Kubrat
Kubrat founded Old Great Bulgaria on the steppe, and it lasted about as long as he did. He was of the Dulo clan and was brought up, according to the Byzantine chroniclers, at the court in Constantinople, where he was baptised - which if true makes the founder of the Bulgar state a Christian raised among Romans. He threw off Avar overlordship around 632 and united the Onogur and other Bulgar tribes between the Don and the Kuban, north of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The emperor Heraclius recognised him and gave him the title of patrician, and the alliance held on both sides, which was unusual on that frontier. The state was a tribal confederation held together by one man, and it did not survive him. On his death around 665 the Khazars pressed in from the east and his sons dispersed with their followings - the tradition, told as a story about a bundle of sticks that cannot be broken together, has him warn them not to separate. One son stayed and submitted; one went to the middle Volga and founded Volga Bulgaria, which became Muslim and lasted until the Mongols; and Asparuh crossed the Danube and founded in 681 the first state Byzantium was ever obliged to recognise on former imperial soil. A hoard of some 800 gold and silver objects found at Mala Pereshchepina in Ukraine in 1912 carries rings with his monogram in Greek letters, and is generally taken to be his grave. It was found by a boy whose leg went through the ground while he was herding. The monogram is the strongest evidence there is that the man in the Byzantine chronicles and the man in the Bulgar king-list are the same person, which is not a thing that can usually be shown for a steppe ruler at all.
- Lived: 605 CE – 665 CE
- Nationality: Bulgar
- Roles: head_of_state
