It gave the Slavic world its alphabet and the Byzantine Empire its worst nightmares — not once, but twice. Between the Danube and the Aegean, Bulgaria built a medieval empire that humbled emperors in Constantinople, and then did it all over again four centuries later.
Pliska ★ Preslav ★ Tarnovo ★ Constantinople Kleidion Danube Greatest extent — stylized map 681 Byzantine treaty 864 Boris I baptized 893–927 Simeon I the Great 1018 Empire falls 1185 Asen & Peter revolt 1396 Vidin falls Rise · zenith · fall The rise The Bulgars were steppe warriors who crossed the Danube around 680 under Khan Asparuh and settled the lands of today's northeastern Bulgaria. In 681 the Byzantine emperor, exhausted by wars on other fronts, signed a treaty recognizing the new Bulgarian state — the founding act of a country whose name has survived, unbroken, for more than thirteen centuries.
