The First Bulgarian Empire — Byzantium Forced to Pay Tribute
The Byzantine Empire recognised a Bulgar state south of the Danube by treaty in 681, after Khan Asparuh defeated an army led by the Emperor Constantine IV in person. The Bulgars were a Turkic people from the steppe north of the Black Sea, whose confederation of Old Great Bulgaria had broken up under Khazar pressure around 668. Asparuh led one group west across the Danube delta into a region already settled by Slavic tribes. Constantine IV, having just seen off the Arab siege of Constantinople, brought a fleet and army against them in 680 and found them entrenched in the marshes. He left the camp to take the waters for gout; the rumour spread that he had fled; and the army broke and was pursued. The treaty that followed obliged the empire to pay an annual tribute, which is what makes it significant — Constantinople had formally acknowledged a barbarian state on territory it claimed, the first time it had done so in Europe. The state that resulted was a fusion. A Turkic warrior aristocracy ruled a Slavic majority, and within two centuries the language, the population and eventually the rulers' names were Slavic. Boris I accepted Christianity in 864 and chose it from Constantinople rather than Rome after playing the two against each other, and received an autonomous church. His son Simeon presided over a golden age of literature in Old Church Slavonic, written in the Cyrillic alphabet developed in Bulgaria from the work of Cyril and Methodius' disciples. Basil II destroyed the empire in 1018.
- Year: 681 CE
- Category: Political
