ites 9.2 Art, music and literature 9.3 Media 9.4 Cuisine 9.5 Sports 10 International rankings 11 See also 12 Notes 12.1 References 13 Further reading 14 External links // History Main article: History of Bulgaria Prehistory and antiquity Further information: Neolithic Europe, Bronze Age Europe, Thrace, Odrysian kingdom, and Slavs Prehistoric cultures in the Bulgarian lands include the Neolithic Hamangia culture and Vinca culture (6th to 3rd millennia BC), the eneolithic Varna culture (5th millennium BC; see also Varna Necropolis), and the Bronze Age Ezero culture. The Karanovo chronology serves as a gauge for the prehistory of the wider Balkans region. A golden rhyton, one of the items in the Thracian Panagyurishte treasure, dating from the 4th to 3rd centuries BC The Thracians, one of the three primary ancestral groups of modern Bulgarians, lived separated in various tribes until King Teres united most of them around 500 BC in the Odrysian kingdom. They were eventually subjugated by Alexander the Great and consecutively by the Roman Empire. After migrating from their original homeland, the easternmost South Slavs settled on the territory of modern Bulgaria during the 6th century and assimilated the Hellenized or Romanized Thracians. Eventually the Bulgar élite incorporated all of them into the First Bulgarian Empire.[10] By the 9th century, Bulgars and Slavs were mutually assimilated.[11] First Bulgarian Empire Main article: First Bulgarian Empire Asparukh, heir of Old Great Bulgaria's khan Kubrat, migrated with several Bulgar tribes to the lower courses of the rivers Danube, Dniester and Dniepr (known as Ongal) after his father's state was subjugated by the Khazars. He conquered Moesia and Scythia Minor (Dobrudzha) from the Byzantine Empire, expanding his new kingdom further into the Balkan Peninsula.[12] A peace treaty with Byzantium in 681 and the establishment of the Bulgarian capital of Pliska south of the Danube mark the beginning of the First Bulgarian Empire. Succeeding rulers strengthened the Bulgarian state – Tervel (700/701–718/721), stabilized the borders and established Bulgaria as a major military power by defeating a 22,000-strong Arab army in 717, thereby eliminating the threat of a full-scale Arab invasion of Eastern and Central Europe.[13] Krum (802–814),[14] doubled the country's territory, killed emperor Nicephorus I in the Battle of Pliska,[15] and introduced the first written code of law, valid for both Slavs and Bulgars. Boris I the Baptist (852–889) abolished Tengriism, replacing it with Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 864,[16] and introduced the Cyrillic alphabet, developed at the literary schools of Preslav and Ohrid.[17] The Cyrillic alphabet, along with Old Bulgarian language, fostered the intellectual written language (lingua franca) for Eastern Europe, known as Church Slavonic. Emperor Simeon I the Great's rule (893–927) saw the largest territorial expansion of Bulgaria in its history.[18] Simeon managed to gain a military supremacy over the Byzantine Empire, demonstrated by the Battle of Anchialos (917), one of the bloodiest battles in the Middle ages[19] as well as one of his most decisive victories. His reign also saw Bulgaria develop a rich, unique Christian Slavonic culture, which became an example for other Slavonic peoples in Eastern Europe and also fostered the continued existence of the Bulgarian nation despite forces that threatened to tear it apart. Baba Vida fortress in Vidin, built in the 10th century After Simeon's death, Bulgaria declined during the mid-10th century, weakened by wars with Croatians, Magyars, Pechenegs and Serbs, and the spread of the Bogomil heresy.[20][21] This resulted in consecutive Rus' and Byzantine invasions, which ended with the seizure of the capital Preslav by the Byzantine army.[22] Under Samuil, Bulgaria somewhat recovered from these attacks and even managed to conquer Serbia, Bosnia[23] and Duklja,[24] but this ended in 1014, when Byzantine Emperor Basil II ("the Bulgar-Slayer") defeated its armies at Klyuch.[25] Samuil died shortly after the battle, on 15 October 1014,[25] and by 1018 the Byzantine Empire fully conquered the First Bulgarian Empire, putting it to an end. The Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Ivan Asen II Byzantine rule and Second Bulgarian Empire Main articles: Uprising of Asen and Peter and Second Bulgarian Empire Basil II managed to prevent rebellions by retaining the local rule of the Bulgarian nobility, who were incorporated into Byzantine aristocracy as archons or strategoi,[26] guaranteeing the indivisibility of Bulgaria in its former geographic borders and recognising the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid.