what they could to level and obliterate the work, the lines can be clearly traced, and it has been shown that the town could be entered by eleven gates. Near the centre of the enclosure was an inner stronghold, and within this again was the palace of the Khans. The stronghold, shaped like a trapezium, was surrounded by thick walls, which were demolished at an ancient date, and now present the appearance of a rampart about ten feet high. Four circular bastions protected the four angles, and two double rectangular bastions guarded each of the four gates, one of which pierced each of the four walls. The walls were further strengthened by eight other pentagonal bastions. The main entrance was on the eastern side.

Within this fortress stood a group of buildings, which is undoubtedly to be identified as the palatial residence of the Khans. The principal edifice, which may be distinguished as the Throne-palace, was curiously constructed. A large room in the basement, to which there seems to have been no entrance from without, except perhaps a narrow issue underneath a staircase, points to the fact that the ground-floor was only a substructure for an upper storey. This storey consisted of a prodomos or entrance-hall on the south side, to which the chief staircase ascended, and a hall of audience. The hall was nearly square, and was divided by rows of columns into three parts, resembling the nave and aisles of a church. The throne stood in a round apse, in the centre of the northern wall. Not far from this building stood a rectangular temple, which in the days of Krum and Omurtag was devoted to the heathen cult of the Bulgarians, but was converted, after the adoption of Christianity, into a church.

The fortress and the palace, which seem to have been built much about the same time, certainly belong to no later period than the first half of the ninth century. The architecture of the Throne-palace bears the impress of Byzantine. influence, and has a certain resemblance to the Trikonchos of Theophilus, as well as to the Magnaura.1 It was doubtless constructed by Greek masons. The columns may have been imported from Constantinople; it is recorded that Krum,

when he attacked that city, carried off works of art from the suburban buildings.

The title of the rulers of Bulgaria was kanas uvegé, sublime khan,"1 but even while they were still heathen, they did not scruple to have themselves described sometimes in their official monuments as 66 rulers by the will of God." Of the political constitution of the kingdom little can be ascertained. The social fabric of the ruling race was based on the clan system,3 and the head of each clan was perhaps known as a župan. From early ages the monarchy had been hereditary in the clan of Dulo, but in the middle of the eighth century, Kormisos, who belonged to another family, ascended the throne, and after his death Bulgaria was distracted for some years by struggles for the royal power. We may probably see in these events a revolt of the clans against the hereditary principle and an attempt to make the monarchy elective. There were two ranks of nobility, the boilads and the bagains,* and among the boilads there were six or perhaps twelve who had a conspicuous position at the court. When a Bulgarian ambassador arrived at Constantinople, etiquette required that the foreign minister should make particular inquiry first for “the six

DESEN

1 κάνας ὐβηγή, preceding the name (frequent in the inscriptions). ¿ẞnyń has been satisfactorily equated (by Tomaschek) with the Cuman - Turk öweghü="high, glorious"; cp. Marquart, Streifzüge, 495; Chron. 40.

2 Omurtag in the Chatalar inscription (A.D.821-822), èk Оeoû äρxwv, Aboba, 545; and Malamir, ó éк 0. ά., ib. 230 (=C.I.G. 8691). The use of the title by Omurtag disproves Uspenski's conjecture (ib. 197-198) that the Roman government conferred it on Malamir because Christianity had spread in Bulgaria in his reign. Marquart's view is (Chron. 41-42) that the title was meant as a translation of the Turkish Tängridä bolmyš qan, "heavencreated khan." It was the regular style of the Christian princes, cp. Constantine, Cer. 681.

3 So among the Magyars (exel dè ἑκάστη γενεὰ ἄρχοντα, Const. De adm. imp. 174). Besides the clans of Dulo, Ukil, and Ugain, mentioned in the Regnal list, we have various yeveal recorded in ninth cent. inscriptions, e.g. Κυριγήρ, Κουβιάρης (Aboba, 190

192). Okhsun, of the family of Kuri-
ger, is described as o fouráv (190);
Ökorses as o кожаvós (where к seems
to be an error for , ib.); and in an-
other inscription (No. 7, p. 192) in
honour of some one γενεᾶς Ἐρ . . . άρης,
I would supply at the beginning
Souravjos. As the title Zhupan was
used by South Slavonic peoples for
the head of a tribe, it is a reasonable
conjecture that it designated a tribal
prince among the Bulgarians. See
Uspenski, ib. 199. The word is sup-
posed to occur in the form oаπav in
the early inscription of Marosh in
Hungary, which is believed to relate
to the Gepids (ib.).

