Invitations to Nrdics etc to rule.

[lugh]

Ok, I just bought a little small history on the Russian geographical era (It kind of takes the USSR borders as the limit of the study, but extended back a few thousand years)
Anyway it was to my surprise that the Slavic people of one of the khanates invited the Varingian nobility to rule them since they were largely running amok with no central strength from the khan or somesuch.
Now I knew the Irish had invited a Danish King to take the High Kingship in maybe the first century or so after Norman invasion, and the Normans themselves were descended from up North and the Byz had their Varingian guard.

My question is this, was this pretty common? Specifically requests for Northern nobility to take positioins of power in other lands? But all the rest aswell.

[Byzantine Prince]

The only ones I know of that were asked to go to the position were Varangian guard(which also included a king) but they quickly became ceremonial units.

Now the Russian thing si different since the Rus already invaded the slavs before that khanate asked to to take care of some business.

[Meneldil]

None asked a Norse to rule the normans. Normans were norses who settled in Normandy, and the french king officialy offered them this area as long as they would protect it (and beyond that, the area around Paris) from other norses' raids and stop their own raids against his kingdom.

Varagians guards were not really in position of power. Yes, they were the elite guard of the emperor, and probably had some political influence, but just as all other elite guards (probably not as much as the Preatorian guard in Rome times). Furthermore, the Varagian guard was not composed of varagians only (at least in its later days).

The fact is that Norses were travelling (mostly raiding and trading) through whole europe, and settled in many various areas. Being disciplined and effective warriors aswell as skilled merchants and travellers, some of them were asked to rule in place of 'crappy' local leaders in Russia and in the british islands.

[nokhor]

as the ottoman empire was disintegrating, a lot of the new monarchies that were being formed in the balkans during the 19th century were 'given' german nobility to be their kings.

[Rosacrux redux]

Aye, but I don't remember anyone asking for them... they were imposed upon us by the "great powers", so we could actually fit into the "civilized world" (at the time, being civilized included having a Dansk or Bavarian clown in fancy clothes with a funny hat as head of the state... beats me why)

Of course, soon enough we threw them all out.

[BalkanTourist]

First of all, slavs never had khans, the supreme title was "kniaz" which roughly translates as "prince". The Kniaz'es rule could be best compared as a limited monarchy, as opposed to the Khan of the Eastern people who was an absolute monarch. There is an easy explanation for that. Most slavs were "landed" i.e. they lived of the land in permanent settlements. Agriculture was the most important way of making a living. Every family clan owned land and they owed nothing to no one. They were not warlike and would accept the general rule of a supreme power as long as they were left alone to tend their crops. Many settled in the Balkans with the permission of Byzantium and got along with the Empire fine for decades. The Elders of each clan formed the Veche which was the parliament (this is 5th, 6th century and on). The Kniaz presided over the Veche but did pay attention to what the Elders had to say. In war the Kniaz was the supreme ruler and commander. This type of government was called "Military Democracy" (that's a free translation, so don't stress on the name, but should get the idea). Democracy was not very suitable for a country's formation or its protection. In order to survive in the Dark and Middle Ages there had to be a strong hand to rule. And that's where the foreign element comes along. In the creation of Bulgaria it was the Bulgars (nowadays it is widely accepted that they were of alano-sarmatian origin, as opposed to turkic). The Bulgars had a monotheistic religion - one god - Tangra. The slavs worshiped many - Perun, Volos, Lada etc. The Khan was the absolute monarch who enherited his powers through his father with the approval of Tangra. The slavs elected their Kniaz among the Elders. The Bulgars gave that strong foundation for governship without which they would have never survived in the steppes to the north of the Black Sea and without which the newly created state would never have survived among strong neighbors as the Byzantine Empire, the Frankish Empire and the Avar Khaganate. It is the same with the Eastern slavs and the Varangians or the Rus. They brought that statemanship skill and united the loose alliance of the slavs. Eventually they melted in the vast sea of slavs, but not without leaving the Rurik dynasty that ruled Kiev until the Mongols.

