The Protobulgarians
Known to English-speaking historians as the Bulgars , and to the Bulgarians themselves as the prabalgari or " Protobulgarians ", the rulers who founded Pliska and Preslav, and who may have been responsible for commissioning the Madara Horseman, started out as Turkic nomads from the Eurasian steppe. Originating in western Siberia, the Bulgars coalesced into three warlike tribes in the sixth century: the Onogurs, Utigurs and Kutrigurs . The latter were the first to descend on the Balkans, reaching the walls of Constantinople twice in the mid-500s AD before being pushed back by the armies of Emperor Justinian. For the next half century Byzantine diplomacy concentrated on keeping these three tribes at each other's throats, in an attempt to preserve the balance of power in the territories north and east of the Black Sea. Eventually, however, they began to cultivate the friendship of the Onogurs, who by this time ruled a swathe of steppe north of the Caucasus mountains - subsequently called Old Great Bulgaria by Byzantine chroniclers. The alliance was cemented in 619 with the baptism of the Onogur Khan Organa, together with his son Kubrat in Constantinople. Nevertheless, things went awry when the Onogurs were driven from their lands by another Turkic tribe, the rapidly expanding Khazars. Kubrat's successor Asparuh led his people southwest to the Danube expecting hospitality from his Byzantine ally Emperor Constantine IV, who instead sent an army to prevent Asparuh from crossing the river. The Byzantine attempt failed, and by 681 Constantine was forced to recognize the existence of an independent Bulgar state ruled by Asparuh from his capital at Pliska. The new kingdom was initially limited to the flatlands either side of the Danube, stretching from the Balkan Range in the south to the Carpathians in the north. However, the Bulgars began to expand beyond the Balkan Mountains and put down urban roots under Asparuh's successor, Khan Tervel , and the centuries-old culture of these Turkic-speaking steppe dwellers began to die out. An aristocratic elite ruling over a population of Thracians and Slavs (the latter, valued by the Bulgars as frontier settlers, became increasingly numerous), the Bulgars gradually lost their separate ethnic identity and became assimilated by their subjects. The process was confirmed by Tsar Boris's conversion to Christianity in 865 and the suppression of paganism that followed - many of the old Bulgar families, unwilling to break with the old faith, were simply wiped out. Little is known about the beliefs and customs of the Bulgars. Byzantine chroniclers have provided us with a few scraps, telling us that they worshipped their ancestors, practised shamanism, sacrificed steppe wolves in times of trouble, and probably indulged in polygamy. Some Turkic-speaking Bulgars still exist, the so-called Volga Bulgars who survive in isolated pockets south of Kazan in Russia. They converted to Islam in the tenth century and enjoyed independent statehood until the thirteenth, when they were submerged beneath the advance of their fellow Muslims, the Tatars.
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