The People and Their Settlements

The Bulgarian state’s political presence on the Aegean, known in Bulgarian as the White Sea, and on the Adriatic, the medieval “Blue Sea,” was usually short-lived. This does not mean that no Bulgarians lived along those coasts. The kingdom’s limited maritime orientation has sometimes been explained as a fear of the sea, but such a psychological attitude is difficult to demonstrate from the surviving evidence. Bulgarian presence on the Black Sea was far more durable. Byzantine writers acknowledge that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Bulgarians formed a substantial part of the population of ports on both its northern and southern shores.

The principal Black Sea centres included Kaliakra, Varna, Mesembria, Anchialos, and Sozopol. The wealth of Mesembria, modern Nessebar, can be seen in the payments imposed after its conquest. In 1366 its inhabitants gave Amadeus of Savoy 20,102 gold perpera—a monetary unit used in the Byzantine world—and 118 florins. In the following year the city paid the Byzantine emperor another 11,028 perpera and 545 florins. Anchialos paid the Green Count 2,734 perpera. The city’s importance was also expressed by Ivan Alexander, who in 1332 rejected Andronikos III’s proposal to exchange it for Yambol, saying that he would not trade “gold for copper.” Sozopol often marked the beginning of the southern frontier, which continued along the Strandzha Mountains, sometimes called Haemus.

The inhabitants called themselves “Bulgarians” and their state the “Bulgarian Land.” They also used the expression “ВЪ БЪЛГАРѢХЪ,” meaning “among the Bulgarians,” while “Land of Tarnovo” occurs only rarely. Foreign names were more varied. Byzantine authors normally wrote of Bulgarians, but sometimes employed archaizing terms such as Moesians and Scythians or identified them as Vlachs. In the Vlach-speaking lands they could be called “șchei,” a name derived from a word for Slavs, while Serbian texts also used Zagorians and Goths. Arabic writers spoke of the “Burjan” people and the land of “Burjan.” In the West, “Bugri” was a common name for the people and “Zagora” for their state.

Bulgarian literature also classified neighbouring peoples through its own, not always precise, categories. The Byzantines were called “Greeks” rather than by their preferred name “Romans,” or Rhomaioi. To the north were Vlachs, Jasians, and Hungarians; the Mongols were at first designated “Tartars” and later Tatars. Westerners could collectively be called “Franks,” Germans “Alemanni,” and the inhabitants of Italy Latins or Italians. “Ishmaelites” was a broad term for eastern peoples and at first included the Ottomans, who might also be called Hagarenes, Muslims, Turks, or even Persians. Apocrypha—religious works outside the official Church canon—assigned symbolic animals to different peoples. The Bulgarian was a bull, the Greek a fox, the Serb a wolf, the Vlach a cat, the Tatar a horse, the Cuman a leopard, the Frank a lion, and the Turk a snake. These images represent stereotypes rather than factual descriptions.

Medieval Bulgarian literature expresses a strong sense of collective importance. The Tale of Pandeh foretells future ascent through the phrase “the Bulgarian is young,” while another apocryphon places the Bulgarian realm among the three principal earthly empires. Bulgarians were listed first among Orthodox peoples, and Bulgarian manuscripts occupied a particularly high position among books of the true faith. Historical memory also sustained this confidence. A Byzantine author remarked that Tsar Samuel’s name was still remembered in the thirteenth century, while in the fourteenth Bulgarians continued to invoke Ivan Asen II’s victory at Klokotnitsa in 1230. Byzantine writers frequently described their northern neighbours in hostile and condescending language that reveals political and social bias. Yet the same sources sometimes acknowledged their courage, patriotism, and willingness to help people in distress. Nikephoros Gregoras recounts how armed mountain dwellers in dark garments made from wool and sheepskins greeted him kindly despite his initial fear.

A person’s place in society was determined to a great extent at birth. To be born “in the purple” meant belonging to the ruler’s world; a very different life awaited a child born in a boyar’s tower or an ordinary thatched house, called an izba in some texts. Orthodox custom required a newborn to be baptized by the eighth day. A child who died unbaptized was not buried in a Christian cemetery. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries baptism involved three immersions in the font, as in Byzantine practice. In the fourteenth century single immersion and sprinkling with holy water are also recorded. This change has been interpreted as a sign of the Tarnovo Patriarchate’s independence from the Church of Constantinople.

A child received one name from its parents and a Christian name at baptism. Patriarch Euthymius, for example, wrote of Ivan Asen I that “Asen… received the name John” at baptism. Double names are particularly well documented among rulers and boyars, but isolated evidence indicates that the custom was not confined to the aristocracy. After Emperor Sigismund’s campaign of 1396, a Bulgarian woman named Maria Iskra cared for a wounded western knight, accompanied him to France, and bore him a son. Both her names appear in the document even though she was not of noble birth. The copyist of the Nomocanon of Jacob Svetoslav identified himself as “John, called Dragoslav,” and similar combinations occur in a late thirteenth-century list from the village of Tmorane. The evidence demonstrates that the practice extended beyond the court, but it is insufficient to prove that every Bulgarian necessarily had two names.