[Watchman]

Just as a general note, one should always be sceptical of any old chronicles or similar claiming someone or other was "invited" to lord it over someone else. There's an awfully big chance those are blatantly falsified to help legitimize the continued rule of a dynasty, y'see. The chroniclers usually did write on the lords' commission, after all...

[Adrian II]

The chroniclers usually did write on the lords' commission, after all...

Indeed, and in this case there is only one written source: the Primary Chronicle which was composed around 1037, well after the events surrounding the Ros which it described.

The (Swedish) Varangians had penetrated the Slav areas in the eighth century. They were avid to use the many good waterways that sprung or connected there for their trade with (and occasional plunder of) Byzantine and later also Arab lands, and they gradually became the overlords of some of the Slav tribes.

The Primary Chronicle has it that the Slav inhabitants of Novgorod chased away their Varangian lords and then invited one of them, Riuruk, to come back and become their defender, which he accepted. The result nascent state became known as 'Ros' or 'Rus'. Riurik's successor Oleg moved his capital to Kiev, closer to the Byzantine gold.

In 1037, their descendant King Yaroslav was just marrying a Swedish princess and it is quite possible that the writer of the Primary Chronicle put a nice Swedish/Varangian gloss on the Riurik affair to consolidate his ruler's new bond with the neighbors ...

[spmetla]

I highly doubt that the slavs had asked the Norse to rule them seeing as the slavs were sold as slaves by the norse (slav being the orgin of the word slave).

[Adrian II]

I highly doubt that the slavs had asked the Norse to rule them seeing as the slavs were sold as slaves by the norse (slav being the orgin of the word slave).

I believe it was mostly the Romans and early Germanic peoples who sold the Venedi as slaves, so they got the name of Slav a little earlier. The Varangians seem to have mainly demanded tribute from the Slavs they pacified, though some of that may have been in human form. Anyway, here is the relevant passage in the 1037 Primary Chronicle of Ros that I mentioned:

Years 860-862. The tributaries of the Varangians drove them back beyond the sea and, refusing them further tribute, set out to govern themselves. There was no law among them, but tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against another. They said to themselves, "Let us seek a prince who may rule over us, and judge us according to the law." They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Rus: these particular Varangians were known as Rus, just as some are called Swedes, and others Normans, Angles, and Goths, for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs, and the Krivichians then said to the people of Rus, "Our whole land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us." They thus selected three brothers, with their kinfolk, who took with them all the Rus, and migrated. The oldest, Rurik, located himself in Novgorod; the second, Sineus, in Beloozero; and the third, Truvor, in Izborsk. On account of these Varangians, the district of Novgored became known as Russian (Rus) land. The present inhabitants of Novgorod are descended from the Varangian race, but aforetime they were Slavs. After two years, Sineus and his brother Truvor died, and Rurik assumed the sole authority. He assigned cities to his followers, Polotzk to one, Rostov to another, and to another Beloozero. In these cities there are thus Varangian colonists, but the first settlers were, in Novgorod, Slavs; in Polotzk, Krivichians; at Beloozero, Ves; in Rostov, Merians; and in Murom, Muromians. Rurik had dominion over all these districts. With Rurik there were two men who did not belong to his kin, but were boyars. They obtained permission to go to Constantinople with their families. They thus sailed down the Dnepr, and in the course of their journey they saw a small city on a hill. Upon their inquiry as to whose town it was, they were informed that three brothers, Kii, Shchek and Khoriv, had once built the city, but that since their deaths, their descendants were living there as tributaries of the Khazars. Oskold and Dir remained in this city, and after gathering together many Varangians, they established their domination over the country of the Polianians at the same time that Rurik was ruling at Novgorod.

[BalkanTourist]

I highly doubt that the slavs had asked the Norse to rule them seeing as the slavs were sold as slaves by the norse (slav being the orgin of the word slave).

Some people including myself believe that the name slav comes from the word slovo (speech or word).
The slavs devided everyone into two categories. They were the ones with the word, who could speak as opposed to the Nemtsi (in Russian it is the name for German people) that comes from the word niam or nem which means mute, dumb, someone who could not speak.
Yet other people believe that the name comes from the word slava and the name of all the land inhabited by slavs was called Slavia. Slava in slavic means glory.

