1.The Bishopric of the Upper Struma
Velbazhd lies in the basin of the upper Struma, on the road from Sredets into Macedonia. After 1018 the town was the seat of one of the bishoprics of the Archbishopric of Ohrid — together with Triaditsa it was the easternmost of the seventeen western sees that marked its limits. Lead seals preserve the names of several of its bishops — Nikephoros, John, Gabriel.
2.A Border District (1246–1330)
In the thirteenth century Velbazhd was a border district fought over by its neighbours. In 1246, after taking Serres and Melnik, the Nicaean emperor John III Vatatzes also conquered Velbazhd together with Stobi, Skopje, Veles and Prilep. By the end of the century the districts of Velbazhd, Sredets and Strumitsa formed the western edge of the tsardom, bordering Serbian and Byzantine lands.
In the autumn of 1282, after the Tatars had withdrawn with their plunder, the Serbs of King Milutin invaded Macedonia and seized the districts of Velbazhd, Tetovo, Skopje and Pijanec and the Ovče Pole. For the first time the Serbs settled permanently in these lands and cut the local Bulgarian population off from its political centre.
3.The Battle of Velbazhd (28 July 1330)
In the summer of 1330 Tsar Michael III Shishman marched against Serbia in alliance with Byzantium. The army's route is not entirely clear: Kantakouzenos says Michael went through Paeonia, and it seems he left Tarnovo on 19 June, passed through Vidin to join his Wallachian and Moldavian allies and his brother Belaur, and came down the Struma by way of Sredets to Velbazhd. The Serbian king Stefan Dečanski, informed of the allies' plans, decided to strike the Bulgarians first and concentrated his forces on the river Kamenica near Velbazhd.
Michael occupied Zemen and ravaged the surrounding country without meeting resistance. According to Kantakouzenos the two sides agreed a one-day truce and fought the next day; Gregoras writes that for four days the Bulgarians laid the district waste unopposed. On 28 July 1330, somewhere between Velbazhd and Zemen, the surprised and probably outnumbered Bulgarians suffered a heavy defeat — some were killed, others captured, as were those who had scattered to plunder the countryside.
The sources disagree on how the tsar died. The Serbian annals repeat that the king "killed the Bulgarian tsar at Velbazhd", and Stefan Dušan boasts in the preface to his Code that he cut off Michael's head with his sword. Most likely Michael was badly wounded in the battle, captured and taken to the Serbian camp, where he died of his wounds or was put to death. Among those who took part the Code names the despot Ivan Alexander, then lord of Lovech, and his father-in-law, the Wallachian voivode Basarab. Belaur did not reach the battlefield in time.
4.The Aftermath
The losses did not threaten the state's existence — part of the forces Michael had gathered never reached Velbazhd at all. But the defeat ended Michael III Shishman's ambitious programme of Bulgarian hegemony in the Balkans and brought about the first strong Serbian intervention in Tarnovo's history: Anna, Dečanski's sister, and her son Ivan Stefan were placed on the throne. The humiliation bred discontent among the boyars which in 1331 led to the coup in favour of Ivan Alexander.
The district of Velbazhd remained outside Bulgaria for good. At the end of the fourteenth century the town was the residence of the Serbian magnate Konstantin Dejanović, one of the local lords who accepted Ottoman overlordship after the battle of Chernomen.