Second Bulgarian Empire

The Second Bulgarian Empire was the medieval Bulgarian state revived by a revolt against Byzantine rule in 1185 and ended by the Ottoman conquest in 1396. Ruled by tsars from Tarnovo, in the hills of north-central Bulgaria, it was for a time the strongest power in the Balkans, and its capital became a leading centre of Orthodox Christian art and learning.

The Byzantine emperor Basil II had conquered the first Bulgarian state in 1018, and although Bulgarian language and culture survived, heavy taxation fed repeated uprisings. In 1185 two noble brothers from Tarnovo, Theodore and Asen, fell out with Emperor Isaac II Angelos and called their people to arms, displaying an icon of Saint Demetrius they said had come to support the Bulgarian cause. Theodore was crowned as Peter IV, and the lands north of the Balkan Mountains rose with them, helped by Cuman horsemen from beyond the Danube. Byzantine campaigns failed, and after a heavy imperial defeat at the Tryavna Pass in 1190 Asen took the crown as Ivan Asen I.

Ivan Asen was murdered by a cousin in 1196 and Peter within a year, and their youngest brother Kaloyan took power in 1197. Seeking recognition for his title, he negotiated with Pope Innocent III and was crowned by a papal legate, while the Bulgarian Church kept its Orthodox rites. In 1204 the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople and founded a Latin Empire, which laid claim to Bulgarian lands. On 14 April 1205 Kaloyan defeated the crusaders at Adrianople and captured their emperor, Baldwin I.

After the weak reign of Boril, Ivan Asen II, son of the first Ivan Asen, took the throne in 1218. In 1230 he crushed the army of Epirus at Klokotnitsa, and towns from Adrianople to Durazzo on the Adriatic accepted his rule. In 1235 the restored Bulgarian Patriarchate won recognition from the Orthodox world, and Tarnovo began to be celebrated as a second Constantinople. Shortly before his death in 1241 he defeated part of a Mongol army returning from the Mongol invasion of Europe.

His young heirs could not hold these gains. Nicaea, the Byzantine successor state, took much of Thrace and Macedonia, Hungary occupied the north-west, and the Golden Horde raided repeatedly and drew tribute. In 1277 a peasant uprising led by the swineherd Ivaylo defeated the Mongols and killed Tsar Constantine Tikh, and Ivaylo briefly reigned before being driven out and killed. Mongol influence over Tarnovo ended only in 1300, when Theodore Svetoslav overthrew the Mongol ruler Chaka.

The fourteenth century brought partial recovery. Theodore Svetoslav made peace with the Byzantine Empire in 1307, and wheat exports brought prosperity. Under Ivan Alexander, who reigned from 1331 to 1371, Bulgarian culture reached a high point: the Tarnovo school produced painted churches, illuminated manuscripts such as the Tetraevangelia of Ivan Alexander, and, under Patriarch Euthymius, a reform of written Bulgarian. Monks inspired by Hesychasm, a contemplative prayer movement, linked Tarnovo with Byzantium and Serbia.

By Ivan Alexander's death in 1371 the realm was divided between his sons Ivan Shishman in Tarnovo and Ivan Sratsimir in Vidin, with a third ruler, Dobrotitsa, on the Black Sea coast. The Ottoman Empire advanced rapidly after defeating a Serbian army at Chernomen in 1371, forcing Ivan Shishman into vassalage. Tarnovo fell in 1393 after a three-month siege, and after the crusader defeat at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396 the Ottomans took Vidin, ending medieval Bulgarian statehood. Exiled clerics carried its books and ideas to Serbia, Wallachia, Moldavia and the Russian lands.

Our 1200, 1279 and 1300 maps show the Second Bulgarian Empire between the Danube and the Balkan range, with the Kingdom of Hungary to the north-west and Byzantine lands to the south; the Golden Horde lies beyond the Danube on the later two maps.