First Bulgarian Empire

Overview

The First Bulgarian Empire was the state founded when Asparuh's Bulgars, having crossed the Danube, defeated a Byzantine army at the Battle of Ongal (680) and compelled Byzantium to recognize the new state by treaty in 681. It combined a Bulgar (Turkic) ruling elite with a large Slavic population. Its capitals were Pliska (681–893), then Preslav (893–968/972), and later Skopje, Ohrid, and Bitola in the western (Cometopuli) phase.

Under Khan Krum (r. 803–814), Bulgaria expanded dramatically (capturing Serdica/Sofia in 809) and inflicted a catastrophic defeat on Byzantium: in 811 Emperor Nicephorus I sacked Pliska but was ambushed and killed at the Battle of Pliska (Varbitsa Pass); Krum famously lined the emperor's skull with silver and used it as a drinking cup — the only Roman/Byzantine emperor killed in battle against a foreign enemy since Valens (378). The decisive religious turning point came under Boris I (r. 852–889), who accepted Christianity from Constantinople; his baptism (taking the name Michael after his godfather Emperor Michael III) is dated 864 by most sources, though some give 865, and scholars have proposed dates ranging across 863–866; mass baptism of the population followed in 865. Boris skillfully played Rome against Constantinople to secure an autocephalous Bulgarian church (executing 52 rebellious boyars and their families), and sheltered the disciples of Cyril and Methodius after 885, fostering the Cyrillic alphabet and the Preslav Literary School. Old Church Slavonic replaced Greek as the church language at the Council of Preslav (893).

The empire reached its zenith under Simeon I the Great (r. 893–927), educated at Constantinople, who waged largely successful wars against Byzantium (annihilating a Byzantine army at Achelous/Anchialus in 917 and besieging Constantinople in 923–924), assumed the title of tsar (emperor) around 913, and presided over a cultural "Golden Age," with Preslav described by observers as rivaling Constantinople. After decline, a revival came under the Cometopuli dynasty and Tsar Samuel (r. 997–1014), based in the west (Ohrid/Prespa). The long struggle with the Byzantine emperor Basil II culminated in the catastrophic Battle of Kleidion (Belasitsa, 29 July 1014), after which Basil, per the 11th-century chronicler John Skylitzes, "divided the prisoners into groups of 100 men, blinded 99 men in each group and left one man in each with one eye so that he could lead the others home" — some 15,000 prisoners in total — earning him the epithet Boulgaroktonos ("Bulgar-Slayer"). Samuel died two months later (6 October 1014), reportedly of shock at the sight of his blinded army. The empire was finally conquered by Basil II in 1018 (the last stronghold at Sirmium subdued in 1019).

Historiographical note

Some modern historians doubt that Kleidion was as total as Skylitzes described; the blinding numbers may be exaggerated, and the death of Samuel is seen by some as more decisive than the battle itself.