BULGARIA, otherwise known as the vilayet Tuna or province of the Danube (though the two do not absolutely coincide), is a political division of European Turkey, which stretches along the right bank of the Danube from the influx of the Timok to its mouth, and is bounded on the south by the main chain of the Balkan, which separates it from Rumelia. On the east it is washed by the Black Sea, and on the west is conterminous with Servia. Its area is estimated at 32,932 square miles. It may be roughly described as a great table-land, sloping with more or less regularity towards the river, having its surface broken with numerous offshoots and underfalls of the southern mountains, and furrowed by the channels of the many streams to which those heights give rise. By far the larger proportion of the area belongs to the basin of the Danube, which in this part of its course receives from the right the Jibritza, the Ogust, the Shit, the Isker, the Vid, the Osma, the Yantra, the Lorn, and the Kosliashilar. A few streams (mostly small) find their way directly to the Black Sea, the only one of importance being the Kamtchyk. which drains the eastern extremity of the Balkan. In summer many of the smaller streams are almost dried up ; but before harvest is fairly over, the wet season frequently sets in, and in spring again there is an abundant rainfall. Throughout the most of the province the soil is excellent, and if it were properly cultivated would yield the richest crops. As it is, the inhabitants are able not only to supply their own wants, but to furnish a considerable export of agricultural produce. The cereal most abundantly grown is wheat, but Indian corn is also pretty common with the Mussulman farmers. Little hay is made, and turnips are quite unknown. Potatoes are only cultivated by the Tatar settlers in the Dobrudsha. The peach, the apricot, the grape, and many other fruits come to great perfection ; and wine is manufactured in considerable quantities, but in a very careless and rude manner. The buffalo is the animal chiefly used in agricultural labour, though horses are sufficiently common. Cows, pigs, and goats are also kept, and sheep -farming is largely carried on in many parts, but the character of the various stocks is very poor. The mineral wealth of the province is totally neglected, and its rich supplies of timber are often heedlessly wasted. Roads can hardly be said to exist ; for though several have been constructed by enterprizing pashas, they have soon been allowed to fall into total disrepair. A single railway line stretches from Kustendji to Chernavoda on the Danube A considerable amount of traffic, however, is carried on by the river, and the export trade on the Black Sea is of growing importance. The province is politically divided into the sandjaks of Rustchuk, Nissa, Widdin, Tirnova, Sofia, Varna, and Tulcha. Its principal towns are Widdin, Nikopoli, Sistova, Rustchuk, Rassova, and Hirsova along the Danube ; Kustendji, Baltshik, and Varna on the coast ; and Babadagh, Basarjyk, Shumna, Tirnova, Lovatz, and Vratza. The population, which amounts to from two to two and a half millions, is of various elements, and is estimated as follows:—
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Bulgarians proper about 1,500,000 Osmanli Turks ,, 500,000 Tatars from 80,000 to 100,000 Circassians ,, 70,000 to 90,000 A.janians 60,000 or 70,000 Eoumanians 35,000 or 40,000 Gipsies 20,000 or 25, 000 Jews about 10,000 Armenians ,, 10,000 Ilussians ,, 10,000 Greeks 7,000 or 8,000 Servians 4,000 or 5,000 Germans, Italians, Arabs, &c say 1,000
The population along the coast is of a very mingled description, the genuine Bulgarian looking down on the Gagaous, as he calls the mongrel race, with no small con tempt. The Tatars are emigrants from the Crimea, who were permitted to leave the Russian empire after the last war. They are industrious and prosperous, but the Cir cassians, who have fied from the Caucasus at the advance of Russia, are for the most part very poor. The Turks, Tatars, Albanians, and Circassians are Mahometans ; the Roumanians, the Armenians, and most of the Russians belong to the Greek Church ; and the Gypsies are part Mahometan, part Christian, and part Pagan.
