Anastas Ishirkov
Academic professor Anastas Todorov Ishirkov was Bulgarian scientist and ethnographer. He was the founder of geographical science in Bulgaria and was a member of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Ishirkov Crag on Oscar II Coast in Graham Land, Antarctica is named after Anastas Ishirkov
Romani people in Bulgaria
Romani people in Bulgaria constitute Europe's densest Romani minority. The Romani people in Bulgaria "speak Bulgarian, Turkish or Romani, depending on the region and their religious affiliations." According to the latest census in 2011, the number of the Romani is 325,343, constituting 4.4% of the total population, in which only one ethnic group could be opted as an answer and 10% of the total population did not respond to the question on ethnic group. In a conclusive report of the census sent to Eurostat, the authors of the census identified the census results on ethnicity as a "gross manipulation"; the former head of the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria, Reneta Indzhova claims to have been fired by the Bulgarian Prime Minister in 2014 for attempting to check the actual number of the Romani and implied that neither the census did enumerate the Romani, nor its statistics did provide the "real data". Unlike other censuses under Eurostat, which require the ethnic identification to be verified by a family tree, in the Bulgarian census the ethnic identification is up to the voluntarily identification of the enumerated and not up to any further investigation by the enumerators.
The previous 2001 census recorded 370,908 Romani. The preceding 1992 census recorded 313,396 Romani, while a secret backstage 1992 census ordered by the Ministry of Interior recorded a figure of 550,000 Romani; the majority of the estimated 200,000-400,000 Muslim Romani tend to identify themselves as ethnic Turks, some deny their origin, or identify as Bulgarians. The demographic collapse in Bulgaria affects only ethnic groups other than the Romani. According to data of the European Commission, to which Eurostat belongs, the Romani in Bulgaria number 750,000 and they constitute 10.33% of the population. An NGO estimates that the number of the Romani in Bulgaria is twice as this high and their population grows by 35,000 a year. In Bulgaria, Romani are most referred to as Tsigani, an exonym that some Romani resent and others embrace; the form of the endonym Roma in Bulgarian is romi. They are younger, according to the 2011 census they make up 10.2% of the population aged up to 9 years, on a note 14.9% of the total age group being non-respondents.
In Bulgaria Roma are discriminated: 59% to 80% of non-Roma have negative feelings towards Roma. They are emancipated social group, having higher crime, birth and poverty rates, not many of them attend school. Though most live in poverty, the Romani are represented in Bulgarian mafia and rich Romani crime bosses deal with drug trade and prostitution. Though most of them are unemployed, they have a high rate of child sex workers. Roma constitute the majority of prison population according to self-identification of inmates, with 7000 prisoners out of 10,000 in total. According to 2002 data, the poverty rate among Romani is 61.8%, in contrast to a rate of 5.6% among Bulgarians. In 1997, 84% of Bulgarian Romani lived under the poverty line, compared with 32% of ethnic Bulgarians. In 1994, the poverty rate of Romani was estimated compared with 15 % for Bulgarians; the unemployment rate of non-Romani in Bulgaria was 25%, while of the Romani it was 65% in 2008, for instance in neighbouring Romania and Hungary the Romani had much lower unemployment rates - 14% and 21% respectively.
In 2016 only 23% of the Romani in Bulgaria are employed. The unemployed enjoy more financial aid than other citizens for children, which may have prompt the higher birth rates of the Romani. In 2011 the share of Romani with university degree reached 0.3%, while 6.9% have secondary education. The Turks are more negative towards the Romani than the Bulgarians, with 30-50% rejecting various interactions and friendship with Romani. Although only 25% of Romani parents object to their children to be married with a Bulgarian and a Turk, only 4% of the Bulgarians and 6% of the Turks would marry a Romani person. Romani are avoided by the majority traditionally for marriage, there are ethnically mixed people with Gypsy and Bulgarian parents who are called жоревци "zhorevtsi". Bulgaria participates in the Decade of Roma Inclusion, an international initiative to improve the socio-economic status and social inclusion of Roma, with eight other governments committing themselves to "work toward eliminating discrimination and closing the unacceptable gaps between Roma and the rest of society".
