Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire or Turkey, was a state that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire; the Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror. During the 16th and 17th centuries, at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire controlling most of Southeast Europe, parts of Central Europe, Western Asia, parts of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century, the empire contained numerous vassal states; some of these were absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.
With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. While the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians; the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy and military throughout the 17th and much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian empires; the Ottomans suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which prompted them to initiate a comprehensive process of reform and modernisation known as the Tanzimat. Thus, over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organised, despite suffering further territorial losses in the Balkans, where a number of new states emerged.
The empire allied with Germany in the early 20th century, hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation which had contributed to its recent territorial losses, thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent with the Arab Revolt in its Arabian holdings. During this time, atrocities were committed by the Young Turk government against the Armenians and Pontic Greeks; the Empire's defeat and the occupation of part of its territory by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War I resulted in its partitioning and the loss of its Middle Eastern territories, which were divided between the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence against the occupying Allies led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy; the word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I, the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman.
Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān. In Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı Devleti; the Turkish word for "Ottoman" referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period, an educated urban-dwelling Turkish-speaker, not a member of the military-administrative class would refer to himself neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk, but rather as a Rūmī, or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia; the term Rūmī was used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond.
In Western Europe, the two names "Ottoman Empire" and "Turkey" were used interchangeably, with "Turkey" being favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character; as the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I, a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River.
It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the southeast, Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, it has a predominantly temperate-continental climate. With a total area of 238,397 square kilometres, Romania is the 12th largest country and the 7th most populous member state of the European Union, having 20 million inhabitants, its capital and largest city is Bucharest, other major urban areas include Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Iași, Constanța, Brașov. The River Danube, Europe's second-longest river, rises in Germany's Black Forest and flows in a general southeast direction for 2,857 km, coursing through ten countries before emptying into Romania's Danube Delta; the Carpathian Mountains, which cross Romania from the north to the southwest, include Moldoveanu Peak, at an altitude of 2,544 m. Modern Romania was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia.
The new state named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Following World War I, when Romania fought on the side of the Allied powers, Bessarabia, Transylvania as well as parts of Banat, Crișana, Maramureș became part of the sovereign Kingdom of Romania. In June–August 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Second Vienna Award, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, Northern Transylvania to Hungary. In November 1940, Romania signed the Tripartite Pact and in June 1941 entered World War II on the Axis side, fighting against the Soviet Union until August 1944, when it joined the Allies and recovered Northern Transylvania. Following the war, under the occupation of the Red Army's forces, Romania became a socialist republic and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the 1989 Revolution, Romania began a transition back towards a market economy; the sovereign state of Romania is a developing country and ranks 52nd in the Human Development Index.
It has the world's 47th largest economy by nominal GDP and an annual economic growth rate of 7%, the highest in the EU at the time. Following rapid economic growth in the early 2000s, Romania has an economy predominantly based on services, is a producer and net exporter of machines and electric energy, featuring companies like Automobile Dacia and OMV Petrom, it has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, part of NATO since 2004, part of the European Union since 2007. An overwhelming majority of the population identifies themselves as Eastern Orthodox Christians and are native speakers of Romanian, a Romance language. Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning "citizen of Rome"; the first known use of the appellation was attested to in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania and Wallachia. The oldest known surviving document written in Romanian, a 1521 letter known as the "Letter of Neacșu from Câmpulung", is notable for including the first documented occurrence of the country's name: Wallachia is mentioned as Țeara Rumânească.
Two spelling forms: român and rumân were used interchangeably until sociolinguistic developments in the late 17th century led to semantic differentiation of the two forms: rumân came to mean "bondsman", while român retained the original ethnolinguistic meaning. After the abolition of serfdom in 1746, the word rumân fell out of use and the spelling stabilised to the form român. Tudor Vladimirescu, a revolutionary leader of the early 19th century, used the term Rumânia to refer to the principality of Wallachia."The use of the name Romania to refer to the common homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—was first documented in the early 19th century. The name has been in use since 11 December 1861. In English, the name of the country was spelt Rumania or Roumania. Romania became the predominant spelling around 1975. Romania is the official English-language spelling used by the Romanian government. A handful of other languages have switched to "o" like English, but most languages continue to prefer forms with u, e.g. French Roumanie and Swedish Rumänien, Spanish Rumania, Polish Rumunia, Russian Румыния, Japanese ルーマニア.