4 Cp. C.I.G. 86916, καὶ τοὺς βοιλάδας
καὶ βαγαίνους ἔδωκεν μεγάλα ξένια. Cp.
Uspenski, Aboba, 201-202. Borlas, in
Mansi, xvi. 158, has been rightly
corrected to boelas (Bonλâs, usual form
in the inscriptions) by Marquart
(Chron. 41). Vagantus or vaganlus,
in the same passage, is doubtless
vaganius (Bayáïvos), cp. Uspenski, op.
cit. 204. Bonλâs passed into Slavonic
as boliarin (the Russian boiar).

>> 1

great boilads," and then for the other boilads, "the inner and the outer." There were thus three grades in this order. We do not know whether the high military offices of tarkan and kaukhan.2 were confined to the boilads. The khan himself had a following or retinue of his own men,3 which seems to have resembled the German comitatus. The kingdom was divided into ten administrative divisions, governed by officers whose title we know only under the equivalent of count.1

The Bulgarians used the Greek language for their official documents, and like the ancient Greeks recorded their public acts by inscriptions on stones. Mutilated texts of treaties and records of important events have been discovered. They are composed in colloquial and halting Greek, not in the diplomatic style of the chancery of Byzantium, and we may guess that they were written by Bulgarians or Slavs who had acquired a smattering of the Greek tongue. Among these monuments are several stones inscribed by the khans in memory of valued officers who died in their service. One of them, for instance, met his death in the waters of the Dnieper, another was drowned in the Theiss. This use of the Greek language for

6

1 In Constantine, Cer. 681, we find the six great boilads (tenth cent.), but in De adm. imp. 154, we learn of the capture of "the twelve great boilads" by the Servians (ninth cent.). It seems plain that inner and outer simply mean a higher and lower grade. For we find exactly the same terms, great, inner, and outer applied to the three Bulgarias. There were the Great Bulgarians on the Danube, the Inner Bulgarians on the Sea of Azov, and the Outer Bulgarians on the Volga. See below, p. 410 sq.

2 The таρκávos (inscriptions) was undoubtedly a military commander. We meet this Turkish title in Menander's account of an embassy of the Turkish Khan Dizabul to Justin II. (fr. 20). The ambassador's name was Tagma, ἀξίωμα δὲ αὐτῷ Ταρχάν. See also Cont. Th. 413, καλουτερκάνος (leg. Καλοὺ TЄρKάvos), and Const. Cer. 681, o βουλίας ταρκάνος. See Uspenski, op. cit. 199-200; Marquart, Chron. 43-44. For the κavxávos see inscriptions, Aboba, 220, 233, aud Simeon (Cont. Georg. ed. Muralt, 819, ed. Bonn 893), ἅμα καυκάνῳ. Other dignities were βαγατουρ or βογοτορ (inscriptions; also

Const. Porph. De adm. imp. 15817, ἀλο-βογοτούρ, as Marquart corrects for åλoyoßoтoup), the Turkish bagadur, from which the Russian bogatyr (=hero) is derived; and Soupyov (zerco, in Mansi, xvi. 158; see Uspenski, ib. 204). κολοβρος (κουλουβρος) seems to have been a title of rank, not a post or office; Tomaschek equates it with Turkish qolaghuz, a guide, and Marquart (Chron. 41) compares Bouкoλaẞpâs in Theoph. Simocatta, i. 8. 2, who

explains it as μάγος or ἱερεύς.

θρεπτοὶ ἄνθρωποι, frequent in the inscriptions. See Uspenski's long discussion, ib. 204 sqq.

4 Ann. Bert., sub a. 866 (p. 85), "intra decem comitatus." Silistria was the chief place of one of the counties: inscription, Simeon, Izv. Kpl. iii. 186, κόμης Δρίστρου. Cp. also Theophylactus, Hist. mart., P. G., 126, 201, 213. See Aboba, 212.

5 Some mysterious epigraphic fragments have also been discovered, written, partly at least, in Greek letters, but not in the Greek tongue. They are very slight and little can be made of them. See Aboba, c. viii.