The rights of the Romani people in the country are represented by political parties and cultural organizations, most notably the Civil Union "Roma". Noted Roma from Bulgaria include musicians Azis, Sofi Marinova and Ivo Papazov, surgeon Aleksandar Chirkov, politicians Toma Tomov and Tsvetelin Kanchev, footballer Marian Ognyanov, 1988 Olympic boxing champion Ismail Mustafov; the Romani people originate from Northern India from the northwestern Indian states Rajasthan and Punjab. The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that roots of Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a big part of the basic lexicon, for example, body parts or daily routines. More Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi, it shares many phonetic features with M
Time zone
A time zone is a region of the globe that observes a uniform standard time for legal and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries of countries and their subdivisions because it is convenient for areas in close commercial or other communication to keep the same time. Most of the time zones on land are offset from Coordinated Universal Time by a whole number of hours, but a few zones are offset by 30 or 45 minutes; some higher latitude and temperate zone countries use daylight saving time for part of the year by adjusting local clock time by an hour. Many land time zones are skewed toward the west of the corresponding nautical time zones; this creates a permanent daylight saving time effect. Before clocks were first invented, it was common practice to mark the time of day with apparent solar time – for example, the time on a sundial –, different for every location and dependent on longitude; when well-regulated mechanical clocks became widespread in the early 19th century, each city began to use some local mean solar time.
Apparent and mean solar time can differ by up to around 15 minutes because of the elliptical shape of the Earth's orbit around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's axis. Mean solar time has days of equal length, the difference between the two sums to zero after a year. Greenwich Mean Time was established in 1675, when the Royal Observatory was built, as an aid to mariners to determine longitude at sea, providing a standard reference time while each city in England kept a different local time. Local solar time became inconvenient as rail transport and telecommunications improved, because clocks differed between places by amounts corresponding to the differences in their geographical longitudes, which varied by four minutes of time for every degree of longitude. For example, Bristol is about 2.5 degrees west of Greenwich, so when it is solar noon in Bristol, it is about 10 minutes past solar noon in London. The use of time zones accumulates these differences into longer units hours, so that nearby places can share a common standard for timekeeping.
The first adoption of a standard time was on December 1, 1847, in Great Britain by railway companies using GMT kept by portable chronometers. The first of these companies to adopt standard time was the Great Western Railway in November 1840; this became known as Railway Time. About August 23, 1852, time signals were first transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Though 98% of Great Britain's public clocks were using GMT by 1855, it was not made Britain's legal time until August 2, 1880; some British clocks from this period have two minute hands—one for the local time, one for GMT. Improvements in worldwide communication further increased the need for interacting parties to communicate mutually comprehensible time references to one another; the problem of differing local times could be solved across larger areas by synchronizing clocks worldwide, but in many places that adopted time would differ markedly from the solar time to which people were accustomed. On November 2, 1868, the British colony of New Zealand adopted a standard time to be observed throughout the colony, was the first country to do so.
It was based on the longitude 172°30′ East of Greenwich, 11 hours 30 minutes ahead of GMT. This standard was known as New Zealand Mean Time. Timekeeping on the American railroads in the mid-19th century was somewhat confused; each railroad used its own standard time based on the local time of its headquarters or most important terminus, the railroad's train schedules were published using its own time. Some junctions served by several railroads had a clock for each railroad, each showing a different time. Charles F. Dowd proposed a system of one-hour standard time zones for American railroads about 1863, although he published nothing on the matter at that time and did not consult railroad officials until 1869. In 1870 he proposed four ideal time zones, the first centered on Washington, D. C. but by 1872 the first was centered with geographic borders. Dowd's system was never accepted by American railroads. Instead, U. S. and Canadian railroads implemented a version proposed by William F. Allen, the editor of the Traveler's Official Railway Guide.
