Slavic Tribes and Their Settlements to the Balkans

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Khan Asparoukh (681 - 700)



Slavic Buglarian Tribal Leader.

"For about a century the Slavic tribes had been roaming the Byzantine lands, their burning and destruction paving the way for the founding of the future state. "

Asparukh realized that as the new state was an alliance of tribes, it could not be established in one fell swoop but would have to be built over the course of several generations. The Slavs and the Bulgars retained their self-government and the territorial autonomy of their tribes. It is telling that in the historical sources from the end of the 7th to the beginning of the 10th century the new state is referred to as a Slav-Bulgar state.

[akritas]

The Slavic Invasion
(part of my article)

Most of the Balkans was settled by Slavs of one of two types (excluding the smaller groups of Slavic Slovenes and Turkic Avars in the Western Blalkans). Each of these two main Slavic groups was to be named for a second conquering group who appeared leter in the 7th century.

The first of these two groups was the Bulgaro-Macedonians, whose Slavic component the Bulgarian historian Zlatarski derives from the Antes. They were conquered in the late 7th century by the Turkic Bulgars, The Slavs eventually assimilated them, but the Bulgars name survived.It denoted this Slavic group from the 9th century thriough the rest of the medieval period into modern days. Until the late 19th century both outside observers and those Bulgaro-macedonians who had ethnic consiousness believed that their group, which is now two separate nationalities, comprised a single people, the Bulgarians. Thus the reader should ignore references to ethnic Macedonians in the Middle Ages which appear in some modern works. In the Middle Ages and into the 19th century the Macedonian Term was used entirely in refernce to a geographical region (as also the Thracian,Moesian e.t.c.)

Anyone who lived within its confines, regardless of nationality coulb called as a Macedonian . Neverthless, the absence of a national counsiousness in the past is no grounds to reject the Macedonians of the FYROM as a nationality today with the obligation of course to be a severe and direct demarcation with the others Macedonians that consider themselfs as Greeks,Bulgarians, Vlachs, e.t.c.

For the story the second Slavic group was the Serbo-Croatian that according Zlatarski derives from the Slaveni.These Slavs came to be dominated by two diffrent but similar tribals peoples called Serbs and Croats in the 2nd quarter of the 7th century

references:
1-Ancient Medieval Cambringe History
2-The Making Of the Slavs, Kurta
3-The Macedonian Question,Dimiter Minchev

akritas

[Otto]

Great stuff Akrita...

we are going to update the main site in the next few weeks with historical articles. please keep it up!