[Watchman]

One thing I know is that way back the Scandinavian word for slave was träl, or "thrall" in its English form. When you count in all the trade and raiding that went on over the Baltic and the so-called "East Route" (the Russian rivers that link the Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas), and the curious similarity between the name Slav and the term "slave" (bluntly slav in Swedish, AFAIK), it gets a whole lot difficult to assume coincidence.

Wherever the name Slav originated from is then a whole another issue, but by what I've read the whole ethno-cultural concept developed under Avar overlordship during the Dark Ages. *shrug* A little irrelevant really, as we were discussing the political influence of Scandinavians (mostly Swedes; they plied the Eastern route, while the Norse and Danes went to Britain and Europe) in the riverside princedoms of southern Russia. Odds are the Vikings' considerable seamanship skills and good ships allowed them to pull some serious weight on the waterways and dominate trade, which would naturally also have make them desirable allies and partners to the local potentates (I understand the Khazars and Hungarian-Magyars were the big names around the period, although the latter eventually departed for Hungary). Political marriages or straight armed power grabs flow naturally from that, and usurpers in particular have since the dawn of history always been keen on whitewashing their background...

[Adrian II]

Some people including myself believe that the name slav comes from the word slovo (speech or word).

Sounds plausible to me, but then I'm no expert. It would seem odd that a people would name themselves 'slaves' in the very language of their slave-masters. It would make more sense if it were the other way round.

The Germanic word for slave (Swedish slav, English slave, German Sklave, French esclave) could have been a generic name for the sort of people the Vikings usually enslaved, being the Slavianie as the Slavs called themselves.

The matter is rather controversial for obvious reasons. Does anybody have more thorough knowledge than the usual Wikipedia fare?

[Watchman]

As I said, the original term was thrall. At some point, Slavs became the group mainly traded as thralls (one suspects this has much to do with the way they tended to have the dubious honor of living next to the steppe nomads, who would quite cheerfully capture people to sell into slavery for example along the great Russian rivers) and the word seems to have stuck. Chances are this wasn't for quite a while any issue, as national consciusness is quite a new phenomenom and the Slavic peoples didn't have too much contact with the English-speaking world anyway. The Scandinavians stopped having thralls around the time they went Christian (11th century), and in any case kept using the old term thrall at least into mid-17th century, so odds are they never had much in the way of issues about it with the folks living on the eastern shores of the Baltic.

Case in point of this is the worry of Swedish peasantry during the Thirty Years' War of the influx of foreign nobles into the kingdom (they were granted land as reward for various services) would lead to the introduction of serfdom - and their written appeal to the governement on the subject specifically uses the term "träl" to describe it.

[Adrian II]

Here's the full etymology of the word, taken from the Online Etymology Dictionary which is a compilation of several modern print etymology dictionaries. Says it all, really, particularly the Klein quote at the end.

Slav
1387, Sclave, from Medieval Latin Sclavus (c.800), from Byzantine Gk. Sklabos (c.580), from Old Slavic Sloveninu, 'a Slav', probably related to slovo, 'word, speech', which suggests the name originally meant member of a speech community (cf. Old Church Slavonic Nemici, 'Germans', related to nemu, 'dumb'). Identical with the -slav in personal names (e.g. Rus. Miroslav, lit. 'peaceful fame', Mstislav, lit. 'vengeful fame'; Jaroslav, lit. 'famed for fury'; Czech Bohuslav, lit. 'God's glory'; and cf. Wenceslas, from Slavic vetye-, 'greater', + -slavu, 'fame, glory'). Spelled Slave c.1788-1866, infl. by Fr. and Ger. Slave. Adj. Slavic is attested from 1813; earlier Slavonic (c.1645), from Slavonia, a region of Croatia.

slave (n.)
c.1290, 'person who is the property of another', from Olf French esclave, from Medieval Latin Sclavus, 'slave' (cf. It. schiavo, Fr. esclave, Sp. esclavo), originally Slav, so called because of the many Slavs sold into slavery by conquering peoples.

