PETAR MUTAFCHIEV ~ BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHY

Author: Veselin Vulchev

Editor's Note: Professor Petar Mutafchiev is an outstanding bulgarian historian and medievalist from the first half of the 20th century. After death of V. Zlatarski in 1936, the second best scholar of academic history in Bulgaria continued the role of his predecessor right to the end of WWII when he himself — i.e., Mutafchiev — died at the age of 60 from undetermined causes of death. The bulgarian scientific community was rather slow and after several communist coups was never able to restore a magnitude of the order of the above scholars. Both Zlatarski and Mutafchiev left historical volumes that were finished posthumously; also, they left a heritage of thousands of pages — published and unpublished — scattered in various sources and archives. It has been difficult to estimate from the writer of these lines what has been authorized and what re-edited from many subsequent editions of P. Mutafchiev's works. The most important seems to remain the original edition from year 1943 of the "History of Bulgaria", in two volumes, Hemus Publishing. The daughter of the titular, Prof. Vera Mutafchieva, has become herself a well-known expert at Osmanistics in recent times, ditto.

CONSPECTUS OF THE "HISTORY OF BULGARIA" - 1943

Volume One: First Bulgarian Tsardom

Foreword

I. Introduction: Prehistory and ancient period in the past of the Balkan Peninsula

1. Prehistoric culture in Bulgarian lands.

2. Thracians and Illyrians. Political organizations by Thracians and Illyrians. The Celts on the Balkan Peninsula.

3. The Balkan Peninsula under Roman rule.

4. The great migration of peoples and the decline of the Roman power in the Danubian-Balkan lands. Goths and Huns.

5. Reasons for the preservation of the Eastern Roman Empire.

II. Slavs, Bulgars and Avars

1. Original motherland and resettlement of the Slavs.

2. Way of life and culture of the ancient Slavs.

3. Age of Slavic invasions over the Balkan Peninsula.

4. Bulgars, origins and tribes.

5. Avars. Origins and way of life. Avar Empire.

III. Age of Slavic migration in the Balkan Peninsula

1. Transformation of the Eastern Roman Empire into Byzantine.

2. Resettlement of the Slavs to the peninsula. Lands taken by Bulgarian and Serbian Slavs.

3. Fate of the old population of the Balkan lands.

4. Byzantium and the Balkan Slavs in the first decades of the resettlement.

IV. Background and beginning of the Bulgarian state on the Balkan Peninsula

1. Creation and disintegration of Kubrat’s Great Bulgaria.

2. Establishment of the Bulgarian state on the Balkan Peninsula. Isperikh and Kuber.

3. Way of life, culture, state structure and military organization of the Bulgars.

4. The last years from the reign of Tervel. Beginning of the state’s expansion.

V. The state crisis in Bulgaria during the VIII century

1. Byzantium at the first iconoclastic emperors. Campaigns of Konstantin V against Bulgaria and the created by them internal war.

2. Overcoming of the external danger and first steps towards internal peace by Telerig and Kardam.

VI. The state upsurge of Bulgaria in the first half of IX century

1. The reign of Krum.

2. The Bulgar reaction at the close successors: Omurtag and Malamir.

3. End of the anti-Slavic reaction. Pressian and the joining of the Macedonian lands to the Bulgarian state.

VII. Conversion of the Bulgarian people

1. Boris I (852-888). Foreign-political relation.

2. Christianity in the Bulgarian lands until the middle of the IX century.

3. Reasons for the acceptance of the Christianity.

4. The Bulgarian ecclesiastical question in IX century.

5. Legislative work of Boris and cares for the structure of the Bulgarian church.

VIII. Beginning of the Slavic writing in Bulgaria

1. Cyril and Methodius. Life and work.

2. Kliment and Naum.

IX. The age of Simeon

1. Beginning. First war with Byzantium. Arrival of the Magyars.

2. Economical and cultural upsurge of Bulgaria.

3. Second period.

X. Decline of the Bulgaria Tsardom

1. Petar. The truce with Byzantium and its consequences. Rebellions against Serbs and Magyars.

2. The social question in Bulgaria during the X century.

3. Spiritual state of the Bulgarian nation. Seclusion (hermitage) and Bogomil movement.

XI. Falling of the Preslav’s Tsardom

1. End of the forty-year peace with Byzantium.

2. The Russian Knyaz Svetoslav in Bulgaria.

3. The battle with Byzantium. Falling of Eastern Bulgarian under Byzantine rule.

XII. Ohrid’s Tsardom

1. Beginning and first period of its wars with Byzantium.

2.Tsar Samuil.

