Bulgaria wins Byzantine recognition and a state is born in the Balkans

Story: 681 C.E.  |  Last updated: January 1, 0681

In 681 C.E., a treaty settled what warfare had already decided. The Byzantine Empire, one of the most powerful states in the world, formally recognized the right of the Bulgars and their Slavic allies to govern lands south of the Danube River. A new political entity — the First Bulgarian Empire — had come into existence, and the map of southeastern Europe would never look quite the same again.

Key findings

• First Bulgarian Empire: The state was formally recognized by Byzantium in 681 C.E. after Bulgar leader Asparuh defeated the army of Emperor Constantine IV, securing Bulgar settlement rights in the northeastern Balkans.
• Byzantine recognition: The treaty forced Byzantium to pay annual tribute to the new state — an extraordinary concession from an empire that considered itself the heir of Rome and the natural ruler of the Balkans.
• Bulgar-Slavic alliance: The victory over the Byzantines likely involved cooperation between the Bulgar cavalry and local South Slavic tribes already settled in the region, making the new state a multi-ethnic political project from the start.

Who were the Bulgars and the Slavs?

The Bulgars were semi-nomadic Turkic warrior peoples who had flourished across the Pontic-Caspian steppe and the Volga region during the 7th century C.E. Skilled cavalry fighters, they had long navigated the complex politics of the steppe, forming alliances, absorbing other groups, and clashing with larger powers. The group led by Asparuh moved south and west, eventually crossing the Danube into territory the Byzantines claimed but no longer effectively controlled.

The Slavs had a different story. Indo-European in origin, South Slavic peoples had been migrating into the Balkans in large numbers since the 6th century C.E., filling the power vacuum left by a Byzantine Empire stretched thin by wars with Persia. By the time Asparuh arrived, Slavic-speaking communities were already embedded throughout much of what is now northeastern Bulgaria.

The alliance between these two groups — one a steppe warrior aristocracy, the other a settled agricultural people — became the social foundation of the new state. Over the following two centuries, the ruling Bulgar class and the broader Slavic population gradually merged, with the Slavic language eventually prevailing as the common tongue. Out of that fusion, a distinct Bulgarian identity emerged.

A state built between empires

The First Bulgarian Empire existed in one of the most contested geographic zones in the medieval world — the Balkans, where Byzantine, Slavic, Avar, and steppe power all collided. Its survival, let alone its growth, was far from guaranteed.

Yet the new state proved remarkably durable. In its first major act of regional significance, Bulgarian forces helped break the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople in 717–718 C.E., destroying the Arab army and blocking what could have been a catastrophic westward advance. The moment illustrated something important: Bulgaria was not simply a threat to Byzantium. It was also, at times, its indispensable neighbor.

The two powers fought, traded, negotiated, and borrowed from each other across generations. Byzantine cultural influence ran deep, culminating in Bulgaria’s adoption of Christianity in 864 C.E. — a decision that reshaped the state’s identity, its diplomatic alignments, and its place in the wider world.

The Cyrillic alphabet and a cultural revolution

Perhaps the most enduring contribution of the First Bulgarian Empire to human civilization was not military but literary. After Christianization, Bulgaria became the leading cultural center of Slavic Europe. Disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius — the Byzantine monks who had created the Glagolitic script for Slavic liturgical use — found protection and patronage at the Bulgarian court.

In the capital Preslav, scholars developed the Early Cyrillic alphabet from that earlier script. It was a practical, elegant system suited to the sounds of Slavic languages. The literature produced in Old Church Slavonic — the standardized literary language — began spreading northward and eastward with remarkable speed. Old Church Slavonic became the lingua franca of much of Eastern Europe, a shared intellectual and religious language that connected communities from the Adriatic to the steppes of Russia.

The Cyrillic script today is used by more than 250 million people across dozens of languages, including Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, and Mongolian. That reach traces back, in a direct and documented line, to the workshops and monasteries of the First Bulgarian Empire.

Lasting impact

The recognition of 681 C.E. set in motion a sequence of consequences that still shape the world. The Bulgarian state gave institutional support to the Cyrillo-Methodian literary tradition at a moment when it might otherwise have been suppressed. That support helped lock in Old Church Slavonic as the sacred and administrative language of Orthodox Slavic civilization for centuries.

The independent Bulgarian Patriarchate, recognized in 927 C.E., was the first autocephalous Slavic church — a model for ecclesiastical independence that other Slavic peoples would later follow. Under Tsar Simeon I, Bulgaria reached its greatest territorial extent, stretching from the Danube Bend to the Black Sea and from the Dnieper River to the Adriatic. At its peak, it was among the most powerful states in Europe, capable of besieging Constantinople itself.

The empire’s gradual merger of Bulgar and Slavic peoples also offers an early example of state-driven ethnogenesis — the process by which a political entity shapes a shared ethnic and cultural identity over time. The Bulgarian nation, in the sense we recognize it today, was forged in that crucible.

Blindspots and limits

The historical record of the First Bulgarian Empire is filtered largely through Byzantine sources, which were often hostile and self-serving. The perspectives of the Slavic farming communities who lived through the Bulgar conquest and integration — and who had little say in the political decisions made above them — are almost entirely absent from surviving documents. The merging of Bulgar and Slavic cultures was a process that took generations and almost certainly involved coercion and displacement alongside cooperation. The famous blinding of 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners by Emperor Basil II in 1014 C.E. — a deliberate act of mass cruelty — is a reminder that the centuries of Bulgarian-Byzantine interaction carried genuine human costs on both sides.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Wikipedia — First Bulgarian Empire

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