The borders of its time zones ran through railroad stations in major cities. For example, the border between its Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit, Pittsburgh and Charleston, it was inaugurated on Sunday, November 18, 1883 called "The Day of Two Noons", when each railroad station clock was reset as standard-time noon was reached within each time zone. The zones were named Intercolonial, Central and Pacific. Within a year 85% of all cities with populations over 10,000, about 200 cities, were using standard time. A notable exception was Detroit which kept local time until 1900 tried Central Standard Time, local mean time, Eastern Standard Time before a May 1915 ordinance settled on EST and was ratified by popular vote in August 1916; the confusion of times came to an end when Standard zone time was formally adopted by the U. S. Congress in the Standard Time Act of March 19, 1918; the first known person to conceive of a worldwide system of time zones was the Italian mathematician
Bulgarian Empire
In the medieval history of Europe, Bulgaria's status as the Bulgarian Empire, wherein it acted as a key regional power occurred in two distinct periods: between the seventh and eleventh centuries, again between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The two "Bulgarian Empires" are not treated as separate entities, but rather as one state restored after a period of Byzantine rule over its territory. Bulgaria is one of the few historic states and nations whose economy and society were never based on slavery, slavery never played an important role in Bulgarian statehood development and wealth. Not long after the Slavic incursion, Moesia was once again invaded, this time by the Bulgars under Khan Asparukh, their horde was a remnant of Old Great Bulgaria, an extinct tribal confederacy situated north of the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine. Asparukh attacked Byzantine territories in Moesia and conquered the Slavic tribes there in 680. A peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire was signed in 681, marking the foundation of the First Bulgarian Empire on the territory both north and south of the lower course of the Danube River in 681 as an alliance between the ruling Bulgars and the numerous slavs in the area, becoming the oldest still existing Slavic state.
The minority Bulgars formed a close-knit ruling caste. It is described as having lasted between 681 and 1018, when it was subjugated by the Byzantine Empire despite Emperor Samuel's fierce resistance. Tervel of Bulgaria, son of Asparuh, was the Khan at the beginning of the 8th century. In 705 Emperor Justinian II named him Caesar, the first foreigner to receive this title. Tervel played an important role in defeating the Arabs during the Siege of Constantinople in 717–718. During Krum reign in the early 9th century Bulgarian territory doubled in size, spreading from the middle Danube to the Dnieper and from Odrin to the Tatra Mountains, his able and energetic rule brought law and order to Bulgaria and developed the rudiments of state organization. Bulgaria reached its cultural and territorial apogee in the 9th century and early 10th century under Prince Boris I and Emperor Simeon the Great, when its early christianization in 864 allowed it to develop into the cultural and literary center of Slavic Europe, as well as one of the largest states in Europe, thus the period is considered the Golden Age of medieval Bulgarian culture.
Major event is the development of the Cyrillic script at the Preslav Literary School, declared official in 893, as was declared the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic called Old Bulgarian. The medieval Bulgarian state was restored as the Second Bulgarian Empire after a successful uprising of two nobles from Tarnovo and Peter, in 1185, existed until it was conquered during the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans in the late 14th century, with the date of its subjugation given as 1396, although some fringe views place it at 1422; until 1256, the Second Bulgarian Empire was the dominant power in the Balkans, defeating the Byzantine Empire in several major battles. In 1205 Emperor Kaloyan defeated the newly established Latin Empire in the Battle of Adrianople, his nephew Ivan Asen II made Bulgaria a regional power again. During his reign, Bulgaria spread from the Adriatic to the economy flourished. Under Ivan Asen II in the first half of the 13th century the country recovered much of its former power, though this did not last long due to internal problems and foreign invasions.
