Avars and Bulgars in Italy

A new line of exceptionally able Bulgar rulers started with Krum (regnabar c. 803-14) whose assumption of the title Khngan announced him as heir to the Avar power recently broken by Charlemagne. Krum came of the Kutrigur Bulgars of Pannonia who had entered Europe in Justinian's reign and became more or less subject to the Avars from 567.

His sweeping conquests brought a considerable Christian population in the North Balkans for the first time under Bulgarian rule. He removed many Christian craftsmen into the interior of Bulgaria. Even quite high-ranking Byzantine officials and army officers appear to have remained, more or less voluntarily, in Bulgarian employ.

Mavi Boncuk |



AVARS AND BULGARS

In the 6th century CE, a part of the Bulgar tribes living the North Pontic steppe had joined with the Avars, and had settled together with them in Pannonia in the later half of the 6th century. Avar power seems to have extended also over a significant part of the North Pontic steppe. According to some authors, within the Avar Kaganat the Bulgars enjoyed a somewhat autonomous status. Yet ten-sions between Bulgars and Avars began to develop particularly after the Avar defeat at Constantinople in 626. In the struggle that followed, the Avars finally re-established the upper hand, which led to three Bulgarian exoduses from Avaria. The first two were directed to Italy, the third to Macedonia.

a) The first Bulgarian exodus from Avaria ended in tragedy. According to Fredegar's chronicle, in 630 (or 631-632) an insurrection broke out in Avaria, when (as it seems) the throne was vacant and the Bulgars and Avars were supporting opposing candidates for succession. The Bulgars were defeated; some 9.000 of them asked for refuge from the Frankish king Dagobert. On the king's intervention the Bavarians agreed to accept them, but they later attacked the Bulgars refugees and killed almost all of them. Alzek (or Altsek), the leader of the remaining 700 Bulgars, eventually was to find refuge with the Carantanian prince Valuh "in marea (sic) Vinedorum".

b) Three decades later (c/a 663), Alzek or more probably another Bulgar leader by the same name, came - apparently "for an uncertain reason" - together with his soldiers, to the Langobard king Grim-wald (d. 671). He offered to do military service in the Langobard land and to settle in it. This is actu-ally a typical request of land for military service. Grimwald sent Alzek and his Bulgars to his son Romwald, in Beneventum. The latter assigned to the Bulgars some "spacious", but deserted lands around the towns of Sepinum, Bovianum (? Boiano) and Isernia, in the present Italy region of Molise. Alzek became, in fact, the local "gastald". The report of this episode, given by Paul the Dea-con, concludes by claiming that Bulgars still live in the area, and that, although they speak "Latin", they have not forgotten the use of their own language. This would mean that they preserved their lan-guage for about two hundred years after their arrival in Italy (i.e. till the time when Paul was writing).

For those that wish to check the original, Paul's actual text reads as follows:

"Per haec tempora Vulgarum dux Alzeco nomine, incertum quam ob causam, a sua gente digres-sus, Italiam pacifice introiens, cum omni sui ducatus exercitu ad regem Grimuald venit, ei se ser-viturum atque in eius patria habitaturum promittens. Quem ille ad Romualdum filium Beneventum dirigens, ut ei cum suo popolo loca ad habitandum concedere deberet, praecepit. Quos Romualdus dux gratanter excipiens, eisdem spatiosa ad habitandum loca, quae usque ad illud tempus deserta erant, contribuit, scilicet Sepinum, Bovianum et Iserniam et alias cum suis territoriis civitates, ip-sumque Alzeconem, mutato dignitatis nomine, de duce gastaldium vocitari praecepit. Qui usque hodie in his ut diximus locis habitantes, quamquam et Latine loquantur, linguae tamen propriae usum minime amiserunt." (Historia Langobardorum, V: 29)


Molise in 1986, there were also still some Croat and Albanian villages. The guidebooks mentioned the settlement of the Bulgars during the reign of Grimwald (or Grimoaldo in Italian). The Molisan village of Cantalupo may have been the centre of Bulgar settlement. It name had supposedly come from "khan-teleped", which was explained as "the base of the khan" (see: Franco Romagnolo - "Nel Molise vivono ancora: albanesi, bulgari e croati", Naš jezik/La nostra lingua. Rome, 1970, 5/6, p. 9).