Most surviving names are Slavic: Beloslav, Berislav, Vitan, Desislav, Dobren, Dragoslav, Ognen, Radin, Tikhota, Khranislav, and Khrabro, as well as the female names Beloslava, Desislava, Kalina, Iskra, and Raditsa. A substantial group is of Turkic origin, including Aldimir, Balik, Kort, Terter, Khanko, Shiydal, and Shishman. Many are known from Tarnovo. This has sometimes been associated with a Cuman presence in the capital, although part of the naming tradition may also derive from the older Bulgar heritage, as with Asen or Ispor, the Slavic form of Asparukh. Baptismal names were generally Greek Christian names: Basil, George, Demetrios, John, Constantine, Michael, Nicholas, Peter, Theodore, Anna, Helena, Maria, and Irene. The names have been gathered incidentally from documents, memorial books, inscriptions, vessels, and building materials and do not form a complete register. Later Ottoman records suggest that Kaloyan and Petka were especially common in Tarnovo. Non-Slavic names were more frequent in the capital, while the known village lists show a strong attachment to Slavic tradition.

No census survives from which the population of Bulgaria in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries can be calculated. Earlier descriptions and rulers’ titles present the Bulgarians as a numerous people, but provide no verifiable figures. A more specific example comes from the village of Radolivo in Macedonia. In the late eleventh century it had thirteen households with a total of fifty-one inhabitants and paid ten gold nomismata to a monastery on Mount Athos. By 1346 its total obligation had reached 520 nomismata, of which 320 went to the monastery. The increase probably reflects both currency depreciation and population growth, but the tax payment cannot yield a reliable number of inhabitants.

Natural population growth was repeatedly interrupted by disaster. Wars with Byzantium, raids by Pechenegs, Uzes, and Cumans, and the fighting surrounding the revolt at the end of the twelfth century depopulated particular regions. Tatar incursions again devastated the country during the following century, and Ottoman conquest began near the end of the period. The greatest demographic blow was the plague of 1347. It travelled from Asia to Crimea, and Genoese ships carried it to Constantinople and the rest of Europe. There are no direct figures for deaths in Bulgaria. Estimates that half or more of the population perished are based on comparisons with other countries and cannot be treated as precise measurements. Further outbreaks occurred in 1363–1366 and 1372–1373.

Despite warfare and disease, Bulgaria continued to be regarded as densely populated. A Franciscan report from the 1360s claims that after the Hungarian conquest of the Tsardom of Vidin, 200,000 subjects of Ivan Sratsimir were converted to Catholicism and that they represented only one-third of the population. Taken literally, these figures would imply approximately 600,000 people in a state extending roughly between Kladovo, Vratsa, Lom, and Zaječar. The missionary numbers are doubtful, however. On their basis, an overall estimate of two to two and a half million inhabitants has been proposed for the lands ruled by Ivan Alexander, excluding Macedonia and southeastern Thrace. It must be regarded as a hypothesis rather than an established demographic result.

Medieval chronicles call Tarnovo, Bdin, Drastar, Sredets, Plovdiv, Boruy, Melnik, Varna, Mesembria, and Sozopol populous, but the description has no precise numerical value. Archaeology permits a rough calculation for Tarnovo. The foundations of about 400 dwellings have been uncovered on Tsarevets, while a substantial part of the hill remained unexplored. If the total number was close to 600 and each household contained an average of six or seven people, approximately 3,500 inhabitants may have lived on the hill. It is uncertain, however, whether all the houses existed at the same time. To these must be added Trapezitsa, Momina Krepost, the New Town, the settlements along the Yantra, and the quarters occupied by Franks, Jews, and Armenians. The capital’s population at its height has consequently been estimated at about 15,000, excluding hundreds of monks and a peacetime garrison that probably did not exceed 2,000 soldiers. By comparison, Constantinople at that time has been estimated at about 30,000 inhabitants.

Evidence for the other towns is even less secure because excavations at Vidin, Cherven, Lovech, Kaliakra, Pernik, and Melnik have concentrated mainly on the fortified cores. George Akropolites claims that in the 1240s Melnik alone contained 500 male aristocrats. The figure was probably exaggerated, but it shows that the city was perceived as a large and wealthy centre. The population of Mesembria in the 1360s has been estimated at approximately 5,000. This conjecture is based on the enormous payments that its citizens managed to collect in a short period and on the peninsula’s limited space. It does not derive from a census and remains only approximate.

Unlike the towns, most villages were small. Archaeological evidence generally indicates between twenty and thirty houses, and the population rarely exceeded one hundred. Taxation counted the kumini, meaning hearths or households, rather than necessarily counting individual buildings. This gave rise to the term dimnina for a tax assessed on dependent people by household. Smaller daughter settlements often appeared around older villages. The presence of several medieval sites within the territory of one modern village does not mean that all were inhabited simultaneously. Settlements were abandoned after warfare or epidemic disease, when fields became exhausted, or when inhabitants brought new land under cultivation. Despite their limited size, villages defined the country’s appearance, and peasants formed the overwhelming majority of its population.

The regions known as Zagora, Romania, and the Lower Land were celebrated for grain, wine, and other agricultural products. Apocryphal visions of a happy future promised abundance from a single vine, sheaf, or sheep—images that reveal what a rural society considered prosperity. It was claimed that wheat ears in the plain north of the Balkan Mountains produced thirty, sixty, or even one hundred grains; this is better understood as praise of fertility than as a reliable measurement of yield. In Thrace, ploughmen cut deep furrows, while grain exported through Anchialos enjoyed a reputation for the highest quality. The favourable environment made rich harvests possible, but warfare, disease, and taxation made their results uncertain.

The picture of a fertile and populous land does not mean that everyday life was easy. Birth determined a person’s rights and opportunities, while the dependent peasant population supported the prosperity of the ruler, the boyars, and the great ecclesiastical landowners through continual labour. Urban wealth and the large contributions imposed on cities attest not only to commercial activity but also to the authorities’ ability to extract substantial resources from the population. Behind the descriptions of abundant fields and celebrated cities stood a society divided sharply between the palace, the fortified boyar tower, and the peasant house.