Bulgarian artists and architects created their own distinctive style. Until the 14th century, during the period known as the Second Golden Age of Bulgarian culture, literature and architecture flourished; the capital city Tarnovo, considered a "New Constantinople", became the country's main cultural hub and the centre of the Eastern Orthodox world. The Empire became tributary to the Golden Horde, a successor state of the Mongol Empire in the 13th to 14th centuries. After the death of Emperor Ivan Alexander in 1371 Bulgaria was split into three countries and in the following decades fell under the domination of the Ottomans. After the Ottoman conquest, many Bulgarian clerics and scholars emigrated to Serbia, Wallachia and Russian principalities, where they introduced Bulgarian culture and hesychastic ideas. Kingdom of Bulgaria History of Bulgaria Zlatarski, Vasil N.. Medieval History of the Bulgarian State. Sofia: Science and Arts Publishers, 2nd Edition, Zahari Stoyanov Publishers, 4th Edition, 2006.
ISBN 978-954-739-928-0. Бакалов, Георги. Електронна издание – История на България. София: Труд, Сирма. ISBN 978-954-528-613-1. Делев, Петър. История и цивилизация за 11. Клас. Труд, Сирма. Българите и България. Министерство на външните работи на България, Труд, Сирма. 2005. Archived from the original on 2005-11-10. Fine, John V. A. Jr.. The Early Medieval Balkans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-08149-3
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization. Ruled by emperors, it had large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus. From the constitutional reforms of Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, the Empire was a principate ruled from the city of Rome; the Roman Empire was ruled by multiple emperors and divided in a Western Roman Empire, based in Milan and Ravenna, an Eastern Roman Empire, based in Nicomedia and Constantinople. Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus after capturing Ravenna and the Roman Senate sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople; the fall of the Western Roman Empire to barbarian kings, along with the hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire, is conventionally used to mark the end of Ancient Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The previous Republic, which had replaced Rome's monarchy in the 6th century BC, became destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflict.
In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar was appointed as perpetual dictator and assassinated in 44 BC. Civil wars and proscriptions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesar's adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC; the following year Octavian conquered Ptolemaic Egypt, ending the Hellenistic period that had begun with the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon in the 4th century BC. Octavian's power was unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power and the new title Augustus making him the first emperor; the first two centuries of the Empire were a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. It reached its greatest territorial expanse during the reign of Trajan. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus. In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a crisis that threatened its existence, but was reunified under Aurelian. In an effort to stabilize the Empire, Diocletian set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West.
Christians rose to power in the 4th century following the Edict of Milan in 313 and the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. Shortly after, the Migration Period involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and the Huns of Attila led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD by Odoacer, the Western Roman Empire collapsed and it was formally abolished by emperor Zeno in 480 AD; the Eastern Roman Empire, known in the post-Roman West as the Byzantine Empire, collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II in 1453. Due to the Roman Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, architecture, philosophy and forms of government in the territory it governed Europe; the Latin language of the Romans evolved into the Romance languages of the medieval and modern world, while Medieval Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Its adoption of Christianity led to the formation of Christendom during the Middle Ages. Greek and Roman art had a profound impact on the late medieval Italian Renaissance, while Rome's republican institutions influenced the political development of republics such as the United States and France; the corpus of Roman law has its descendants in many legal systems of the world today, such as the Napoleonic Code. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Neoclassical architecture. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian peninsula until the 3rd century BC, it was an "empire" long before it had an emperor. The Roman Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of towns left to rule themselves and provinces administered by military commanders, it was ruled, not by annually elected magistrates in conjunction with the senate. For various reasons, the 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which led to rule by emperors.
