The Bulgars who gave their name to the state arrived in the Balkans during the 7th century as a Turkic nomadic people from the Eurasian steppes. Khan Asparuh led these tribes across the Danube River around 680-681 AD, defeating a Byzantine army and forcing Emperor Constantine IV to recognize Bulgarian authority south of the river in 681. This treaty marks the foundation of the First Bulgarian Empire. The Bulgars represented a minority ruling class that gradually merged with the Slavic peoples already settled throughout the region, who vastly outnumbered them. By the 9th century, the Slavic language and culture had absorbed the Bulgars, though the state retained their name.
Tsar Boris I converted Bulgaria to Christianity in 864, aligning initially with Constantinople rather than Rome. This decision proved consequential for the cultural trajectory of the state. Boris invited the disciples of Cyril and Methodius—Byzantine missionaries who had created the Glagolitic alphabet for Slavic speakers—to establish educational centers in Bulgaria. Clement of Ohrid and Naum of Preslav refined this system into the Cyrillic script at the Preslav Literary School and Ohrid Literary School during the 890s. Bulgaria became the first Slavic state to possess a written language and a native liturgy, transforming Pliska and later Preslav into centers of Slavic Christian scholarship.
Tsar Simeon I the Great, who ruled from 893 to 927, expanded Bulgarian territory to its greatest extent. His armies reached the walls of Constantinople multiple times, and he claimed the title of Emperor rather than Khan. Simeon patronized arts and letters extensively—his reign is often termed the Golden Age of medieval Bulgarian culture. The empire stretched from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, encompassing much of present-day Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, and parts of Greece and Romania. Simeon died in 927, and the empire fragmented under pressure from the Byzantines, who fully conquered it by 1018.
Byzantine rule lasted until 1185, when brothers Peter and Asen led a successful revolt, establishing the Second Bulgarian Empire with its capital at Veliko Tarnovo. The Tsarevets Fortress, perched on a hilltop surrounded on three sides by the Yantra River, became the seat of Bulgarian tsars and the patriarchate. Under Tsar Ivan Asen II, who ruled from 1218 to 1241, the empire regained much of its former territorial extent. Ivan Asen defeated the forces of the Latin Empire at the Battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230, expanding Bulgarian control southward to the Aegean Sea. His 1230 inscription at the Church of the Forty Martyrs in Veliko Tarnovo lists his domains: Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, and the entire Wallachian land.
The Second Empire produced architectural monuments that still define Bulgarian identity. The Boyana Church near Sofia received its interior frescoes in 1259, representing one of the most accomplished examples of medieval European painting. These images departed from rigid Byzantine conventions, showing naturalistic faces with individual expressions. The rock-hewn churches at Ivanovo, carved into cliffs along the Rusenski Lom River, date from the 13th and 14th centuries and contain frescoes commissioned by Tsar Ivan Alexander.
Ottoman forces began raiding Bulgarian territories in the 1340s. The Battle of Maritsa in 1371 destroyed a Serbian-led coalition, opening the Balkans to systematic conquest. Tsar Ivan Shishman lost Sofia in 1382, and Veliko Tarnovo fell after a three-month siege in 1393. The Ottomans executed Shishman in 1395, ending the Second Bulgarian Empire. The northwestern fortress of Vidin held out until 1396 under Ivan Sratsimir. Bulgaria entered nearly five centuries of Ottoman administration, during which the Bulgarian nobility ceased to exist as a class, the patriarchate dissolved, and the language survived primarily in rural communities.
Ottoman authorities governed Bulgaria through the millet system, which organized subjects by religious community rather than ethnicity. The Orthodox Christian population, including Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs, fell under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople after the Ottomans suppressed the independent Bulgarian archbishopric in 1767. Greek clergy controlled most bishoprics in Bulgarian-speaking regions, conducting services in Greek and administering education that emphasized Hellenic identity. This created a dual pressure: conversion to Islam offered social advancement and tax relief, while remaining Christian increasingly meant identification with Greek rather than Bulgarian culture.
Some Bulgarians did convert to Islam, particularly in the Rhodope Mountains and parts of northeastern Bulgaria. The Pomaks—Bulgarian-speaking Muslims—emerged during the 17th and 18th centuries, though the exact mechanisms and timeline of their conversion remain debated. Other communities maintained Christianity while participating in Ottoman administrative and military structures. Certain towns, like Koprivshtitsa in the Sredna Gora mountains, gained special tax privileges by serving as collection centers for imperial revenues, allowing merchant classes to accumulate wealth while retaining Christian identity.
Paisius of Hilendar, a monk at the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos, completed his "Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya" (Slavonic-Bulgarian History) in 1762. This short text, which Paisius copied by hand and distributed throughout Bulgarian lands, rejected Greek cultural supremacy and recounted the medieval Bulgarian empires. Paisius addressed his readers directly: "Know your own kind and language." The work circulated in manuscript form for decades before its first printing in 1844, becoming foundational to the Bulgarian National Revival. This movement, spanning roughly 1762 to 1878, sought to restore Bulgarian language, education, and ecclesiastical independence.
The struggle for a separate Bulgarian church from the Greek-dominated patriarchate intensified through the 1850s and 1860s. Bulgarians in Constantinople and major towns refused to commemorate the Greek patriarch during services and established independent congregations. The Ottoman government, seeking to balance various Christian communities, issued a firman in 1870 establishing the Bulgarian Exarchate as an autonomous church structure. This granted Bulgarians control over their own bishops, theological education, and parishes in regions where two-thirds of the Orthodox population voted for exarchate rather than patriarchate jurisdiction. The move provoked a schism with Constantinople, which declared the exarchate schismatic in 1872, but it consolidated Bulgarian identity along linguistic rather than purely geographical lines.
Revolutionary committees formed throughout the 1860s and 1870s, advocating armed rebellion against Ottoman rule. Vasil Levski created a network of local committees across Bulgaria between 1869 and 1872, envisioning a democratic republic encompassing all ethnic groups. Ottoman authorities captured Levski near Lovech in December 1872 and hanged him in Sofia in February 1873. His execution elevated him to the status of national martyr. Hristo Botev, a poet and revolutionary, led a detachment of about 200 armed emigrants from Romania into Bulgaria in May 1876 to support the ongoing April Uprising. Botev died in a skirmish with Ottoman troops on Okolchik Peak in the Stara Planina on June 2, 1876, at age 28.
The April Uprising itself began on April 20, 1876, in Koprivshtitsa, when insurgents killed a Turkish official. The revolt spread to several regions but remained poorly coordinated. The First Revolutionary District around Panagyurishte and Koprivshtitsa sustained fighting for several days before Ottoman regular and irregular forces suppressed the rebellion. The suppression involved the destruction of villages and massacres of civilian populations. Contemporary accounts by foreign journalists, particularly American journalist Januarius MacGahan and British diplomat Walter Baring, reported widespread atrocities. MacGahan's dispatches from Batak, a village in the Rhodopes where he documented mass graves and destroyed homes in July 1876, circulated widely in European and American newspapers.
Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in April 1877, citing the treatment of Balkan Christians. Russian forces crossed the Danube in June 1877 and advanced south, accompanied by Bulgarian volunteer units. The Siege of Pleven, where Ottoman forces under Osman Pasha held defensive positions from July to December 1877, stalled the Russian advance for five months. After Pleven's fall, Russian troops crossed the Stara Planina in winter conditions and advanced toward Constantinople. Fighting continued until January 1878, when the Ottomans requested an armistice. Russian casualties exceeded 200,000 dead from combat and disease.