The third "Bulgar" exodus from Avaria often mentioned refers to a mixed case. Byzantine captives whom the Avars had settled near Sirmium (today Sremski Mitrovci in Serbia) had apparently devel-oped into a "new people". Hence, around 680 the Avar khan assigned them a leader - the Bulgarian Kuver. However, Kuver raised a rebellion, defeated the Avars and led his people to a new settlement area in Macedonia, located to the northwest of Thessalonica. Yet on arriving to this new location, many of the people fled to Thessalonica, Constantinople and the cities of Thrace (as said - "to their native cities"). Kuver attempted to forbid such desertion. He tried to negotiate with the Byzantine em-peror and at the same time attempted to gain control of Thessalonica - with no success. It has been said that the leader Kuver, was in fact one of Kubrat's sons, which links this story to the events sur-rounding the rise and fall of Great Bulgaria in the North Pontic area.

BREAK-UP OF GREAT BULGARIA

The Bulgars of the North Pontic area, at least the tribes west of the Don seem also to have fallen under the political control of the Avars in the 6th century. However, in the first part of the 7th century, under the leadership of Kubrat of the Dulo clan (a grouping that most certainly originated farther east within the Turkic Kaganat), the Pontic Bulgars freed themselves first from the Avars and then from the Turkic Kaganat itself. Conflicts with the Turkic Khazars (among whom the formerly dominant Ashina clan had taken power), led to the destruction of Great Bulgaria shortly after Kubrat's death. The five sons of Kubrat then chose each a different solution:

Around 660. Batbayan, the eldest son, who ruled probably among the Onogurs (i.e. "ten arrows" - "ten tribes") in the east part of Great Bulgaria, recognised Khazar overlordship. The Magyar tribes had most probably been in some close ties with the Onogurs at this time, and hence they also fell un-der Khazar authority (the later name *ugor ? Hungar stemming from the Onogurs, while the link with the Khazars being one of the main reasons why the Byzantine writers identified the Magyars as "Turks" - i.e. Turks and Khazars are sometimes equated in the Byzantine texts).

Kubrat's second son, Kotrag, led his people to the "Black Islands" in Middle Volga, where finally by the 10th century the Volga Bulgar state arose.

The third son, Asparukh, seems to have opposed the Khazars in the lands between the Dnjepr and Dnjestr, before he led his people to the lower Danube, where the Byzantine sources first mention this particular Bulgar group in 681. Some say that Asparukh's Bulgars was mainly composed of Kutrigur tribes, who were already active in the Balkans a few centuries earlier. At any rate, the further history and final linguistic assimilation of Askparukh's people in the local Slavic population is the legacy of Danubian Bulgaria.

The fourth son, as it appears, was the already mentioned Kuver, who had fled with some of his people to Pannonia, among the Avars, before the episode of insurrection and migration to Macedonia. A part of the Pannonian Bulgars would finally join Asparukh's group.

There is also mention of a fifth son, who led his clans to Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna in Italy, i.e. to the Pentapolis, where these people would be settled and converted to Christianity by the local Byzantine authorities. This Bulgar group is to be distinguished from the Bulgars that Grimwald and his son settled in Beneventum (Molise). In fact both the Langobards and Byzantines, being most of the time in mutual conflict, where settling various immigrant groups along the military frontiers in areas relatively near the border of Langobard Beneventum, the Byzantines had brought in Slavic colonists, who like the Bulgars in the Langobard area were permitted to keep their local leaders. There is some question of whether or not Slavic words survived from this time in the local dialects of Gargano (as was at one time suggested by Gerhard Rohlfs - see: ("Ignote colonie slave sulle coste del Gargano", in: G. Rohlf, Studi e ricerche su lingua e dialetti d'Italia. Firenze, 1972).

It should be added that toponyms in Italy that may suggest a Bulgar presence - e.g. Bolgare in Lom-bardy, Bolgheri in Tuscany and Monte di Bulgheria - are probably not related to the earliest Bulgar migrations, but either to late Mediaeval immigrations from the Balkans (when the Slavic and Albanian presence was also established or re-established), or to earlier Christian heretics (e.g. in the 12-13th centuries the later were called Bougres in France, from when the English coarsity "bugger" de-rives). There is also a small possibility that some such toponyms in Italy may come from the Albanian word bulgër or bujgër, denoting a type of plant.