[27] After his death Byzantine domestic policies changed, which led to a series of unsuccessful rebellions, the largest being led by Peter II Delyan. However, it was not until 1185 when Asen dynasty nobles Ivan Asen I and Peter IV organized a major uprising and succeeded in reestablishing the Bulgarian state, marking the beginning of the Second Bulgarian Empire. The Asen dynasty set up its capital in Veliko Tarnovo. Kaloyan, the third of the Asen monarchs, extended his dominions to Belgrade, Nish and Skopie; he acknowledged the spiritual supremacy of the Pope, and received a royal crown from a papal legate.[10] Cultural and economic growth persisted under Ivan Asen II (1218–1241), who extended Bulgaria's control over Albania, Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace.[28] The achievements of the Tarnovo artistic school as well as the first coins to be minted by a Bulgarian ruler were only a few signs of the empire's welfare at that time.[10] Ivan Shishman, the last ruler of the Tarnovo Tsardom (1371–1395) The Asen dynasty ended in 1257, and due to Tatar invasions (beginning in the later 13th century), internal conflicts, and constant attacks from the Byzantines and the Hungarians, the country's military and economic might declined. By the end of the 14th century, factional divisions between Bulgarian feudal landlords (bolyari) and the spread of Bogomilism had caused the Second Bulgarian Empire to split into three small tsardoms (At Vidin, Tarnovo and Karvuna) and several semi-independent principalities that fought among themselves, and also with Byzantines, Hungarians, Serbs, Venetians and Genoese. In the period 1365–1370, the Ottoman Turks, who had already started their invasion of the Balkans, conquered most Bulgarian towns and fortresses south of the Balkan Mountains and began their northwards conquest.[29] Fall of the Second Empire and Ottoman rule Main articles: History of early Ottoman Bulgaria and National awakening of Bulgaria The Battle of Nicopolis, 1396 In 1393, the Ottomans captured Tarnovo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, after a three-month siege. In 1396, the Vidin Tsardom fell after the defeat of a Christian crusade at the Battle of Nicopolis. With this, the Ottomans finally subjugated and occupied Bulgaria.[30][31][32] During their rule, the Bulgarian population suffered greatly from oppression, intolerance and misgovernment.[33] The nobility was eliminated and the peasantry enserfed to Ottoman masters[34] while Bulgarians lacked judicial equality with the Ottoman Muslims and had to pay much higher taxes than them.[35] Bulgarian culture became isolated from Europe, its achievements destroyed, and the educated clergy fled to other countries.[36] Throughout the nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule, the Bulgarian people responded to the oppression by strengthening the haydut ("outlaw") tradition,[11] and attempted to reestablish their state by organizing several revolts, most notably the First and Second Tarnovo Uprisings (1598 / 1686) and Karposh's Rebellion (1689). The National awakening of Bulgaria became one of the key factors in the struggle for liberation, resulting in the 1876 April uprising —the largest and best-organized Bulgarian rebellion. Though crushed by the Ottoman authorities – in reprisal, the Turks massacred some 15,000 Bulgarians[11] – the uprising prompted the Great Powers to take action. They convened the Constantinople Conference in 1876, but their decisions were rejected by the Ottoman authorities, which allowed the Russian Empire to seek a solution by force without risking military confrontation with other Great Powers (as had happened in the Crimean War of 1854 to 1856). Third Bulgarian State Main articles: Serbo-Bulgarian War, First Balkan War, Second Balkan War, Bulgaria during World War I, Bulgaria during World War II, People's Republic of Bulgaria, and History of Bulgaria since 1989 The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, resulted in the defeat of Ottoman forces by the Russian army (supported by Bulgarian and Romanian volunteer forces) and the Treaty of San Stefano (3 March 1878), which set up an autonomous Bulgarian principality. The Western Great Powers immediately rejected the treaty, fearing that a large Slavic country in the Balkans might serve Russian interests. The subsequent Treaty of Berlin (1878) provided for a much smaller autonomous state comprising Moesia and the region of Sofia.[37] The Bulgarian principality proclaimed itself a fully independent state on 5 October (22 September O.S.), 1908, after it won a war against Serbia and incorporated the semi-autonomous Ottoman territory of Eastern Rumelia. Bulgarian troops marching at a victory parade in Sofia celebrating the end of World War II, 1945 In the years following the achievement of complete independence Bulgaria became increasingly militarized, and was referred to as "the Prussia of the Balkans"[38][39] In 1912 and 1913, Bulgaria became involved in the Balkan Wars, first entering into conflict alongside Greece, Serbia and Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire. The First Balkan War (1912–1913) proved a success for the Bulgarian army, but a conflict over the division of Macedonia arose between the victorious allies. The Second Balkan War (1913) was a disastrous defeat for Bulgaria, which was attacked almost simultaneously by its neighbors. In World War I, Bulgaria again found itself fighting on the losing side as a result of its alliance with the Central Powers. Despite achieving several decisive victories (at Doiran, Monastir and again at Doiran in 1918), Bulgaria lost the war and suffered significant territorial losses.