APPENDIX 545 language of his subjects ; in both cases he gave the name of his own race to the state which he founded. And both cases point to the same truth touching the Slavs : their strong power of assimilation, and their lack of the political instinct and force which are necessary for creating and organizing a political union. Both Bulgaria and Russia were made by strangers. (1) We first met Bulgarians in the fifth century, after the break-up of the Empire of Attila. We then saw them settled somewhere north of the Danube^ it is best to say roughly between the Danube and the Dnieper — and sometimes appearing south of the Danube. (2) We saw them next, a century later, as subjects of the Avar empire. We saw also (above, vol. 4, App. 1.5) that the}- were closely connected with the tribes of the Uturgurs and Kotrigurs. (3) The next important erent in the history of the Bulgarians is the break-up of the Avar empire. In this break-uj) they themselves assisted. In the reign of Heraclius, the Bulgarian king Kurt revolts against the cliagan of the Avars and makes an alliance with Heraclius, towards the close of that emperor's reign (c. 635-6). 1 At this time the Bulgarians and their fellows the Utigurs seem to have been united under a common king ; Kurt is designated as lord of the Utigurs. (4) The next movement seems to have been a westward migration of part of the Bulgarians. Crossing the Danube, some of the emigrants settled in Pannonia, in the now reduced realm of the Avars ; and others went farther afield and found their final abodes in Italy on the shores of the Adriatic (see above, p. 130, note 5). (5) Kurt died in the reign of Constans II. His suc- cessor Bezmer reigned only three years, and was succeeded b}' Isperich, who crossed the Danube and established the Bulgarian kingdom in Moesia in the reign of Constantine IV. (c. a.d. 679). The Bulgarians on the Danube had kinsfolk far to the east, who in the tenth century lived between the Volga and the Kama. They are generally known as the Bulgarians of the Volga ; their country was distinguished as Black Bulgaria ^ from White Bulgaria on the Danube. The city of the eastern Bulgarians was destroyed by Timour, but their name is still preserved in the village of Bolgar_y in the province of Kasan. They must have migrated northwards to these regions from the shores of the Lake of Azov, between the Dnieper and Don. For in the 8th century they were certainly in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Azov,^ and were on the west side of the Don, while the kindred tribe of the Kotrags or Kotrigurs were over against them on the east baidc. Towards the end of the ninth century the Mohammedan religion began to take root among the Bulgarians of the Volga, and the conversion was completed in the year a.d. 9'22. We have a good account of their country and their customs from the Arabic traveller Ihn Foslan. ■* Thus, about the end of the seventh century, there were five settlements of the Bulgarians and their kinspeople in Europe. (1) The Bulgarians between the Don and Dnieper. (2) The Kotrags or Kotrigurs, their neighbours on the other side of the Don. (3) The Bulgarian kingdom of the Danube, in which the Utigurs had been merged. (4) The Bulgarian settlement in Pannonia. (.5) The Bulgarian settlements in Italy. The existence of these five lots of Bulgarians was accounted for by a legend which must have arisen soon after the foundation of the Bulgarian kingdom in Moesia. According to this legend King Kuvrat (Kurt) had five sons. When his 1 Nicephorus, p. 24, ed. de Boor, Nicephorus calls him Kuvrat " lord of the Uno- gundurs";(i.<:., the Utigurs, cp. above, vol. 4, .App. 15) ; but he is clearly the same as Kuvrat (or Ko/3paT09) lord of the "Huns and Bulgarians " mentioned below, p. 36; the Krovat of Theophanes and the Kurt of the old Bulgarian list (see next Appendix). Theophanes identifies the Bulgarians and Unogundurs. • Constantine Porph., De Adm. Imp. c. 12, r fiavprj HovXyapia. Cp. Bt Aoxpu^aria (white Croatia), MovpoPAaxi'a, &c. s This appears from the account in Theophanes and Nicephorus.
- See C. M. Friihn, Aelteste Nachrichten tiber die Wolga-Bulgharen, in Memoirs of the
Academy of St. Petersburg (series vi.), i. p. 550 (1832). Cp. Roesler, Romanische Studien p. 442 sqq. VOL. VL 35