'This sense development arose in the consequence of the wars waged by Otto the Great and his successors against the Slavs, a great number of whom they took captive and sold into slavery' [Klein].

[BalkanTourist]

So both are true. The Slavs were peaceful people. With the exception of the 4th-5th century when they raided the Byzantine Empire first for plunder and then to settle, they disliked fighting and generally obeyed the far superior militarily Byzantines, Franks, Avars. The foreign element was essential for the formation of any type of a slavic country. Bulgaria had 2,000,000 slavs and between 20,000 and 100,000 Bulgars, but the Bulgars gave the name of the new country and they ruled it for the first 350 years. It was the first slavic country, founded in 681. It gave the Eastern Slavs (Russians, White Russians and Malo Russians(Ukrainians) their alphabet (Cyrilic) and their religion (Orthodox). It sent priests and scholars.
Then came Russia with the handful of varangians who ruled over the vast see of slavs. It is true that a lot of them were victims of the nomads that passed through the steppes in what is now Ukraine. That is the reason for the concentration of the majority of them in the heavily forested north that was safer, but was not suited for agriculture which was the primary occupation of slavs. Kiev was an exception, but it was protected by the vikings who did hold the trade route utilizing the great network of rivers that could bring the furs and amber of the north, the slaves and honey of the woodlands, the great horses of the steppes to the Second Rome - Constantinople.Eventually though it fell to the Mongols. It just didn't have the best strategic position on the map. Novgorod and then Moscow did.
The Western slavs fell early under the influence of the Frankish Empire and never really recovered. One exception is Poland, which I must say at one point was the torch bearer for all the rest of the Slavonic Commonwealth perhaps not that much culturaly as politically. The Polish king started a crusade to liberate the fellow slavic country of Bulgaria (eventhough Bulgaria was Orthodox and Poland Catholic) when it fell to the Ottoman Turks. Unfortunatelly it was unsuccessful and he paid with his life. Almost 600 years later Bulgaria still remembers and the Orthodox Church has cannonized a Catholic - Saint Vladislav (Wladislaw) named Varnencik because he died at the Battle of Varna (biggest Bulgarian port on the Black Sea, second largest city nowadays) in 1444.

[Rosacrux redux]

Not nitpicking by any account, but BT, I think Bulgaria never gave the Slavs a religion or an alphabet... Byzantium did both. The Byzantine monks Cyrillos and Methodios created the Alphabet and spread Orthodoxy in Bulgaria and the rest of the Balkans, while other missionaries (and, most importantly, official arrangements and state deals - as in the case of the Rus) dealt with the rest of the Slavs.

Or was it just a figure of speach - the Bulgarians being the first Slavs to aquire alphabet and orthodoxy by the Byzantines? ~;

[spmetla]

I thought that the Bulgarians were intially tribes of a Turkic origin much like the Cumans that fought their way through southern Russia and Ukraine until settleing around the Danube.

I also thought that the first true Slavic nation was the Moravian empire that was later subjigated by Karl der Grosse although I could well be wrong.

Thanks Adrian for clearing up the origin of the word Slav. I'm finding that despite my Czech origin I know very little about slavic history.

[Watchman]

I've gotten the impression the Slavs as a semi-cohesive cultural and linguistical unit formed in something like 500s to 600s (after the Avars turned up, anyway) and then proceeded to conquer-cum-settle much of East and Central Europe,assimilating the previous inhabitants as they went. They seem to have been pretty good at it too, when you look at the map, but apparently weren't big on forming into large political units beyond loose tribal/village confederations. Given that any such moves would likely have brought a swift and violent response from their Avar overlords, this seems fairly sensible.

I've also been told that bulgar is an old Turkic word for "difficult" or "quarrelsome" or something like that, and that the region of Bulgaria was sometime in the 500s or so conquered by a nomad people from further east (probably pushed out of their old haunts by the Mongolic Avars, who had themsleves been driven out of their old pastures near China by the revolt of the emerging Turkish khanate, but anyway). I've read that the nomads were of proto-Turkic origin, although this is apparently still disputed, and were fairly soon absorbed into their subject peoples leaving behind only the name of the region and the language, which is apparently fairly closely related to the Turkish linguistical family.

