb oğša-/oqša meant "to be like, resemble".
There appears to be an etymological association between the Bulgars and the preceding Kutrigur and Utigur – as'Oğur tribes, with the ethnonym Bulgar as a "spreading" adjective. Golden considered the origin of the Kutrigurs and Utigurs to be obscure and their relationship to the Onogurs and Bulgars – who lived in similar areas at the same time – as unclear, he noted, however, an implication that the Kutrigurs and Utigurs were related to the Šarağur, that according to Procopius these were Hunnish tribal unions, of Cimmerian descent. Karatay considered the Kutrigurs and Utigurs to be two related, ancestral people, prominent tribes in the Bulgar union, but different from the Bulgars. Among many other theories regarding the etymology of Bulgar, the following have had limited support. An Eastern Germanic root meaning "combative" (i.e. cognate with the Latin pugn
Moesia
Moesia was an ancient region and Roman province situated in the Balkans south of the Danube River. It included most of the territory of modern-day Central Serbia and the northern parts of the modern North Macedonia, Northern Bulgaria and Romanian Dobrudja. In ancient geographical sources, Moesia was bounded to the south by the Haemus and Scardus mountains, to the west by the Drinus river, on the north by the Donaris and on the east by the Euxine; the region was inhabited chiefly by Thracians, Dacians and Thraco-Illyrian peoples. The name of the region comes from Moesi, Thraco-Dacian peoples who lived there before the Roman conquest. Parts of Moesia belonged to the polity of Burebista, a Getae king who established his rule over a large part of the northern Balkans between 82 BC and 44 BC, he led plunder and conquest raids across Central and Southeastern Europe, subjugating most of the neighbouring tribes. After his assassination in an inside plot, the empire was divided into several smaller states.
In 75 BC, C. Scribonius Curio, proconsul of Macedonia, took an army as far as the Danube and gained a victory over the inhabitants, who were subdued by M. Licinius Crassus, grandson of the triumvir and also proconsul of Macedonia during the reign of Augustus c. 29 BC. The region, was not organized as a province until the last years of Augustus' reign; as a province, Moesia was under an imperial consular legate. In 86 AD the Dacian king Duras ordered his troops to attack Roman Moesia. After this attack, the Roman emperor Domitian arrived in Moesia and reorganized it in 87 AD into two provinces, divided by the river Cebrus: to the west Moesia Superior - Upper Moesia, to the east Moesia Inferior - Lower Moesia; each was governed by a procurator. The chief towns of Upper Moesia in the Principate were: Singidunum, Remesiana, Bononia and Skupi; the last two were Greek towns which formed a pentapolis with Istros and Apollonia. From Moesia, Domitian began planning future campaigns into Dacia and by 87 he started a strong offensive against Dacia, ordering General Cornelius Fuscus to attack.
Therefore, in the summer of 87, Fuscus led six legions across the Danube. The campaign against the Dacians ended without a decisive outcome, Decebalus, the Dacian King, had brazenly flouted the terms of the peace, agreed on at the war's end. Emperor Trajan arrived in Moesia, he launched his first military campaign into the Dacian Kingdom c. March–May 101, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube River and defeating the Dacian army near Tapae, a mountain pass in the Carpathians. Trajan's troops were mauled in the encounter, he put off further campaigning for the year to heal troops and regroup. During the following winter, King Decebalus launched a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, but this was repulsed. Trajan's army advanced further into Dacian territory and forced King Decebalus to submit to him a year later. Trajan was granted the title Dacicus; the victory was celebrated by the Tropaeum Traiani. However, Decebalus in 105 undertook an invasion against Roman territory by attempting to stir up some of the tribes north of the river against the empire.
Trajan took to the field again and after building with the design of Apollodorus of Damascus his massive bridge over the Danube, he conquered part of Dacia in 106. Sometime around 272, at the Moesian city of Naissus or Nissa, future emperor Constantine. After the abandonment of Roman Dacia to the Goths by Aurelian and the transfer of the Roman citizens from the former province to the south of the Danube, the central portion of Moesia took the name of Dacia Aureliana. During administrative reforms of Emperor Diocletian, both of the Moesian provinces were reorganized. Moesia Superior was divided in two, northern part forming the province of Moesia Prima including cities Viminacium and Singidunum, while the southern part was organised as the new province of Dardania with cities Scupi and Ulpiana. At the same time, Moesia Inferior was divided into Scythia Minor. Moesia Secunda's main cities included Marcianopolis, Nicopolis, Durostorum, Sexaginta Prista and Novae, all in Bulgaria today; as a frontier province, Moesia was strengthened by stations and fortresses erected along the southern bank of the Danube, a wall was built from Axiopolis to Tomi as a protection against the Scythians and Sarmatians.
The garrison of Moesia Secunda included Legio I Italica and Legio XI Claudia, as well as independent infantry units, cavalry units, river flotillas. The Notitia Dignitatum lists its units and their bases as of the 390s CE. Units in Scythia Minor included Legio I Iov