The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium, which means "command". Successful consuls were given the honorary title imperator, this is the origin of the word emperor since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors upon their accession. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts and civil wars from the late second century BC onward, while extending its power beyond Italy; this was the period of the Crisis of the Roman Republic. Towards the end of this era, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was perpetual dictator before being assassinated; the faction of his assassins was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by an army led by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian's division of the Roman world between themselves did not last and Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, ending the Final War of the Roman Republic. In 27 BC the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian princeps ("first citi
Eastern European Time
Eastern European Time is one of the names of UTC+02:00 time zone, 2 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The zone uses daylight saving time. A number of African countries use UTC+02:00 all year long, where it is called Central Africa Time, although Egypt and Libya use the term Eastern European Time; the following countries, parts of countries, territories use Eastern European Time all year round: Egypt, since 21 April 2015. Kaliningrad Oblast, since 26 October 2014. See Kaliningrad Time. Libya, since 27 October 2013. Used year-round EET from 1980–1981, 1990–1996 and 1998–2012; the following countries, parts of countries, territories use Eastern European Time during the winter only: Bulgaria, since 1894 Cyprus. Belarus, in years 1922–30 and 1990–2011 In Poland this time was used in years 1918–22. In time of World War II, Germany implemented MET in east occupied territories. Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol used EET as part of Ukraine between 1991-94 and 1996-2014. Turkey, used EET in years 1910-1978 and re-used it again in years 1985-2016.
Now uses year round DST timezone called Further-eastern European Time or Turkey Time. Sometimes, due to its use on Microsoft Windows, FLE Standard Time or GTB Standard Time are used to refer to Eastern European Time. Since political, in addition to purely geographical, criteria are used in the drawing of time zones, it follows that time zones do not adhere to meridian lines; the EET time zone, were it drawn by purely geographical terms, would consist of the area between meridians 22°30' E and 37°30' E. As a result, there are European locales that despite lying in an area with a "physical" UTC+02:00 time, are in another time zone. Following is a list of such anomalies: The westernmost part of Greece, including the cities of Patras and Ioannina, the Ionian Islands The westernmost parts of the Bulgarian provinces of Vidin and Kyustendil The westernmost part of Romania, including most of the area of the counties of Caraș-Severin, Timiș, Bihor, as well as the westernmost tips of the counties of Mehedinți and Satu Mare The extreme westernmost tip of Ukraine, near the border with Hungary and Slovakia, at the Ukrainian Transcarpathian Oblast comprising the city of Uzhhorod and its environs most of the Kaliningrad Oblast, including the cities of Kaliningrad and Baltiysk Western Lithuania, including the cities of Klaipėda, Tauragė, Telšiai Western Latvia, including the cities of Liepāja and Ventspils The westernmost parts of the Estonian islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, including the capital of the Saare County, Kuressaare The southwestern coast of Finland, including the city of Turku.
The easternmost part of North Macedonia, including the city of Strumica. The easternmost part of Serbia, in the Pirot District, including the city of Pirot; the extreme easternmost tips of Hungary and Slovakia, bordering to the north and south the Ukrainian Transcarpathian Oblast, a bit to the east of the Vásárosnamény, Hungary – Uzhhorod, Ukraine line The easternmost part of Poland, including the cities of Lublin and Białystok The extreme northeast of Sweden, in the Norrbotten province, including the cities of Kalix and Haparanda The northeast of Norway, lying north of Finland coinciding with the county of Finnmark. The easternmost town in Norway, Vardø, lies at 30°51' E, located east of of the central meridian of UTC+02:00, i.e. east of Istanbul and Alexandria. The Norwegian-Russian border is the only place where CET borders Moscow time, resulting in a one hour time change when crossing that border. There is a "tri-zone" point at the Norway-Finland-Russia tripoint, near the town of Rayakoski.
Belarus is located between 23°11′E and 32°47′E and is thus located with the physical UTC+02:00 area, but it uses UTC+03:00 year around. All European Russia west of Moscow; this includes the city of Anapa, at the westernmost tip of the Krasnodar Krai near the entrance to the Sea of Azov, at 37°22' E. Western Tur
Bulgaria
Bulgaria the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north and North Macedonia to the west and Turkey to the south, the Black Sea to the east; the capital and largest city is Sofia. With a territory of 110,994 square kilometres, Bulgaria is Europe's 16th-largest country. One of the earliest societies in the lands of modern-day Bulgaria was the Neolithic Karanovo culture, which dates back to 6,500 BC. In the 6th to 3rd century BC the region was a battleground for Thracians, Persians and ancient Macedonians; the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire lost some of these territories to an invading Bulgar horde in the late 7th century. The Bulgars founded the First Bulgarian Empire in AD 681, which dominated most of the Balkans and influenced Slavic cultures by developing the Cyrillic script; this state lasted until the early 11th century, when Byzantine emperor Basil II conquered and dismantled it. A successful Bulgarian revolt in 1185 established a Second Bulgarian Empire, which reached its apex under Ivan Asen II.