6 Aboba, 190-194.

their records is the most striking sign of the influence which
was exercised on the Bulgarians by the civilization of Con-
stantinople. We can trace this influence also in their buildings,
and we know that they enlisted in their service Greek engineers,
and learned the use of those military engines which the Greeks
and Romans had invented for besieging towns. Notwith-
standing the constant warfare in which they were engaged
against the Empire, they looked to Constantinople much as
the ancient Germans looked to Rome. Tervel had been created
a Caesar by the gratitude of Justinian II., and two of his
successors found an honourable refuge in the Imperial city
when they were driven by rivals from their own kingdom.
Tserig fled to the court of Leo IV. (A.D. 777), accepted baptism
and the title of Patrician, and was honoured by the hand of
an Imperial princess.1 It might be expected that the Bulgarians
would have found it convenient to adopt the Roman system of
marking chronology by indictions or even to use the Roman
era of the Creation of the world, and we actually find them
employing both these methods of indicating time in their
official records.2 But they had also a chronological system of
their own.
They reckoned time by cycles of sixty lunar years,
starting from the year A.D. 659, memorable in their history as
that in which they had crossed the Danube and made their
first permanent settlement in Moesia. For historical purposes,
this system involved the same disadvantage as that of Indictions,
though to a much smaller degree; for instance, when an event
was dated by the year shegor alem or 48, it was necessary also
to know to what cycle the year referred. But for practical
purposes there was no inconvenience, and even in historical
records little ambiguity would have been caused until the
Bulgarian annals had been extended by the passage of time
into a larger series. It is possible that the Bulgarian lunar
years corresponded to the years of the Hijra, and if so, this
would be a remarkable indication of Mohammadan influence,
which there are other reasons for suspecting. We know that in
the ninth century there must have been some Bulgarians
who were acquainted with Arabic literature.1

a Greek

1 Krum's sister married
deserter.

2 See Aboba, 227 and 546.
3 See Bury, Chronol. Cycle.

4

Responsa Nicolai, § 103, "libri profani quos a Saracenis vos abstulisse ac apud vos habere perhibetis." Cp. Jireček, Geschichte, 134.

B

MESA PER

L

But the Bulgarians had other neighbours and foes besides the Romans, and political interests in other directions than in that of Constantinople. It is recorded that the same prince who crossed the Danube and inaugurated a new period in Bulgarian history, also drove the Avars westward,1 and the record expresses the important fact that in the seventh century the Bulgarians succeeded to the overlordship which the Avar khans had exercised over Dacia in the reigns of Maurice and Heraclius. This influence extended to the Theiss or beyond. Eastward, their lordship was bounded by the Empire of the Khazars, but it is impossible to define the precise limit of its extent. There can be no doubt that in the seventh and eighth centuries Bulgaria included the countries known in later times as Walachia and Bessarabia, and the authority of the khans may have been recognised even beyond the Dniester. At all events it appears to be certain that in this period Bulgarian tribes were in occupation of the coastlands from that river wellnigh to the Don, and this Bulgarian continuity was not cleft in twain till the ninth century. The more easterly portion of the people were known as the Inner Bulgarians, and they were probably considered to belong to the Empire of the Khazars. But we cannot decide whether it was at the Dniester or rather at the Dnieper that the authority of the Khazars ended and the claims of the Great Bulgarians of Moesia began.

2

1

T

South of the Danube, the kingdom extended to the Timok, which marked the Servian frontier.3 The Bulgarians lived on terms of unbroken friendship with the Servians, and this may perhaps be explained by the fact that between their territories the Empire still possessed an important stronghold in the city of Sardica.

For the greater security of their country the Bulgarians reinforced and supplemented the natural defences of mountain

1 [Moses of Chorene], Geography (seventh cent.), cited in Westberg, Beiträge, ii. 312; Marquart, Chron. 88.

2 Scr. Incertus, 345. Βουλγαρίαν ἐκεῖθεν τοῦ Ιστρου ποταμοῦ (= PseudoSimeon, 615). There is no reason to suppose that when Isperikh settled in the Dobrudzha, he abandoned Bessarabia. Till the ninth century there was no power but that of the Khazars

to limit the Bulgarians on their eastern
frontier, and there is no probability
that the Khazars ever exerted author-
ity further than the Dniester, if as
far.

3 One point on the frontier (Constantine, De adm. imp. 155) seems to have been Rasa (Novi Bazar, Jireček, Geschichte, 150).

Ꮓ