We Are Bulgaria Since 681 AD: One of Europe's Oldest Living States

Some nations count their history in generations. Bulgaria counts it in dynasties — more than thirteen centuries of them. Since 681 AD, when the First Bulgarian Empire was formally recognised by the Byzantine Empire under a binding peace treaty, Bulgaria has existed as a continuous, named state in the heart of Europe. That is not legend. That is recorded history. While many of today's European countries did not yet exist as concepts, Bulgaria was already negotiating borders with the most powerful empire of the age.

The Foundation: Khan Asparuh and 681 AD

In 681 AD, Byzantine Emperor Constantine IV was compelled to sign a peace treaty acknowledging the sovereignty of a new political force on his northern frontier. Under the leadership of Khan Asparuh, Bulgar tribes had crossed the Danube, forged a lasting alliance with the Slavic peoples of Moesia, and repelled imperial military campaigns with enough force to demand recognition. The treaty was not granted — it was earned in the field. Bulgaria's first capital was established at Pliska, and a state was born that would endure the rise and fall of empires around it.

This was not a temporary tribal confederation. It was a structured political entity with a ruler, a territory, diplomatic standing, and — crucially — a name that has survived unchanged to this day. The world was different in 681 AD. The Arab Caliphate was still expanding. The Frankish kingdoms were decades away from Charlemagne. England did not yet exist. Bulgaria did.

The First Golden Age: Tsar Simeon I and the Flourishing of Culture

By the late ninth and early tenth centuries, Bulgarian history had reached its most radiant chapter. Under Tsar Simeon I (reigned 893–927 AD), Bulgaria expanded into one of the most significant powers in medieval Europe, stretching from the Black Sea coast to the Adriatic. Simeon himself was educated in Constantinople, the greatest city of his era, and upon returning home he set about transforming Bulgaria into an intellectual rival to Byzantium.

His court at Preslav became a flourishing centre of theology, philosophy, translation, and original literature. Scholars composed in Church Slavonic. Architects raised monuments. Illuminated manuscripts were produced in palace scriptoria. This era is rightly known as the Golden Age of Bulgarian culture — a period when Bulgaria was not on the margins of European civilisation, but among its most active contributors.

The Gift of Letters: The Cyrillic Alphabet

Among Bulgaria's most enduring contributions to human civilisation is the Cyrillic alphabet. Developed by the disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius — most notably Saints Clement and Naum at the literary schools of Preslav and Ohrid — Cyrillic was formally adopted and promoted across Bulgarian lands during the reign of Tsar Boris I in the late ninth century. The Bulgarian state did not merely receive this alphabet; it actively cultivated, institutionalised, and disseminated it throughout the Slavic world.

From Bulgaria, Cyrillic reached Serbia, Kievan Rus, and eventually the vast territories of Russia and beyond. Today, over 250 million people write in Cyrillic-derived scripts — a living, daily legacy of a decision made in medieval Bulgaria more than eleven centuries ago. When a Russian schoolchild picks up a pen, or a Serbian poet writes a verse, they are in some small measure writing in an alphabet that Bulgaria gave to the world.

The Second Bulgarian Empire: Resilience and Revival

The First Bulgarian Empire was conquered by Byzantium in 1018 after decades of fierce resistance. Yet even occupation could not erase Bulgarian identity. In 1185, two Bulgarian nobles — the brothers Asen and Peter — launched a successful uprising from the city of Tarnovo, and the Bulgarian state was restored as the Second Bulgarian Empire. It was a remarkable act of national will: a people reclaiming their statehood after nearly two centuries of foreign rule.

The Second Empire reached its territorial and political peak under Tsar Ivan Asen II (reigned 1218–1241), whose victory at the Battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230 over the Despotate of Epirus secured Bulgarian dominance across much of the Balkan peninsula, from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. Tarnovo, the new capital, grew into a prominent political, religious, and cultural centre — sometimes styled the "Third Rome" by Bulgarian chroniclers. The Bulgarian Patriarchate was restored in 1235, reaffirming the spiritual as well as political independence of the nation.

The fourteenth century brought a second cultural flourishing, centred on Tarnovo and linked to the Hesychast movement within Orthodox Christianity. Bulgarian writers, artists, and theologians produced works of lasting significance. The Boyana Church near Sofia, with its remarkably realistic frescoes dating from 1259, stands today as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a testament to Bulgarian artistic achievement in this period.

Five Centuries of Endurance: Identity Under Ottoman Rule

In 1396, the Second Bulgarian Empire fell to Ottoman conquest after the Battle of Nicopolis, beginning a period of foreign rule that would last nearly five centuries. And yet — Bulgaria did not disappear. What the sword could not destroy, culture preserved.

The monasteries became the keepers of Bulgarian identity. Rila Monastery, founded in the tenth century by Saint Ivan of Rila and designated today as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, retained its Bulgarian clergy throughout the Ottoman period and continued to hold services in the Bulgarian language when many other institutions had been brought under Greek Orthodox control. Its library housed manuscripts; its walls sheltered monks who copied, taught, and prayed in Bulgarian. It was, in the words of the UNESCO designation, a symbol of the awareness of Slavic cultural identity following centuries of occupation.

The flame of national consciousness was rekindled in 1762, when a Bulgarian monk named Paisius of Hilendar, working at Mount Athos, completed his Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya — a sweeping history of the Bulgarian people intended to remind his countrymen of who they were and where they came from. Historians regard this work as the beginning of the Bulgarian National Revival, a century-long cultural and political awakening that would eventually lead to liberation.

In April 1876, Bulgarians launched a large-scale uprising against Ottoman rule. The uprising was suppressed with brutal force, and the international outcry that followed — amplified by voices across Europe including William Ewart Gladstone — created the political conditions for military intervention. Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877, and following decisive engagements including the Battle of Shipka Pass, Bulgarian statehood was restored.

Liberation and Continuity: 1878

In 1878, following the Russo-Turkish War, Bulgaria regained its sovereignty through the Treaty of San Stefano and the subsequent Treaty of Berlin. The Liberation of Bulgaria was not the birth of something new — it was the return of something ancient. The same name, the same language, the same Cyrillic letters that monks had preserved by candlelight for five centuries now appeared on the documents of a modern sovereign state.

The continuity was not merely symbolic. It was linguistic, cultural, religious, and — in the deepest sense — human. The Bulgarian people had carried their identity through conquest and occupation and emerged on the other side still recognisably themselves.

Still Here

Bulgaria today is a member of the European Union and NATO — a modern democracy rooted in one of Europe's oldest and most tested state traditions. Since 681 AD, the name on the map has not changed. The Cyrillic alphabet, shaped in medieval Bulgarian literary schools, is still taught to every child in Bulgarian classrooms. The monasteries that sheltered identity through five centuries of occupation still welcome pilgrims. The history that Paisius wrote to remind a people of their worth is still read.

Thirteen centuries of wars, empires, occupations, uprisings, and rebirths, and Bulgaria is still here — not as a relic, but as a living nation with ancient roots and a story that is still being written.

That is what continuity looks like.

That is Bulgaria.