After numerous exhausting wars and feudal strife, the Second Bulgarian Empire disintegrated in 1396 and its territories fell under Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 resulted in the formation of the current Third Bulgarian State. Many ethnic Bulgarian populations were left outside its borders, which led to several conflicts with its neighbours and an alliance with Germany in both world wars. In 1946 Bulgaria became part of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc; the ruling Communist Party gave up its monopoly on power after the revolutions of 1989 and allowed multi-party elections. Bulgaria transitioned into a democracy and a market-based economy. Since adopting a democratic constitution in 1991, the sovereign state has been a unitary parliamentary republic with a high degree of political and economic centralisation; the population of seven million lives in Sofia and the capital cities of the 27 provinces, the country has suffered significant demographic decline since the late 1980s.
Bulgaria is a member of the European Union, NATO, the Council of Europe. Its market economy is part of the European Single Market and relies on services, followed by industry—especially machine building and mining—and agriculture. Widespread corruption is a major socioeconomic issue; the name Bulgaria is derived from a tribe of Turkic origin that founded the country. Their name is not understood and difficult to trace back earlier than the 4th century AD, but it is derived from the Proto-Turkic word bulģha and its derivative bulgak; the meaning may be further extended to "rebel", "incite" or "produce a state of disorder", i.e. the "disturbers". Ethnic groups in Inner Asia with phonologically similar names 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". Neanderthal remains dating to around 150,000 years ago, or the Middle Paleolithic, are some of the earliest traces of human activity in the lands of modern Bulgaria.
The Karanovo culture arose circa 6,500 BC and was one of several Neolithic societies in the region that thrived on agriculture. The Copper Age Varna culture is credited with inventing gold metallurgy; the associated Varna Necropolis treasure contains the oldest golden jewellery in the world with an approximate age of over 6,000 years. The treasure has been valuable for understanding social hierarchy and stratification in the earliest European societies; the Thracians, one of the three primary ancestral groups of modern Bulgarians, appeared on the Balkan Peninsula some time before the 12th century BC. The Thracians excelled in metallurgy and gave the Greeks the Orphean and Dionysian cults, but remained tribal and stateless; the Persian Achaemenid Empire conquered most of present-day Bulgaria in the 6th century BC and retained control over the region until 479 BC. The invasion became a catalyst for Thracian unity, the bulk of their tribes united under king Teres to form the Odrysian kingdom in the 470s BC.
It was weakened and vassalized by Philip II of Macedon in 341 BC, attacked by Celts in the 3rd century, became a province of the Roman Empire in AD 45. By the end of the 1st century AD, Roman governance was established over the entire Balkan Peninsula and Christianity began spreading in the region around the 4th century; the Gothic Bible—the first Germanic language book—was created by Gothic bishop Ulfilas in what is today northern Bulgaria around 381. The region came under Byzantine control after the fall of Rome in 476; the Byzantines were engaged in prolonged warfare against Persia and could not defend their Balkan territories from barbarian incursions. This enabled the Slavs to enter the Balkan Peninsula as marauders through an area between the Danube River and the Balkan Mountains known as Moesia; the interior of the peninsula became a country of the South Slavs, who lived under a democracy. The Slavs assimilated the Hellenized and Gothicized Thracians in the rural areas. Not l
Erfurt, Germany
Ryazan, Russia
Iziaslav, Ukraine
Valladolid, Spain
Laval, France
Berat, Albania
