♚ Smilets

Smilets was a Bulgarian boyar of unknown parentage and birth date who rose amid the political fragmentation of the late thirteenth-century Second Bulgarian Empire. Before becoming tsar, he was one of the strongest lords of central Bulgaria. His family’s principality in the Sredna Gora region was centred on the fortress of Kopsis and is reconstructed as extending through the upper Maritsa basin and the country between the rivers Strem and Tundzha toward Sliven. John V. A. Fine describes Smilets as having asserted practical independence between Sredna Gora and the Balkan Mountains, although the sources do not establish whether this secession occurred before or after 1285. The breadth of his possessions, their proximity to Byzantine territory and the weakness of the government at Tarnovo made him a plausible contender for the crown.

Smilets reinforced his regional position through both family solidarity and an important Byzantine connection. His brothers Radoslav and Vojsil shared control of the family lands, while between about 1283 and 1285 Smilets married an unnamed daughter of Sebastocrator Constantine Palaiologos, brother of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos. His wife was therefore a cousin of the reigning emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos. This marriage almost certainly preceded Smilets’s accession and placed the Sredna Gora lord within the extended Palaiologan aristocratic network. Fine cautiously suggests that Byzantine support helped sustain Smilets’s independence from George I Terter, whose government was in no position to challenge a powerful magnate established beside the empire’s recent acquisitions.

The background to Smilets’s rise was the steady extension of Tatar power over Bulgaria. A destructive invasion in 1273 inaugurated a period of recurrent raids. In the first half of 1285 a reported force of 10,000 Tatar horsemen crossed Bulgaria and penetrated the Black Sea region, Eastern Thrace and Macedonia before a Byzantine army commanded by Humbertopoulos, governor of Mesembria, defeated it in a battle near the Maritsa. George I Terter subsequently acknowledged Nogai’s suzerainty, paid tribute, sent his son Todor Svetoslav to Nogai as a hostage and gave a daughter to Nogai’s son Caka. Nogai also exercised overlordship over Shishman at Vidin and apparently protected the Braničevo rulers Darman and Kudelin, preventing Tarnovo from recovering the north-western principalities.

Smilets became tsar in 1292 after another major Tatar raid and the flight of George I Terter. His accession was secured with the backing of Nogai, though the exact mechanism remains obscure. George had apparently remained an obedient tributary, so the reason for Nogai’s decision to replace him is not recorded. The historian Nikov proposed that a boyar faction hostile to the Terter family intrigued at Nogai’s court and persuaded the Tatar ruler to support Smilets; Fine regards this as plausible but unproved and suggests that Nogai probably received at least an increase in tribute. Andronikos II refused George formal asylum for fear of offending Nogai and perhaps because the emperor already knew of the aspirations of his Palaiologan relative by marriage. George Pachymeres summarized the deposed ruler’s helplessness by saying that Terter could not help himself, much less anyone else.

Once enthroned at Tarnovo, Smilets relied principally on his own family. Radoslav received the rank of sebastocrator and Vojsil that of despot, the highest Bulgarian titles below the imperial dignity. The brothers retained the Sredna Gora principality rather than surrendering it to direct royal administration, an arrangement resembling the appanage earlier tolerated for George Terter’s brother Eltimir. Sources differ over the early status of the Krăn region: Fine treats Eltimir’s principality west of Sliven as a Terter appanage already existing under George, whereas the Bulgarian synthesis presents Krăn as part of the Smilets family’s Sredna Gora possessions and dates Eltimir’s acquisition of it to a later marriage settlement. The disagreement reflects the scant evidence for provincial boundaries and tenure.

For the remainder of 1292 and throughout 1293 no individual campaign, law or administrative measure of Smilets can be securely dated. His basic policy was to preserve amicable relations simultaneously with Nogai and Byzantium. Theodore Metochites states that during Smilets’s reign Bulgaria and the empire were bound by “oaths and agreements,” although he supplies neither the date nor the precise clauses of these arrangements. Byzantine acceptance of the new regime served two interests: it avoided confrontation with Nogai and recognized a Bulgarian ruler already connected by marriage to the Palaiologoi. There is no evidence that Smilets attempted to recover Mesembria or the other former Bulgarian lands along the Black Sea and in western Thrace that had passed under Byzantine control.

