First Bulgarian Empire (681): Asparukh Founds a Balkan State

The First Bulgarian Empire was founded when the Bulgar leader Asparukh defeated a Byzantine army near the Danube in 680 and won a peace treaty from Emperor Constantine IV in 681. The treaty, by which Byzantium agreed to pay tribute, is traditionally taken as the birth of the Bulgarian state. The new power, built on an alliance of Turkic Bulgars and local Slavs, became one of the great states of medieval Europe and a long-term rival of Byzantium.

Old Great Bulgaria and the migration

The Bulgars were a semi-nomadic people of Turkic origin who lived on the steppes north of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. In the 630s a ruler named Kubrat (also spelt Kuvrat) united several Bulgar groups into a state that Byzantine writers called Old Great Bulgaria. Kubrat had friendly relations with Emperor Heraclius.

After Kubrat’s death, probably around 650–665, the Khazars, a rising steppe power, attacked his people. The Byzantine chroniclers Theophanes and Nikephoros tell that Kubrat’s sons divided: the eldest, Batbayan, stayed near the Sea of Azov and submitted to the Khazars; Kotrag moved north, where his followers later formed Volga Bulgaria; Asparukh led his group west across the Dnieper and Dniester rivers; a fourth son, often identified with Kuber, went into the Avar lands of Pannonia; and a fifth settled in Italy.

Historians accept the broad outline of this account, although the story of five brothers may simplify a more complex process.

Settlement in the Onglos

Around the 670s Asparukh’s Bulgars settled in an area that Byzantine writers called the Onglos, a place protected by rivers, marshes and earthworks. It probably lay near the Danube Delta, north of the river, but its exact location is still debated by Bulgarian, Romanian and Ukrainian scholars.

From there the Bulgars raided Byzantine territory south of the Danube. The region between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains had already been heavily settled by Slavs during the previous century, and Byzantine control there was weak.

Constantine IV’s campaign of 680

Emperor Constantine IV (reigned 668–685) had just survived attacks on Constantinople by the Umayyad Arabs in the 670s. In 680 he resolved to remove the Bulgar threat. He led an army by land and sent a fleet up the Black Sea coast to the Danube.

The Bulgars refused to fight in the open and stayed within their fortified camp in the Onglos. The marshy ground made a Byzantine assault difficult. After several days the emperor, suffering from gout, left the army to seek treatment at the coastal city of Mesembria (modern Nesebar), leaving orders for his troops to continue.

His departure was misread by the soldiers as flight. Panic spread and the Byzantine army began to withdraw in disorder. The Bulgars attacked the retreating troops, inflicted heavy losses and followed them across the Danube.

The treaty of 681

Asparukh’s forces advanced to the area around Varna, on the Black Sea coast of modern north-eastern Bulgaria. There they found a Slavic population organised in tribal groups, including the so-called Seven Clans and the Severi. The Bulgars established their authority over these groups, moving some to guard the frontiers against Byzantium and the Avars.

In 681 Constantine IV, unable to drive the Bulgars back, concluded a peace treaty. Byzantium agreed to pay an annual tribute, a humiliation that Theophanes recorded with dismay. In effect the empire recognised the existence of an independent state on its former territory. The year 681 has therefore become the conventional founding date of Bulgaria. No copy of the treaty itself survives, and its terms are known only from the brief reports of Byzantine chroniclers.

Key people

Asparukh (also spelt Isperikh in Bulgarian) is listed in the Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans, a short early list of rulers, as a member of the Dulo clan. Little is known of his personal life, but his success in 680 made him the founding hero of Bulgarian national history.

Constantine IV (reigned 668–685) was an energetic emperor who had already repelled the Arab attacks of the 670s. In 680–681, as the Bulgar crisis unfolded, he also presided over the Third Council of Constantinople, the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which settled a major theological dispute. His concession to the Bulgars reflected the empire’s priorities: the eastern frontier against the caliphate came first.

Kubrat, Asparukh’s father according to the chronicles, is associated by many archaeologists with the rich seventh-century burial treasure found at Malaya Pereshchepina in Ukraine in 1912, which includes gold objects and rings bearing a name read as Kubrat. The identification is widely accepted but not certain.

The Bulgars and the Slavs

The relationship between the incoming Bulgars and the Slavs was crucial. The Bulgars were relatively few in number, probably tens of thousands at most, while the Slav population was much larger. Rather than destroying the Slavs, the Bulgars organised them, using them as allies and frontier guards in a system that combined steppe military traditions with local communities.

Over the next two centuries the two peoples merged. Bulgar titles, such as khan and boila, and the steppe custom of building great earthwork fortifications survived, but the Slavic language became dominant. The adoption of Christianity in the 860s accelerated this fusion, creating the medieval Bulgarian nation.

Building the state

The new state combined a Bulgar military aristocracy, led by a ruler with the title khan (or kanasubigi in some inscriptions), with a much larger Slav population. Its centre was in the north-east, where the fortified capital of Pliska developed. Bulgar and Slav cultures gradually mixed, and the Bulgars eventually adopted the Slavic language.

Asparukh died around 700; a later legend says he fell fighting the Khazars, but this is uncertain. His successor Tervel became a decisive player in Byzantine politics. In 705 he helped the deposed emperor Justinian II regain his throne and received the title of Caesar. In 717–718 the Bulgars helped defeat the Arabs besieging Constantinople (see Arab Siege of Constantinople). The famous rock relief known as the Madara Rider, carved near Pliska, is usually dated to Tervel’s time.

Legacy

The First Bulgarian Empire lasted until the Byzantine conquest of 1018. It reached great power under Khan Krum, who destroyed a Byzantine army in 811 (see Battle of Pliska), and under Tsar Simeon I in the early tenth century (see Simeon the Great).

Bulgaria’s conversion to Christianity under Boris I in 864–865 and its adoption of the Slavonic script developed by the disciples of Cyril and Methodius made it a centre of Slavic literature and Orthodox culture. Modern Bulgarians regard 681 as the founding year of their state, and the 1,300th anniversary was celebrated nationally in 1981.

Timeline

• c. 630s: Kubrat unites the Bulgars in Old Great Bulgaria.
• c. 650–665: Death of Kubrat; Khazar pressure splits the Bulgars.
• c. 670s: Asparukh settles in the Onglos near the Danube Delta.
• 680: Constantine IV’s expedition fails; the Bulgars cross the Danube.
• 681: Peace treaty; Byzantium agrees to pay tribute to the Bulgars.
• c. 700: Death of Asparukh; Tervel succeeds him.
• 705: Tervel helps Justinian II regain the Byzantine throne.
• 1981: Bulgaria celebrates 1,300 years of statehood.

Why it matters

The events of 680–681 created a lasting state in the Balkans on former Roman land, one that Byzantium was forced to recognise by treaty. Bulgaria became a bridge between the steppe, the Slavic world and Byzantine civilisation, and its later cultural achievements shaped Orthodox Eastern Europe.