The first bulgarian state formations Zufar miftakhov

1. General remarks.

2. The Huns’ movement from the Volga to the West and its consequences.

3. Creation of the Hun state.

4. Altynoba — the first ancient Bulgarian state.

History in some sense is a sacred book of the peoples...

N. M. Karamzin.

1. General remarks

The material, laid out in previous lectures, allows us to define the initial status, from which we start the study of the initial stage of the ancient Bulgar state.

From the beginning of the first century of our era (between 15 and 47 AD) in the Middle Volga basin, on the territory of modern Samara province, on the banks of the river Kinel was a princedom, Bulyar (initial name Atil). It was established by chieftain Kama-Tarkhan, who came with Utigurs, closely related to Bulgars, from the regions of Mongolia.

By the middle of the 4th c. AD direct descendants of Sumerians settled in the strategically two most important regions of the Caucasus. One group of Bulgars settled in the plains of Northern Dagestan, and another settled in the territory of Caucasian Albania (present Azerbaijan), south of the Derbent pass. The Caucasus Bulgars in those times were called by a general name, Burdjans. Later we will call them Dagestany Bulgars.

The process of disintegration of the Hun state stretched for many centuries and resulted in mass resettlement of Hun peoples or their splinters in the regions of Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Volga basin, Northern Caucasus, Northern Pontic and Meotida. However, approximately until the 60s of the 4th c., the waves of Hun settlement west of Volga had incidental character.

Since 360 AD the historical fate of the Bulgars was directly connected with Hun peoples, we have, if briefly, to tell the history of Huns from the middle of the 4th c. AD. L.N. Gumilev wrote:

“... The end of an ethnos does not mean physical destruction of itsmembers, but only of a system, abandoning of the tradition and a possibilityfor the remaining individuals to enter the world of the other ethnosystems”(No 196). As an ethnos Huns lived for almost 1,5 thousand years, and then this ethnos fragmented, giving a beginning to new ethnoses or expanding the already existing ethnosystems. A significant part of the Huns was included in the forming Bulgarian ethnosystem.

What information was preserved on this subject in historical sources?

Group of the European sources. Ptolemaus Claudius (bornafter 83 AD, died after 161 AD), the outstanding Alexandria astronomer, mathematician and geographer left descriptions of the Hun peoples, who in the end of the 1st —beginning of the 2nd century were the first to reach the Dnieper.

More detailed information on the Huns was left by Ammianus Marcellinus (4-th c.), Paul Orozy (beginning of the 5 c.), Priskos (5 c.), Jordanes (6 c.). They not only wrote about the Huns’ actions in Europe, about their appearance, but also tried to figure out where they came from and where they lived before.

Group of the Bulgarian sources. The information on the initial stage of the Hun’s campaign west of the Volga, about Bulgarian participation in the Hun’s campaigns, about the process of inclusion of Hun clans and peoples in the Bulgarian ethnosystem is contained in the Gazi Bardjwork “Gazi Bardj tarikhy” (“Annals of Gazi Bardj”) (end of the 20s —middle of the 40s of the 13th c.), in the fragments of the Bulgarian annals published in the Bakhshi Iman book “Djafgar tarikhy, Vol. 1, Collection of Bulgarian annals” (Orenburg, 1993).