The best-recorded episode of 1294 was not an action by Smilets but an indication of the wider Bulgarian political and military diaspora. A Bulgarian in Byzantine territory claimed to be Ivaylo, or Lahana, although the former tsar had been killed by the Tatars. Andronikos II asked Ivaylo’s former wife, Maria, to identify the man; she rejected his claim. Nevertheless, the “False Ivaylo” received permission to recruit Bulgarians and Romans against the advancing Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor. His successes and popularity eventually alarmed the emperor, who dispersed the force and imprisoned him. At about the same time the Bulgarian Nikola Myto, styled “protosebastos of the Bulgarians,” governed Mosynopolis, modern Komotini, and commanded a substantial Bulgarian contingent in Byzantine service. These developments illuminate the disturbed regional setting but cannot be treated as policies directed by Smilets.

No securely dated event of Smilets’s reign is preserved for 1295 or 1296. Manuel Philes, in his poem “On the Exploits of the Famous and Renowned Protostrator,” praises the Byzantine general Michael Glabas Tarchaneiotes and says that Lahana and “Smil, the ruler of the Bulgarians,” knew this great man, as did those eager for battle. Some historians have inferred a Bulgarian-Byzantine conflict from this rhetorical passage, but the Bulgarian narrative explicitly rejects that conclusion: no independent notice confirms such a war, and it conflicts with Metochites’s testimony concerning bilateral agreements. Consequently, no battle between Smilets and Michael Glabas can safely be inserted into the reign.

In 1297 the struggle between Nogai and the Golden Horde khan Tokta began to transform the political world on which Smilets depended. Smilets remained Nogai’s submissive vassal and tributary, without any recorded attempt to escape Tatar suzerainty. Tatar forces nevertheless invaded Eastern Thrace in 1297 and subjected it to severe devastation, affecting the Bulgarian population of the region as well as Byzantine lands. The texts record neither a Bulgarian counterattack nor diplomatic intervention by Smilets. His inability to restrain such raids demonstrates that loyalty to Nogai might protect his throne but did not give him effective control over Tatar military activity in the Balkans.

The Tatars repeated their incursion into Eastern Thrace in 1298. Smilets also remained inactive in the north-western Bulgarian lands, where Nogai presented himself as protector of autonomous rulers threatened by Serbian expansion. Shortly before his death, however, Smilets sought a separate rapprochement with Serbia. His daughter Theodora married the Serbian heir Stefan Uroš III Dečanski after the latter returned from Tatar captivity in 1298. A late Serbian chronicle claims that King Stefan Uroš II Milutin first fought and defeated Smilets and then sealed peace by marrying his son to the Bulgarian ruler’s daughter. Because the notice is late and provides no date, battlefield or operational detail, the existence and scale of this alleged war remain uncertain; the marriage itself is the firmer element of the tradition.

A second dynastic arrangement strengthened the family’s position in central Bulgaria. Another daughter attributed to Smilets married Despot Eltimir, also called Aldemir, the brother of George I Terter, probably in 1298. The Bulgarian synthesis states that Eltimir received the Krăn region as her dowry, thereby establishing or restoring the Despotate of Krăn. Theodore Metochites calls him an “adventurer” and a “wandering fugitive” who became the bridegroom of the beloved daughter of Smilets’s wife. Fine likewise places the alliance in late 1298, though his reconstruction treats Eltimir’s earlier possession of the region differently. The marriage was politically significant because it associated a member of the displaced Terter family with Smilets’s widow and created a potential counterweight to the ambitions of Radoslav and Vojsil.

Smilets’s reign contains no securely attested named battle commanded by the tsar, no recorded capture of a fortress and no demonstrated Bulgarian-Byzantine war. The only alleged Serbian victory comes from the late chronicle and cannot be localized, while the Tatar raids of 1297 and 1298 elicited no known military response from Tarnovo. His principal achievements were therefore diplomatic and defensive in the narrow political sense: he preserved his crown through submission to Nogai, maintained peace with Andronikos II and attempted to strengthen his dynasty through marriages with the Palaiologoi, the Serbian Nemanjić house and Eltimir. These arrangements did not reverse territorial disintegration or restore royal authority over Vidin, Braničevo and other autonomous regions.