1859–1862: United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia 1862–1866: Romanian United Principalities or Romania 1866–1881: Romania or Principality of Romania 1881–1947: Kingdom of Romania or Romania 1947–1965: Romanian People's Republic or Romania 1965–December, 1989: Socialist Republic of Romania or Romania December, 1989–present: Romania Human remains found in Peștera cu Oase, radiocarbon dated as being from circa 40,000 years ago, represent the oldest known Homo sapiens in Europe. Neolithic techniques and agriculture spread after the arrival of a mixed group of people from Thessaly in the 6th millenium BC. Excavations near a salt spring at Lunca yielded the earliest evidence for salt exploitation in Europe; the first permanent settlements appeared in the Neolithic. Some of them developed into "proto-cities"; the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture—the best known archaeological culture of Old Europe—flourished in Muntenia, southeastern Transylvania and northeastern Moldavia in the 3rd m
Varna
Varna is the third-largest city in Bulgaria and the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Situated strategically in the Gulf of Varna, the city has been a major economic and cultural centre for three millennia. Varna known as Odessos, grew from a Thracian seaside settlement to a major seaport on the Black Sea. Varna is an important centre for business, education, tourism and healthcare; the city is referred to as the maritime capital of Bulgaria and headquarters the Bulgarian Navy and merchant marine. In 2008, Varna was designated seat of the Black Sea Euroregion by the Council of Europe. In 2014, Varna was awarded the title of European Youth Capital 2017; the oldest gold treasure in the world, belonging to the Varna culture, was discovered in the Varna Necropolis and dates to 4200–4600 BC. Theophanes the Confessor first mentioned the name Varna, as the city came to be known, with the Slavic conquest of the Balkans in the 6th to 7th centuries; the name could be of Varangian origin, as Varangians had been crossing the Black Sea for many years, reaching Constantinople in the early Middle Ages.
In Swedish, the meaning of värn is "shield, defense" – hence Varna could mean "defended, fortified place". The name may be older than that. According to Theophanes, in 680 Asparukh, the founder of the First Bulgarian Empire, routed an army of Constantine IV near the Danube delta and, pursuing it, reached "the so-called Varna near Odyssos and the midlands thereof"; the new name applied to an adjacent river or lake, a Roman military camp, or an inland area, only to the city itself. By the late 10th century, the name Varna was established so that when Byzantines wrestled back control of the area from the Bulgarians around 975, they kept it rather than restoring the ancient name Odessos; the latter is said to be of Carian origin, though no modern scholarship supports this. Varna Peninsula on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Varna. Varna, Illinois, a small town of 400 people, was named in this city's honour; the War of Varna was going on at the time. Varnensky District and its administrative centre in the Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia are named in commemoration of the taking of Varna by the Russian army during the 1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War.
Varna Drive, in Toronto, Canada, is named after Varna. There is a hamlet in southern Ontario named Varna. Prehistoric settlements best known for the Chalcolithic necropolis, a key archaeological site in world prehistory, eponymous Varna culture and internationally considered the world's oldest large find of gold artifacts, existed within modern city limits. In the wider region of the Varna lakes and the adjacent karst springs and caves, over 30 prehistoric settlements have been unearthed with the earliest artefacts dating back to the Middle Paleolithic or 100,000 years ago. Since late Bronze Age the area around Odessos had been populated with Thracians. During 8th–9th c. BC local Thracians had active commercial and cultural contacts with people from Anatolia, Thessaly and the Mediterranean Sea; these links were reflected in some local productions, for example, forms of bronze fibula of the age, either imported or locally made. There is no doubt that interactions occurred by sea and the bay of Odessos is one of the places where the exchanges took place.
Some scholars consider that during the 1st millennium BC, the region was settled by the half-mythical Cimmerians. An example of their accidental, presence, is the tumulus dated 8th–7th c. BC found near Belogradets, Varna Province; the region around Odessos was densely populated with Thracians long before the coming of the Greeks on the west seashore of the Black Sea. Pseudo-Scymnus writes: "... Around the city lives the Thracian tribe named Crobises." This is evidenced by various ceramic pottery, made by hand or by a Potter's wheel, bronze ornaments for horse-fittings and iron weapons, all found in Thracian necropolises dated 6th–4th c. BC near the villages of Dobrina, Kipra and other, all in Varna Province; the Thracians in the region were ruled by kings, who entered into unions with the Odrysian kingdom, Getae or Sapaeans—large Thracian states existing between 5th–1st c. BC. Between 336–280 BC these Thracian states along with Odessos were conquered by Alexander the Great. Archaeological findings have indicated that the population of northeast Thrace was diverse, including the region around Odessos.
