From: Vassil Karloukovski
Message: 24547
Date: 2003-07-15
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
...
> *****GK: Your last two posts contain much that is of
> interest to me. I would, however, argue that there is
> a big difference between being "outdated" and being
> wrong (:=)). Since I am not really a "Bulgarist" I do
> not follow the new research as closely as you do.
I wouldn't blame you but the Bulgarian historians and scholarship in
general for not properly publicising their results.
But
> I do not see, as yet, on the basis of your reports,
> how it contributes to any dramatic change in our
> traditional perspective of Bulgar identity and
> history.
for one, your exposition is in a too rigid framework - distinct and
ethnically conscious of their (Slavic-, Turkic-, whatever-)ness
peoples, homogeneous peoples/tribes (rulers vs. the mass), etc. It is
untenable. If you look at the few surviving early Bulgarian
references of ethnic self-characterization, they are nothing but
straightforward. One apocrypha of the XI (or, some say, XII-XIII c.),
describes the coming of Asparukh ('Ispor& tsar&') and the evacuation
of the 'Karvunska zemlja' (Dobrudzha, NE Bulgaria) by 'the Romans'
and goes on to say that the arrived then people were 'Ethiopians'
(the 'asiatic Ethiopians' as some researchers tried to rationalize).
Another text says that 'the Bulgarians were the same as Vlachs/Vl&hvi
(the Magi, different interpretations) and the Persians'. And
Theophicaltus, the XI c. Greek archbishop at Ochrid writes how the
old Bulgarians used to live in those regions but were chased by
Alexander the Great, only to return later again. If nothing else,
this should show you that the people, even the educated people back
then didn't think about themselves along modern lines and didn't find
contradictions between apparently incompatible to us designations.
The ruling dynasties, which were very important in this aspect, would
be even more mobile, flexible. The references and the idea of a
common Slavicness are most clearly expressed at the time of Cyrillus
and Methodius, and thus are a foreign, introduced concept. A couple
of centuries later, in the XI-XII c. this will (de)generate into
localized nationalisms: "The Slavs, that is the Bulgarians" in
Bulgaria, or "The Slavs, that is the Russians". And later come the
Assenids (Kumano-Vlacho-something :-), at least the skull of what is
thought to be Kaloian is significantly Mongoloid) who nevertheless
claimed to continue the line of the tsars of the First kingdom. And
after them, the last two dynasties were probably Kumanic in origin -
the Terters and the Shishmans. And whilst the last tsars, princes
would die fighting the infidel Ottomans, it would be a surprise if
many of the local Kumanic feudal lords didn't simply hand over their
fortresses to the linguistically akin to them Ottomans, immediately
enjoying the benefits of the Ottoman spachi system :) :(. And you
still speak of "Boris, a gravedigger of the proto-Bulgar ethnos"
(what? - a genocide?, a self-destruction?), about "preserving their
ethnic identity amongst the Slavic masses they dominated" (after how
many centuries was this supposed to go on? Especially having in mind
that the material culture of the masses, both Slavic and Bulgar, was
roughly on the same level, i.e. lower than the Byzantine, the one
they aspired to and amongst many of whom they lived. (If you follow
the ongoing dispute, Bulgar vs. Khazar, about the so called "Malaja
Pereshchepina" type of VII-VIII c. luxurious burials west of Dniepr,
you must have seen that certain archaeologists deny any Bulgar
connection of the basis of some Turkic characteristics displayed by
the finds which, they say, should not be characteristic for the
Bulgars, thoroughly Sarmatised in the centuries after the Huns).
Regards,
Vassil
Minor details certainly, but hardly a
> paradigmatic shift. I will comment on some aspects of
> this in the next little while.****