The whole thing seems to be a little muddy really (no big surprise considering the period and the relative dearth of surviving records), and certainly isn't helped by the amount of nationalist sentiments involved.

[Rosacrux redux]

All correct Watchman, besides the language thingy: Bulgarian is a purely Slavic language, nothing Turkic there. Only sparce Turkic elements survive in it, but even those could be attributed to the heavy linguistic loans during the long Ottoman period.

Wether the Bulgars were Turkic or not is indeed a controversial subject, but I understand that the proto-Bulgars were one of the tribes forming the Hunnish conglomerate and after the latter felt apart, continued their history ...with the known consequences.

We have a similar pattern in the "Varangian"-ruled Rus and Bulgaria: A small, dynamic, minority, ruling over a large body of Slavs, and in time getting completely absorbed into them, leaving little or no trace genetically, ethnically and linguistically.

Practically, what they left behind are the names of the respective people - Russians and Bulgarians.

[Sigurd]

Back to the question:

First of all, according to my readings it is true that the people living in the Novgorod area sought amongst the Norse for their new King. The people of that area (their name escape my mind but I don’t think it was slavs) called the Norse varangians, because that was where the Norse they did business with came from; Varanger (North of Norway). The name stuck and was later adopted to the guard in Constantinople (which I believe was first instituted to fight the Rus).

Why they did this is rooted in an ancient myth. It was practiced by all Norse descended nations (e.g. Rus, Goths etc…). This is where it gets interesting; it is rooted in the Norse mythology. Around 70 BC - 0 AD a nation consisting of a blond people migrated from the Black Sea area and moved north-west. The name of this people was As or what in Norwegian is Aser (mythology defines Aser as Gods) their leader was the unmistakably Odin,Wota or Udin. He conquered and settled in what is today Russia, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and finally Norway. He built cities and left one of his many sons as kings in these city-states before moving on. He established a great settlement in Denmark which today is called Odense. He heard about the great kings of Sweden and desired to conquer these also. He sent armies over to the Scandinavian Peninsula and the king there desired to meet this great conqueror and invited him over, giving him land to settle. This is where he finally settled down. One of his sons was sent over to Norway and settled a great nation there. All later kings in these lands were direct descendants of Odin. It should be noted that many of them died either by decease or by murder (long story). Whenever a new king was needed and the previous king didn’t have any sons, they had to go and find a descendant of that old stock. The most likeable place happened to be Norway, one of the places where the kings survived and was able to breed. Sweden was however the primary home of the people that was considered gods. A good example on this was the Visigoths (I could be wrong on the actual type of Goths). Their king had died and he had no sons, instead of electing a new king they went back to Gothland (Sweden) to get a new king. This is an odd thing to do, but the king had to be a descendant of Odin and there were none in the land of the Visigoths.

I am at work and I don’t have the books in front of me, but the actual incident described by the initial poster is one of the topics of that book. I believe the king they got was the son of the current Norwegian King of that day and his name was Rurik (the "Rus" name) but I forget his Norse name. I believe it was in the 8th century.

[edit]: AdrianII: I didn’t read you post until after I had posted mine… you excerpt from Primary Chronicle of Ros confirms Rurik and the Novgorod area. It should be noted that the books that I have read believe that the 11th century historians are writing based on guesswork. Most of them place the Varangians in Sweden. We know the Norse traders traveled by water and sometimes pulled their boats on small stretches of land where it was convenient to do so and if their ships was light enough (some of the Norse ships could weigh 80 tons with a full load). But there were few Swedish traders that far north and the waterway to those areas would be around the Scandinavian Peninsula i.e. along the Norwegian coast and up before you could turn south into the great northern rivers at the base of the Kola Peninsula in the White Sea. It would be more likely that the traders of the Varangian peninsula traveled those rivers into the heart of Russia. Excavations on the Varangian Peninsula have uncovered great eastern riches, even money shells from the oceans of the south. Besides the Varangian name speaks for itself.

[therecanbeonlywar!]