During 6th–4th c. BC the region was populated with Scythians who inhabited the central Eurasian Steppe and the area south of river Istros. Characteristic for their culture weapons and bronze objects are found all over the region. Scythian horse ornaments are produced in “animal style”, close to the Thracian style, a possible explanation for the frequent mixture of both folks in northeastern Thrace. Many bronze artefacts give testimony for such process, for example and front plates for horse heads, as well as moulds for such products in nearby and more distanced settlements. Since the 4th c. BC the region had been populated by more Getae, a Thracian tribe populating both shores around the Danube Delta. Celts started populating the re
Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi
Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi known as Akkerman, is a city and port situated on the right bank of the Dniester Liman in Odessa Oblast of southwestern Ukraine, in the historical region of Bessarabia. Administratively, Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi is incorporated as a town of oblast significance, it serves as the administrative center of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi Raion, one of twenty-six districts of Odessa Oblast, though it is not a part of the district. It is a location of a big freight seaport. Population: 50,086 The city of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi is referred to by alternative transliterations from Ukrainian as Bilhorod-Dnistrovsky or Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyy. Dnistrovsky was added to differentiate it from Bilhorod, part of the Sloboda Ukraine and carried a similar name. Previous namesOphiusa, Phoenician colony Tyras, Ancient Greek colony Asprokastron, Greek name in Antiquity and the Middle Ages Name attested from 944-1484 AD. Maurokastron, Greek name of a Roman/Byzantine fort in Late Antiquity on a site directly opposite Asprokastron, but taken together.
Album Castrum, Latin name Cetatea Albă, Romanian name Moncastro, Italian corruption of Maurokastron used by Genoese traders and during Genoese rule Turla, Turkic Akkerman, Ottoman Turkish Belgorod-Dnestrovskiy, Russian The town became part of the Principality of Moldavia in 1359. The fortress was enlarged and rebuilt in 1407 under Alexander the Good and in 1440 under Stephen II of Moldavia, it fell to Ottoman conquest on August 5, 1487. From 1503 to 1941, the city was known by its Romanian name of Cetatea Albă "white citadel". Since 1944 the city has been known as "Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi", while on the Soviet geography maps translated into its Russian equivalent of "Belgorod-Dnestrovskiy" "white city on the Dniester"; the city is known by translations of "white city" or "white rock" in a number of languages including Белгород Днестровски in Bulgarian, Akerman in Gagauz, Białogród nad Dniestrem in Polish, Walachisch Weißenburg in German, Dnyeszterfehérvár in Hungarian and עיר לבן in Hebrew. In Western European languages, including English, the city has been known by the official name of the time or a transliteration derived from it.
In the 6th century BC, Milesian colonists founded a settlement named Tyras on the future location of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, which came under Roman and Byzantine rule. In Late Antiquity, the Byzantines built a fortress and named it Asprokastron, but it passed out of their control in the 7th-10th centuries, but appears to have been re-established by the mid-11th century; the Voskresensk Chronicle lists Bilhorod "at the mouth of the Dniester, above the sea" among the towns controlled by Kievan Rus. In the 13th century the site was controlled by the Cumans, became a center of Genoese commercial activity from c. 1290 on. Held by the Second Bulgarian Empire in the early 14th century, by the middle of the century it was a Genoese colony. Sfântul Ioan cel Nou, the patron saint of Moldavia, was martyred in the city in 1330 during a Tatar incursion. In 1391, Cetatea Albă was the last city on the right bank of the Dnister to be incorporated into the newly established Principality of Moldavia, for the next century was its second major city, the major port and an important fortress.
In 1420, the citadel was attacked for the first time by the Ottomans, but defended by Moldavian Prince Alexander the Kind. In the 15th century, the port saw much commercial traffic as well as being used for passenger traffic between central Europe and Constantinople. Among the travellers who passed through the town was John VIII Palaiologos. Following the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II brought in colonists from Asprokastron to repopulate the city. In 1484, along with Kilia, it was the last of the Black Sea ports to be conquered by the Ottomans; the Moldavian prince Stephen the Great was unable to aid in its defence, being under threat of a Polish invasion. The citadel surrendered when the Ottomans claimed to have reached an agreement with Prince Stephen, promised safe passage to the inhabitants and their belongings. Attempts by Stephen the Great to restore his rule over the area were unsuccessful. Cetatea Albă was subsequently a base. In 1485, Tatars setting out from this city founded Pazardzhik in Bulgaria.