[11] The total amount of casualties from these three wars was 412,000–152,000 military deaths and 260,000 wounded. A wave of 253,000[40] officially registered refugees, who represented 6% of the pre-war population of the country, and an unclear number of unregistered refugees put an additional strain on the already ruined national economy. Following these losses, in the 1920s and 1930s the country suffered political unrest, which led to the establishment of a royal authoritarian dictatorship by Tsar Boris III (reigned 1918–1943). After regaining control of Southern Dobrudzha in 1940, Bulgaria entered World War II in 1941 as a member of the Axis. However, it declined to participate in Operation Barbarossa and never declared war on the USSR, and saved its Jewish population from deportation to concentration camps by repeatedly postponing compliance with German demands, offering various rationales.[41] In the summer of 1943 Boris III died suddenly, an event which pushed the country into political turmoil as the war turned against Nazi Germany and the Communist guerilla movement gained more power.[42] Zhelyu Zhelev, the first democratically elected president of Bulgaria[43] In September 1944 the Communist-dominated Fatherland Front took power, ending the alliance with Nazi Germany and joining the Allied side until the end of the war in 1945. The Communist uprising of 9 September 1944 led to the abolishment of monarchic rule, but it was not until 1946 that a people's republic was established. It came under the Soviet sphere of influence, with Georgi Dimitrov (1946–1949) as the foremost Bulgarian political leader. Bulgaria installed a Soviet-type planned economy with some market-oriented policies emerging on an experimental level[44] under Todor Zhivkov (1954–1989). By the mid 1950s standards of living rose significantly.[45] Lyudmila Zhivkova, daughter of Zhivkov, promoted Bulgaria's national heritage, culture and arts worldwide.[46] On the other hand, an assimilation campaign of the late 1980s directed against ethnic Turks resulted in the emigration of some 300,000 Bulgarian Turks to Turkey,[47][48] which caused a significant drop in agricultural production due to the loss of labor force.[49] On 10 November 1989, the Bulgarian Communist Party gave up its political monopoly, Zhivkov was removed from power, and Bulgaria embarked on a transition from a single-party republic to a parliamentary democracy. In June 1990 the first free elections took place, won by the moderate wing of the Communist Party (the Bulgarian Socialist Party — BSP). In July 1991, a new constitution that provided for a relatively weak elected President and for a Prime Minister accountable to the legislature, was adopted. Economic planning was scrapped and private initiative was legalized. The new system eventually failed to improve both the living standards and create economic growth — the average quality of life and economic performance actually remained lower than in the times of Communism well into the early 2000s.[50] A reform package introduced in 1997 restored positive economic growth, but led to rising social inequality. Bulgaria became a member of NATO in 2004 and of the European Union in 2007. The US Library of Congress Federal Research Division reported it in 2006 as having generally good freedom of speech and human rights records,[51] while Freedom House listed Bulgaria as "free" in 2010, giving it scores of 2 for political rights and 2 for civil liberties.[52] Geography Main article: Geography of Bulgaria A view of central Stara Planina Raysko Praskalo waterfall Geographically and in terms of climate, Bulgaria features notable diversity, with the landscape ranging from the Alpine snow-capped peaks in Rila, Pirin and the Balkan Mountains to the mild and sunny Black Sea coast; from the typically continental Danubian Plain (ancient Moesia) in the north to the strong Mediterranean climatic influence in the valleys of Macedonia and in the lowlands in the southernmost parts of Thrace. Relief and natural resources Bulgaria comprises portions of the separate regions known in classical times as Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia. About 30% of the land is made up of plains, while plateaus and hills account for 41%.