In the creation of Bulgaria it was the Bulgars (nowadays it is widely accepted that they were of alano-sarmatian origin, as opposed to turkic). The Bulgars had a monotheistic religion - one god - Tangra. The slavs worshiped many - Perun, Volos, Lada etc. The Khan was the absolute monarch who enherited his powers through his father with the approval of Tangra. The slavs elected their Kniaz among the Elders. The Bulgars gave that strong foundation for governship without which they would have never survived in the steppes to the north of the Black Sea and without which the newly created state would never have survived among strong neighbors as the Byzantine Empire, the Frankish Empire and the Avar Khaganate.

But Tangra/Tengri was a god worshipped by most of the Turco-Mongolic peoples. Furthermore, according to David Nicolle's Osprey book on the steppe nomads, "Bulgars" derived from a word meaning "mixed people" (I'm not sure if I worded this correctly), perhaps indicating the Bulgars merging with local Slavic inhabitants. Regarding their ethnic character, they may very well have been largely Alano-Sarmatian/Indo-Iranian/Caucasoid since even some of the European Huns were not full Mongoloids; it is highly possible that they could've mixed with the native Caucasoids of the Western and Central Asian steppes that still comprised of the ethnic majority of the steppes at the time. Regarding their Turkic origins, there can be no doubt that they were at one point under Turkic influence by the Kok Turuks/Tujue Khaganate of the 6th century AD that stretched from western Manchuria all the way to the Caspian Sea on the Central Asian steppes whether or not the Bulgars were originally Turkic; so it's not really surprising to see Turkic words or phrases in their vocabulary. What I find rather surprising though was that one branch of the Bulgars, the Volga Bulgars of central Russia, despite the fact that their neighbors were Orthodox, converted to Islam around the 10th century, at around the same time the Seljuk tribe of the Oghuz Turkic people adopted Islam by way of Arabic missionaries.

[BalkanTourist]

Not nitpicking by any account, but BT, I think Bulgaria never gave the Slavs a religion or an alphabet... Byzantium did both. The Byzantine monks Cyrillos and Methodios created the Alphabet and spread Orthodoxy in Bulgaria and the rest of the Balkans, while other missionaries (and, most importantly, official arrangements and state deals - as in the case of the Rus) dealt with the rest of the Slavs.

Or was it just a figure of speach - the Bulgarians being the first Slavs to aquire alphabet and orthodoxy by the Byzantines? ~;

