Asparuh

Khan Asparuh founded the First Bulgarian Empire in 681, the first state the Byzantine Empire was ever obliged to recognise on former imperial soil. He belonged to the Dulo clan and was a younger son of Kubrat, ruler of Old Great Bulgaria on the steppe north of the Black Sea. When Kubrat died the confederation broke up under Khazar pressure and his sons went in different directions; Asparuh led his people west across the Dnieper and Danube into the marshy delta country of what is now southern Romania. In 680 the emperor Constantine IV came against him with an army and a fleet. The Byzantines were unable to fight in the marshes, the emperor left on account of illness, and the withdrawal turned into a rout at the Danube. Asparuh pushed south into Moesia, took the land between the Danube and the Balkan range, and reached an arrangement with the Slavic tribes already settled there rather than subjugating them outright. The treaty of 681 obliged Constantinople to pay an annual tribute, which is the formal beginning of Bulgaria. The fusion of a Turkic ruling clan with a Slavic majority produced a state that became Slavic in language within two centuries. He established his capital at Pliska. He is thought to have died fighting the Khazars. Bulgarian tradition places his death around 700 in fighting on the northern frontier. The Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans, one of the earliest Bulgarian documents, records his clan and reign length, though its chronology cannot be reconciled with the Byzantine sources. His brothers are said to have led their followers to Italy, Pannonia and the middle Volga, where a separate Bulgar state lasted until the Mongols.

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