It was established as the fortress of Akkerman, part of the Ottoman defensive system against Poland-Lithuania and the Russian Empire. Major battles between the Ottomans and the Russians were fought near Akkerman in 1770 and 1789. Russia conquered the town in 1770, 1774, 1806, but returned it after the conclusion of hostilities, it was not incorporated into Russia until 1812, along with the rest of Bessarabia. On 25 September 1826, Russia and the Ottomans signed here the Akkerman Convention which imposed that the hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia be elected by their respective Divans for seven-year terms, with the approval of both Powers. During the Russian Revolution, Akkerman was alternatively under the control of the Ukrainian People's Republic and troops l
Khadjibey
Khadjibey was a fortress and a haven by the Gulf of Odessa, in the location of the modern city of Odessa, Ukraine. Other known spellings include Khadzhibey, Hajibey, Hacıbey, Gadzhibei, Chadžibėjus, Hacıbey, Kachybey, Kotsiubiiv. Named after Hacı I Giray. A Tatar settlement existed on the site by 14th century but was ceded in the early 15th century to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1764 the Ottomans reinforced their position by building the Yeni Dünya fortress nearby. In 1789, during the Russo-Turkish War, the Russian army took the fortress and settlement and in 1792 and the territory was transferred to the Russian Empire Khadzhibey Estuary
Edirne
Edirne known as Adrianople, is a city in the northwestern Turkish province of Edirne in the region of East Thrace, close to Turkey's borders with Greece and Bulgaria. Edirne served as the third capital city of the Ottoman Empire from 1369 to 1453, before Constantinople became the empire's fourth and final capital between 1453 and 1922; the city's estimated population in 2014 was 165,979. The city was founded as Hadrianopolis, named after the Roman emperor Hadrian; this name is still used in the modern Greek language. The Turkish name Edirne derives from the Greek name; the name Adrianople was used in English until the Turkish adoption of the Latin alphabet in 1928 made Edirne the internationally recognized name. Bulgarian: Одрин, Albanian: Edrenë, Macedonian: Одрин / Eдрене, Slovene: Odrin and Serbian: Једрене / Jedrene are adapted forms of the name Hadrianopolis or of its Turkish version; the area around Edirne has been the site of numerous major battles and sieges, from the days of the ancient Greeks.
The vagaries of the border region between Asia and Europe gives rise to Edirne's historic claim to be the most contested spot on the globe. In Greek mythology, son of king Agamemnon, built this city as Orestias, at the confluence of the Tonsus and the Ardiscus with the Hebrus; the city was founded eponymously by the Roman Emperor Hadrian on the site of a previous Thracian settlement known as Uskadama, Uskodama or Uscudama. It was the capital of the Bessi, or of the Odrysians. Hadrian developed it, adorned it with monuments, changed its name to Hadrianopolis, made it the capital of the Roman province of Thrace. Licinius was defeated there by Constantine I in 323, Emperor Valens was killed by the Goths in 378 during the Battle of Adrianople. In 813, the city was temporarily seized by Khan Krum of Bulgaria who moved its inhabitants to the Bulgarian lands north of the Danube. During the existence of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the Crusaders were decisively defeated by the Bulgarian Emperor Kaloyan in the Battle of Adrianople.
In 1206 Adrianople and its territory was given to the Byzantine aristocrat Theodore Branas as a hereditary fief by the Latin regime. Theodore Komnenos, Despot of Epirus, took possession of it in 1227, but three years was defeated at Klokotnitsa by Emperor Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria. In 1361, the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Murad. Murad captured Adrianople in 1369; the city became "Edirne". Murad moved the Ottoman capital to Edirne. Mehmed the Conqueror was born in Edirne, where he fell under the influence of some Hurufis dismissed by Taş Köprü Zade in the Şakaiki Numaniye as "Certain accursed ones of no significance", who were burnt as heretics by a certain Mahmud Pasha; the city remained the Ottoman capital for 84 years until 1453, when Mehmed II took Constantinople and moved the capital there. Edirne is famed for its many mosques, domes and palaces from the Ottoman period. Under Ottoman rule, Edirne was the principal city of the administrative unit, the eponymous Eyalet of Edirne, after land reforms in 1867, the Vilayet of Edirne.
Sultan Mehmed IV left the palace in Constantinople and died in Edirne in 1693. During his exile in the Ottoman Empire, the Swedish king Charles XII stayed in the city during most of 1713. Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, lived in Edirne from 1863 to 1868, he was exiled there by the Ottoman Empire before being banished further to the Ottoman penal colony in Akka. He referred to Edirne in his writings as the "Land of Mystery". Edirne was a sanjak centre during the Ottoman period and was bound to, the Rumeli Eyalet and Silistre Eyalet before becoming a provincial capital of the Eyalet of Edirne at the beginning of the 19th century. Edirne was occupied by imperial Russian troops in 1829 during the Greek War of Independence and in 1878 during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878; the city suffered a fire in 1905. In 1905 it had about 80,000 inhabitants, of. Edirne was a vital fortress defending Ottoman Constantinople and Eastern Thrace during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, it was occupied by the Bulgarians in 1913, following the Siege of Adrianople.