Byzantium was the eastern part of the Roman Empire. That's a well known fact. People often make the mistake of thinking that Byzantine equals Greek. As in any empire there wasn't a single people that inhabited it, but many - armenians, greeks, syrians, slavs etc. One of them was the governor of Solun (Thesalonika) which in the 9th century was swarming with slavs. The Slavs started raiding the Balkans in the 4th and 5th century and later settled permanently. They reached Pelopones and even Crete. They were not united and easily accepted Byzantine rule. Many melted away withint the locals. Later when Bulgaria was created, the Bulgarian khans tried to attract those slavs to join the new state as there were seven slavic tribes already within the union with the Bulgars.
The governor of Solun, Leo, sent two of his sons to get good education in the Magnaura Academy in Constantinope. They were getting ready to join the clergy. There they acquired many neccessary skills and much knowledge that would help them not only with church matter but also in diplomacy. Cyril was sent by the Emperor to many missions which are described in his literary work. He had to establish diplomatic relations with tribes and spread the word of God. In these times religion was a major diplomatic weapon.
By the ninth century the diferences between Rome and Constantinople were quite big. The two great cities and their spiritual leaders - the Pope and the Patriarch were competing for the acquisition of new souls for their respective churches. Accepting Christianity from either would put the recepient in the respective sphere of influence. The Pope already had most of Western Europe and had turned his attention to the Western Slavs who were just to the east of the HRE. The newly created state of Moravia ( to answer a question from above - no Moravia was formed as a state in the 9th century, Bulgaria in 681.) was of special interest of both the Latin priests and the orthodox ones.
In that time the only three languages that one could worship in were Greek, Latin and Hebrew. To worship in another tongue was a sin. Proving the religion is just modified politics, the Patriarch and the Orthodox council decided to approve the worship in slavic, if the Moravian Kniaz agreed to accept the Orthodoxy. He even promised him his own alphabet. So a great scholar and a diplomat was summoned to get the job done - Cyril. His brother Methodius was helping him. Who else could have done it?! There was no better man for the job. He was highly educated, experienced and SPOKE the language. The alphabet created was based on the Greek one but also considered the diferences in phonetics that the slavs had. Just look at nowadays Western Slavs who use the Latin alphabet especially in Polish where they have some words that are unreadable for the foreign eye. Unfortunately the German/Latin/Catholics prevailed and Moravia was lost for the cause. Cyril and Methodius were persecuted by the German clergy and even tried for herecy. They never made it to Bulgaria, but their students - Climent, Naum, Angelariy and Gorazd did (they were also Slavs). The Bulgarian Khan was playing the diplomatic game at the time. He knew that in order for his country to be internationally respected and recognized, and internally united, there had to be a single monoteistic well recognized religion. Emissaries of the Arabs came offering Islam. He rejected it, because at the time although the Arabs were a force to be considered and had besieged Costantinople twice, the majority of the countries were converting to Christianity. Khan Boris was even offered the Judeism from the Khazars who had accepted it earlier. The big fate defining question was -Catholicizm or Orthodoxy. The Pope had offered an archbishop, clergy to convert the populace, recognition for the Bulgarian ruler as a King, but the King was a vassal to the Pope and the church was not autonomous but was controled from Rome. After some bargaining and because they already lost Moravia and were feeling pressured at the prospects of having a Catholic faction right at their door step, the Byzantines stroke a deal. They would give the Bulgarian church full independence with their own Patriarch, the liturgy would be in Bulgarian (which turned to be universal Church-Slavonic for the Orthodox Slavs even until the time of Peter I of Russia in the 18th century) and the priests would be Bulgarian. But most importanly they offered an alphabet. After the conversion there was a tremendous revival in all aspects of life. Many scholars appeared, many books were writen in the late 9th and the 10th centuries in Bulgaria. That coincided with the rule of King Simeon the Great who ironically defeated the Byzantines and besieged Constantinople. Naturally Bulgaria was the torch bearer for all the Slavs. And when the Kievan Rus was ready to accept Christianity, many Bulgarian priests went there with books written in Slavic and it was they who spread the Cyrilic alphabet to Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Serbs. If it wasn't for the pupils of Constantine-Cyril and his brother Methodius and for the receptiveness of Kniaz Boris, that alphabet would have been dead, and so would be Bulgaria.

[Byzantine Prince]

Byzantium was the eastern part of the Roman Empire.

Everyone knows that here.

People often make the mistake of thinking that Byzantine equals Greek.

Byzantines spoke greek. They also followed the Orthodox Church which spoke Greek. Most nobillity was greek. Albanians were always revolting so they weren't exactly on with the program. When the slavs apeared as you said they were ruled by other(greeks) so yes you could say byzantium=greek. Moreover if you look at the time line Byzantium aws really small for the most part. In the end it was limited to Constantinople and different patches in Pelloponesus.

Climent, Naum, Angelariy and Gorazd did (they were also Slavs)

You can keep them. We don't really care . What's the point of writing so much about things that have nothing to do with what this thread was started for? Are trying to prove something? I'm not trying to be offensive, I'm just wondering why?

[Watchman]

Just as an observation, but every now and then I notice what looks suspiciously like nationalist sentiment leaking out between the lines of Balkan's posts.

Though, mind you, some of it may just be showing off his erudition on a given subject. I do that a lot, too.

[BalkanTourist]

Just as an observation, but every now and then I notice what looks suspiciously like nationalist sentiment leaking out between the lines of Balkan's posts.

Though, mind you, some of it may just be showing off his erudition on a given subject. I do that a lot, too.

I honestly try to steer away from any nationalistic sentiment. Reason why I can discuss about slavs and Bulgarians in particular is because my knowledge in that area is the most. I wouldn't argue with a Norwegian guy about the history of the Norse. I am just writting about what I know, what I have read in various sources. I just love History.