Internally, Smilets governed through an aristocratic family coalition rather than through a documented programme of centralization. The elevation of Radoslav and Vojsil acknowledged their power but also perpetuated the semi-independent character of the Sredna Gora lands. Nothing in the surviving excerpts records legislation, judicial reform, monastic patronage, a church council or the appointment of a patriarch under Smilets. Patriarch Joakim III later became a victim of Todor Svetoslav, who had him thrown from a cliff into the Yantra in 1300 on a charge of treason. Fine cautiously raises the possibility that the alleged treachery went back to Smilets’s overthrow of George Terter, but no source establishes whom Joakim supported or what action he took. It would therefore be unsafe to infer either alliance or conflict between Smilets and the patriarch.

The economic evidence is equally sparse. Smilets’s tributary obligations to Nogai must have burdened the resources of a territorially diminished kingdom, but their amount and form are unknown; even the suggestion that his accession brought increased tribute is a modern inference rather than a preserved treaty clause. During this period Venetian and especially Genoese commercial interests in the Black Sea and its rich agricultural hinterland were expanding into political influence, yet no commercial agreement of Smilets survives in the supplied material. Nor is a coin type securely attributed to him here. By contrast, the excerpts cite copper coins showing George I Terter with Todor Svetoslav and later issues of George bearing Tatar symbols after 1285. That evidence cannot be transferred to Smilets. No charter, chrysobull or royal inscription issued by Smilets is quoted, and the Ivanovo rock-church inscriptions discussed in the narrative concern George Terter’s later fate rather than Smilets’s government.

Smilets died in 1298; the Bulgarian narrative places his death at the beginning of November, but records no cause. His nearly six-year reign ended without a secure adult successor. The subsequent tradition identifies a minor son, commonly called Ivan IV Smilets, whose authority was exercised by his mother, Smilets’s Palaiologan widow, with the assistance of Eltimir. Božilov argues that the child should be counted as a Bulgarian ruler because the throne was briefly held either by him or in his name, while Fine presents this as a debated reconstruction rather than an uncontested reign. In early 1299 the widow reportedly sent Eltimir to King Milutin and offered to marry the Serbian ruler, promising that through her he could acquire the Bulgarian tsardom. The proposal failed to stabilize the regime.

The decisive change came from the steppe. In the autumn of 1299 Tokta defeated Nogai near the Terek, and Nogai was killed. His son Caka fled across the Danube with followers and with his brother-in-law Todor Svetoslav. The latter’s wealth and contacts enabled him to win over elements of the Tarnovo aristocracy. Smilets’s widow and the minor Ivan withdrew first to Eltimir at Krăn and later to Constantinople, while Caka occupied Tarnovo and is treated as tsar in Fine’s reconstruction. Todor Svetoslav subsequently conspired with local notables, imprisoned Caka and had him strangled. In 1300 Todor Svetoslav, son of George I Terter, established himself as ruler and became Smilets’s ultimate and politically consequential successor, ending the succession crisis that followed Smilets’s death.

The fall of Smilets’s house continued after Todor Svetoslav’s accession. Radoslav and Vojsil fled to Byzantium with their troops and sought imperial assistance. In early 1302 Radoslav, whom Andronikos II had made sebastocrator, marched from Thessaloniki against Eltimir’s Krăn principality; Eltimir defeated him, captured and blinded him, and sent him back to his wife in Thessaloniki. Vojsil remained in Byzantine territory and continued to advocate intervention on behalf of his family. The son associated with Smilets’s succession adopted the Byzantine aristocratic name John Komnenos Doukas Angelos Branas Palaiologos, eventually became a monk and died before 1330; Byzantium never seriously advanced him as a claimant to Tarnovo.

Smilets’s historical significance lies less in personal conquest than in what his reign reveals about Bulgaria’s late thirteenth-century crisis. A powerful provincial lord could reach Tarnovo through Nogai’s favour, maintain himself through aristocratic kinship and Byzantine dynastic ties, yet remain unable to centralize the kingdom or protect its wider interests. The harsh Bulgarian synthesis characterizes him as a passive figurehead, whereas Fine’s more cautious reconstruction emphasizes how little the evidence permits historians to know and notes that he successfully maintained peace with both Byzantium and Nogai. The source base consists chiefly of Byzantine observers such as Pachymeres, Metochites and Manuel Philes, supplemented by a late Serbian chronicle and modern genealogical and political reconstructions. Their testimony is fragmentary, externally focused and sometimes contradictory; the absence of surviving Smilets charters, inscriptions and securely identified coins makes his reign one of the least documented and most contested episodes in the history of the Second Bulgarian Empire.