3. Falling of Ohrid’s Tsardom.

4. Character and structure of Orhid’s Tsardom.

***

Volume Two: Second Bulgarian Tsardom

I. The Bulgarians under Byzantine yoke

1. Administrative and ecclesiastical structure of the Bulgarian lands. Position of the Bulgarian nation under foreign rule.

2. Attempts for liberation. Insurrections of Petar Delian and Georgi Voiteh.

3. Pechenegs, Uzes and Kumans in the Bulgarian lands. Magyars, Normans and Crusaders.

4. A new rise of Bogomilism and seclusion in the Bulgarian lands.

5. Ethnical changes in the Balkan lands in XI-XII century.

II. Battle for liberation from Byzantine yoke

1. The European South-East in the end of XII century.

2. Preparation and beginning of the Bulgarian insurrection by Petar and Assen.

3. The question for the participation of the Wallachians in the Bulgarian liberation movement.

4. Second period in the liberation movement.

III. Bulgaria in the reign of Kaloyan

1. Continuing the battle against Byzantium. Ivanko and Dobromir Hrus.

2. Relations with the Magyars. Creation of the Tsarigrad’s Latin Empire. Ecclesiastic union with Rome.

3. The fight with Latins and Greeks.

IV. Boril

1. The temporary decline of Bulgaria.

2. Strez and the attempt of the Serbs to settle in Macedonia.

3. Internal relations and an upsurge of the Bogomil movement.

V. Age of Ivan Assen II (1218-1241)

1. The Balkan Peninsula in the first quarter of XIII century.

2. Bulgaria - the only great power in the European South-East. The battle of Klokotnitsa and its consequences.

3. Structure of the Tarnovo Tsardom.

4. Relations with Latins and Niceans. Restoration of the Bulgarian Patriarchate.

VI. The last Assens

1. Koloman and Mikhail Assen.

2. Konstantin Assen.

VII. Internal situation of Bulgaria during the XIII century

1. State organization and social relations.

VIII. The civil war in Bulgaria. The Tatar dominion and the political disintegration of the Bulgarian lands

1. The rule of Tsaritsa Maria.

2. Ivaylo

3. Reign of Georgi I Terterius.

4. Smilets.

IX. Attempts for restoration of the state’s might

1. TeodorSvetoslav.

2. Mikhail Shishman.

3. Ivan Aleksander.

4. Spiritual life in the Second Bulgarian Tsardom.

X. Arrival and early conquests of the Ottomans

1. The dawn of the Ottoman expansion.

2. Arrival of the Ottomans.

3. Momchil.

4. Sources for the Ottoman actions on the Balkans.

XI. Conquest of the southern and western Bulgarian lands

1. The Ottomans set foot in Europe.

2. The first wave of the invasion.

3. Silence from the Ottomans.

4. Battle of Chernomen.

5. The second wave of the invasion.

XII. Conquest of the northern Bulgarian lands

1. The end of the Tsardom of Tarnovo

2. The end of the Tsardom of Bdin

3. Consequences of the Ottoman expansion.

XIII. Bulgarian lands in the Ottoman state (XV-XVIII century)

1. Early forms of the Ottoman military organization.

2. Basic institutions of landowning by the Ottomans.

3. The Ottoman centralism.

(unfinished)

Picture 1: Sample picture material on the text above.

(i). Petar Mutafchiev was a rare paragon of style, expediency and professionalism among the scholarly circles of "capitalist" Bulgaria. Here we see a photograph with his wife Nadejda — i.e., mother of Vera — taken sometime in the mid-1920s.