The Bulgarians were originally a people of Ugrian or Finnish extraction, according to Professor Hosier, a Samoyede race. They appear for the first time in history about 120 B.C., when a band, under the leadership of a chieftain called Vound, took refuge in Armenia and settled on the banks of the Araxes. They are next mentioned by Bishop Eunodius as marching towards the left bank of the Danube, and in the following century they became known to the Byzantine empire as a hostile power. About 660 they seem to have broken up into several divisions, of which the most important crossed the Danube under Asparuch (third son of Kubrat, who had delivered them from the domination of the Avars), settled in Mcesia, subjugated the Slavonic population, and extorted tribute even from the Greek emperor. The kingdom thus founded gradually extended northwards to the country of the Theiss, and south over a large part of the peninsula. Its most prosperous period was the reign of Simeon (893-927), who not only made himself formidable to the Greeks as a warrior, but also took an interest in the internal pro gress of his country, securing the establishment of Christianity, which had been introduced by Boris or Bogoris about 862, and bestow ing his patronage on the early efforts of native literature. After his death decay began ; the Russians and Petchenegs invaded the country, and the Byzantine emperors took no rest till the Bulga rians, sadly diminished in numbers, acknowledged the supremacy of Basilius in 1019. More than a century and a half later, two brothers, Peter and Asan or Yusan, headed a successful insurrection, and founded what is known as the Bulgaro-Wallachian kingdom of the Asanides, which, after maintaining itself against the Byzantines and the Hungarians, and even becoming master of Macedonia and Thrace, at last fell under the Tatar yoke, and was finally subjugated to Turkey by the fatal battle of Kossova.
The Bulgarians retain but little trace of their Finnish origin; that they were recognized as belonging to that race is shown by the name Unnogonduri, applied to them by the Byzantines. They still have high cheek bones ; their hair is light and thin ; their eyelids do not open wide ; and the general form of the face is frequently oval. Of their condition in heathen limes little is known, though a few important deductions, such as that they had slaves, can be drawn from the questions presented by them to the Pope in 866. (See Ada Conciliorum, v.) They were so far Slavonicized by the 9th century that the church service was held in Slavonic. At present, though their language is still fundamentally Slavonic, and is usually placed between the Russian and the Servian, yet it is largely mingled with Turkish and Persian, and has even a consider able element of Italian and Greek. The Turkish influence not only appears in the vocabulary, but it is no uncommon thing, especially in the more pretentious forms of speech, for Slavonic verbs to be conjugated in the Turkish mode. A grammar was published in 1852 by A. and D. Kyriak Canckof, and Miklosch has devoted him self to the study of the dialects. Of early literary remains there is an almost total lack ; but a number of popular songs that seem to have been handed down, perhaps from heathen times, have been collected. (Sec Dozen s Les Chants Populaircs JBulgarcs, Paris, 1874.) Those songs have little or no poetic merit, but are full of wild cosmogonic myths. The modern literature is written in a dialect which is hardly understood by the mass of the people, and its existence is largely due to foreign influence. The alphabet in use is a compound of letters from the secular and ecclesiastical alphabets of Russia. Though nominally members of the Greek Church, the Bulgarians are in many respects as pagan as they were centuries ago, and their superstitions are almost countless. The clergy, appointed by the heads of the church at Constantinople, are deplorably ignorant, and frequently know as little as their flocks of the meaning of the prayers which they read in Greek. Their arbitrary and oppres sive dealings excited a strong movement of revolt about 1860, and the bishops were expelled from many of the towns. A junc tion with the Roman Catholics, to whom the national church of Bul garia has frequently shown a leaning, was proposed by one party, which soon found numerous supporters ; but the agitation will probably end in the establishment of an independent Bulgarian hierarchy.
No inconsiderable number of Bulgarians are to be found beyond the province that bears their name. They form a more or less im- tion. portant element in the whole region from the Danube to the ^Egean, and from the Black Sea to Eastern Albania. Gochlert reckons that