The Great Powers–Britain, Italy and Russia–forced the Ottoman Empire to cede Edirne to Bulgaria at the end of First Balkan War, which created a political scandal in the Ottoman government in Istanbul, leading to the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état. Although it was victorious in the coup, the Committee of Union and Progress was unable to keep Edirne, but under Enver Pasha, it was retaken from the Bulgarians soon after the Second Balkan War began, it was occupied by the Greeks between the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 and their defeat at the end of the Greco-Turkish War known as the Western Front of the larger Turkish War of Independence, in 1922. According to the 2007 census, Edirne Province had a population of 382,222 inhabitants; the city is a commercial centre for woven textiles, silks and agricultural products
Nikopol, Bulgaria
Nikopol is a town in northern Bulgaria, the administrative center of Nikopol municipality, part of Pleven Province, on the right bank of the Danube river, 4 kilometres downstream from the mouth of the Osam river. It spreads up a narrow valley; as of December 2009, the town has a population of 3,892 inhabitants. In Roman times, it was a village in the province of Moesia, first mentioned in 169. After the decline of the Roman Empire, the town turned out to be located at the northern border of the Byzantine Empire. In 1059, it was named Nicopolis, Greek for "City of Victory". During most of the Middle Ages, it was part of the Bulgarian Empire from its foundation in 681. After the fall of Tarnovo in 1393, the last Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Shishman defended what remained of the Empire from the fortress of Nikopol, where he was captured after the town was conquered by the Ottomans in 1395. Nikopol is therefore sometimes considered the capital of Bulgaria during these two years, it was the site of the Battle of Nicopolis, the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages, in 1396.
At the fortress of Nicopolis, the united armies of Christian Europe headed by Hungarian king Sigismund and various French knights were defeated by the Ottomans under Bayezid I and his Serbian vassal Stefan Lazarević. Under Ottoman rule, Nikopol developed into an important military and administrative centre as a sanjak, with a strong fortress and a flourishing economic and political life, until it went into decline during the 17th and 18th centuries, it was the centre of a district, but it was overtaken by Pleven as the regional centre of that part of the Bulgarian lands. Nikopol was captured by the Russians in the Battle of Nikopol in 1877. Nikopol has a population of 3,892 as of December 2009, it provides services to the local villages. Nikopol was flooded by the Danube during the 2006 European floods, is working on new town infrastructure to manage fluctuations in the Danube River; the completion of a car ferry in 2010 has linked the town to Turnu Măgurele across the Danube in Romania, spurring local development, including the opening of new restaurants and the town’s first hotel.
Nikopol serves as a port for tourist boats where visitors stop and have the opportunity to take a bus into the nearby city of Pleven, or spend the afternoon in Nikopol. The fifth-largest nature park in Bulgaria, Persina Natural Park, lies in Nikopol. Persina Natural Park is the only Bulgarian natural park on the Danube River, contains marshlands, over 200 species of birds, 475 species of plants, 1,100 species of animals. Based on the importance and uniqueness, Persina Natural Park has been declared a Ramsar site. Tourist attractions in Nikopol include the ruins of the medieval fortress, the richly decorated 13th- or 14th-century Church of Saints Peter and Paul, the rock-hewn Church of Saint Stephen, the Bulgarian National Revival Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God from 1840, the Elia water fountain with an immured Ancient Roman gravestone featuring an epitaph, the Vasil Levski museum house. Nikopol is twinned with: Halásztelek, Hungary Shakhty, Russia Zimnicea, Romania Ivan Shishman of Bulgaria, the last emperor of the Second Bulgarian Empire, beheaded at Nikopol in 1395 Jean de Vienne, French general and knight, died at Nikopol Jean de Carrouges, French knight, died at Nikopol Eve Frank, born at Nikopol, successor of her father, the Jewish claimed Messiah Jacob Frank.
Joseph Karo, lived in Nikopol from 1523-1536 Nikopol Point on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Nikopol. Https://web.archive.org/web/20051220013159/http://get.info.bg/visit/Dir.asp?d=0-13-PLEVEN-Nikopol http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/N/NikopB1ul.asp http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4917820.stm#map http://www.pleven.pro/weather/town.php?id=nikopol
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