[53] The mountainous southwest of the country has two alpine ranges — Rila and Pirin — and further east stand the lower but more extensive Rhodope Mountains. The Rila range includes the highest peak of the Balkan Peninsula, Musala, at 2,925 meters (9,596 ft);[54] the Balkan mountain chain runs west-east through the middle of the country, north of the Rose Valley. Hilly countryside and plains lie to the southeast, along the Black Sea coast, and along Bulgaria's main river, the Danube, to the north. Strandzha forms the tallest mountain in the southeast. Few mountains and hills exist in the northeast region of Dobrudzha. The Black Sea as seen from Bakurluka peak near Sozopol. Bulgaria has large deposits of bauxite, copper, lead, zinc, bismuth and manganese. Smaller deposits exist of iron, gold, silver, uranium, chromite, nickel, and others. Bulgaria has abundant non-metalliferous minerals such as rock-salt, gypsum, kaolin and marble. Hydrography and climate The country has a dense network of about 540 rivers, most of them—with the notable exception of the Danube—short and with low water-levels.[55] Most rivers flow through mountainous areas. The longest river located solely in Bulgarian territory, the Iskar, has a length of 368 kilometers (229 mi). Other major rivers include the Struma and the Maritsa River in the south. Bulgaria overall has a temperate climate, with cold winters and hot summers. The barrier effect of the Balkan Mountains has some influence on climate throughout the country–northern Bulgaria experiences lower temperatures and receives more rain than the southern lowlands. Precipitation in Bulgaria averages about 630 millimeters (24.8 in) per year.[56] In the lowlands rainfall varies between 500 and 800 millimeters (19.7 and 31.5 in), and in the mountain areas between 1,000 and 2,500 millimeters (39.4 and 98.4 in) of rain falls per year. Drier areas include Dobrudja and the northern coastal strip, while the higher parts of the Rila, Pirin, Rhodope Mountains, Stara Planina, Osogovska Mountain and Vitosha receive the highest levels of precipitation. Some 20 nesting couples of the Eastern Imperial Eagle (Aquila heliaca) exist in Bulgaria, and their number is gradually growing.[57] Pirin mountain, which holds one of the world's oldest trees – Baikushev's Pine.[58] Environment and wildlife Bulgaria has signed and ratified the Kyoto protocol[59] and has achieved a 30% reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 to 2009, completing the protocol's objectives.[60] However, pollution from outdated factories and metallurgy works, as well as severe deforestation (mostly caused by illegal logging), continue to be major problems.[61] Urban areas are particularly affected mostly due to energy production from coal-based powerplants and automobile traffic,[62][63] while pesticide usage in the agriculture and antiquated industrial sewage systems have resulted in extensive soil and water pollution with chemicals and detergents.[64] In addition, Bulgaria remains the only EU member which does not recycle municipal waste,[65] although an electronic waste recycling plant was put in operation in June 2010.[66] The situation has improved in recent years, and several government-funded programs have been initiated in order to reduce pollution levels.[64] Three national parks, eleven nature parks[67] and seventeen biosphere reserves[68] exist on Bulgaria's territory. Nearly 35% of its land area consists of forests.[69] The brown bear and the jackal[70] are prominent mammals, while the Eurasian lynx, the Eastern imperial eagle and the European mink have small, but growing populations. Politics and law Main articles: Politics of Bulgaria, Law of Bulgaria, and Law enforcement in Bulgaria Georgi Parvanov, current president and head of state of Bulgaria The National Assembly or Narodno Sabranie (??????? ????????) consists of 240 deputies, each elected for four-year terms by popular vote. The National Assembly has the power to enact laws, approve the budget, schedule presidential elections, select and dismiss the Prime Minister and other ministers, declare war, deploy troops abroad, and ratify international treaties and agreements. The president serves as the head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. While unable to initiate legislation other than constitutional amendments, the President can return a bill for further debate, although the parliament can override the President's veto by vote of a majority of all MPs. Boyko Borisov, leader of the centre-right party Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, became prime minister on 27 July 2009,[71] and Georgi Parvanov was re-elected as a president in 2005. The Bulgarian legal system recognizes the Acts of Parliament as a main source of law, and is a typical representative of the Romano-Germanic law family.[72] The judiciary is overseen by the Ministry of Justice, while the Supreme Administrative Court and Supreme Court of Cassation, the highest courts of appeal, rule on the application of laws in lower courts. The Supreme Judicial Council manages the system and appoints judges. Despite some notable progress,[73][74] Bulgaria's judiciary remains one of Europe's most corrupt and inefficient.[75][76] Law enforcement organisat