Execution Rock and The Terterid Dynasty
The Lobna skala (Execution Rock) at the sheer northern end of Tsarevets is associated with the dynasty that followed the brief reign of the swineherd Ivailo (1277-80). Proclaimed tsar after a popular anti-feudal revolt, Ivailo successfully organized resistance against invading Tatar hordes but neglected to guard against a coup by the bolyari (nobles), who had him flung off the rock. The Terterid dynasty which followed was chiefly concerned with its own survival and willing to suspect anyone - even the patriarch, Yoakim III, who was also executed - of collusion with the Tatars; it was only during the later, fourteenth-century reign of Todor Svetoslav that there was much progress or security. However, Bulgarian culture - strongly influenced by that of Byzantium - revived during the Shishmanid dynasty (1323-93), and the enlightened rule of Ivan Aleksandar and his son Ivan Shishman created the conditions whereby medieval Tarnovo attained the zenith of its development. Trade with Genoa, Venice and Dubrovnik flourished; hospitals and hospices were maintained by the public purse; students came from Serbia, Russia and Wallachia to study at the university; and Tarnovo became one of the Balkans' main centres of painting and literature. Nonetheless, by the late fourteenth century the Second Kingdom had fragmented into several semi-autonomous states, and the hegemony of the kingdom had been dissipated: individually, the states were no match for the expansionist Ottoman Turks, who besieged Tarnovo for three months before capturing, plundering and burning the city in July 1393
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