Plovdiv (ancient Philippopolis), city in southern Bulgaria, capital of Plovdiv Region, on the Maritsa River. Plovdiv is a trading and market centre for the Plovdiv Basin and for an agricultural area producing tobacco and livestock. A manufacturing city as well, Plovdiv has cigarette-making, food-processing, and woodworking industries; textiles, metal, leather, and chemicals are also produced here. The city has an ancient gate and walls, a Catholic cathedral, old Orthodox churches as well as mosques, the ruins of a Turkish market and ancient baths. Plovdiv is also the site of the Ivan Vazov National Library (founded in 1879), Paisi Hilendarski University of Plovdiv (1961), and institutes of food, agriculture, and music.

Originally the Greek settlement of Eumolpias, Plovdiv was captured in 341 bc by Philip II of Macedonia, and was renamed Philippopolis. After Roman conquest in 46 bc, it was known as Trimontium, and was the capital of the Roman province of Thrace. The city was the site of many battles and was ruled successively by the Goths, Byzantines, Bulgarians, Greeks, Ottoman Turks, and Russians. It was made the capital of Eastern Rumelia under the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and was joined to the rest of Bulgaria in 1885. Population 340,638 (2001).

Pleven , city in northern Bulgaria, capital of Pleven Province. The city trades in cattle and wine; and its industries include canning vegetables, extracting vegetable oil, tanning hides, and milling flour. Manufactured goods include cotton, linen, and woollen textiles. Pleven was the site of a key battle in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878). It was defended by the Ottoman Turks against Russian and Romanian troops, but in 1877 it fell to the Russians after four months of fighting. The fall of Pleven caused the Turks to seek an armistice early in 1878. Population 122,149 (2001).

Pernik, city in western Bulgaria, capital of Pernik Province, on the Struma River near Sofia. A road and rail junction and coal-mining centre since 1891, Pernik is located in an area containing many lignite mines and iron smelteries. Industries include engineering, and the manufacture of briquettes, electrical equipment, and glass. Ruins of a Byzantine fortress are located here. From 1949 to 1962 the city was called Dimitrovo. Population (1990 estimate) 99,643.

Gabrovo, town, north-central Bulgaria, in the foothills north of the Balkan Mountains. Gabrovo is located on the River Yantra. The town developed—probably in the mid-15th century—as a strategic point on the northern approach to the Shipka Pass, which lies 24 km (15 mi) to the south. The first Bulgarian school was opened in Gabrovo in 1835, and in 1877 the town was liberated from the Turks (see Ottoman Empire). The town is now a major centre for the textile industry. Population (1992) 76,522.

Dobrich, largest town of southern Dobruja, in north-eastern Bulgaria. Lying about 40 km (25 mi) north of the Black Sea port of Varna, Dobrich is an important industrial, agricultural, and commercial centre. Its industries include food processing, cotton- and woollen-milling, machine-building, electrical engineering, and timber-processing.

Built on the site of a former Roman fortress, the town was established in the 15th century while the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. Originally named Hajioglu Pazarjik, meaning “the town of pilgrims”, it became known as Dobrich at the end of Ottoman rule in the 19th century. Bulgaria was forced to cede southern Dobruja to Romania in 1913 after being defeated in the Second Balkan War. The 1919 Treaty of Neuilly, which followed World War I, also recognized southern Dobruja as part of Romania. The area was not returned to Bulgaria until 1940. After World War II, the town was completely rebuilt and in 1949 renamed Tolbukhin, after Fyodor Tolbukhin, a marshal in the Soviet Army. In 1991 the town’s name reverted to Dobrich. Population 100,379 (2001).

Burgas, city in eastern Bulgaria, capital of Burgas Province, a seaport on the Gulf of Burgas (an inlet of the Black Sea). The surrounding region is chiefly agricultural. The city has a good harbour and is linked by rail through Sofia with the European railway system. The major part of Bulgaria’s Black Sea grain trade passes through Burgas, and trade in other agricultural produce rivals that of Varna. The city’s fish-processing industry handles most of Bulgaria’s fish harvest. The city also has flour and sugar mills. Hellenistic ruins of the ancient city of Nessebar, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983, are nearby. Population 193,316 (2001).

Bulgarian Literature, literature created by the inhabitants of Bulgaria. Bulgarian literature began in the second half of the 9th century ad with the translations by St Cyril and St Methodius of religious works from Greek into the vernacular, now known as Old Church Slavonic. From this period until the Turkish conquest of Bulgaria (1396), Bulgarian literature consisted mainly of similar translations of the Gospels, lives of the saints, sermons, and other religious material. Historical chronicles were also written. During the Turkish and Greek ecclesiastical domination (1396-1878), Bulgarian literature virtually ceased to exist.

The 19th century marked the beginning of modern Bulgarian literature and the awakening of national consciousness. It had its origin in historical works such as Istoria Slaveno-Bolgarska (History of the Slavic-Bulgarians), written in a form of ecclesiastical Slavonic mixed with popular language by a monk, Paisij, about 1762. After 1830, a movement in Bulgaria for freedom from Turkish rule and Greek Church domination, the establishment of Bulgarian schools and printing establishments, and the publication of Bulgarian grammars and other educational works all played a part in producing a new Bulgarian literature. At the same time, novobulgarski, the new literary Bulgarian language based on the vernacular of its eastern dialects, was formed.

Before 1878 writers were concerned with social and political questions, above all with national independence, rather than with literary style or the problems of the inner life of the individual. The most important writer of this preliberation period was the revolutionary poet Christo Botev. The principal writer of the next period was Ivan Vazov, one of the most prolific as well as one of the most popular of Bulgarian writers and the one who scored a success in English translation, with his novel Under the Yoke (1893; trans. 1912). Other important writers of this period were Stoyan Mikhaylovski and Aleko Konstantinov. The former was a pessimistic philosopher, disillusioned with politics; the latter was a satirist who characterized the Bulgarian peasant in Bai Ganyu (1895; “Uncle John”).

In the post-liberation period, writers increasingly emphasized technique and form and harmony and rhythm of language. Important writers of this third period are the short-story writers Dimiter Ivanov, who wrote under the pen name of Elin-Pelin, and Yordan Yovkov; both are noted for their interest in peasant life and the countryside.

From 1944 until the collapse of communism in 1989, Bulgarian literature adhered closely to the requirements of Soviet Socialist Realism. The work of some talented writers, including the poets Blaga Dimitrova, Lubomir Levchev, and Pavel Matev, nevertheless revealed a fresher point of view and signalled the desire for greater artistic freedom. In particular, the prose-writer Yordan Radichkov handled historical themes, always a Bulgarian favourite, with unusual finesse, and his short novel Khradriatyat chovek (1967; “A Brave Man”) earned wide popularity.

Elias Canetti won the 1981 Nobel Prize for literature for his novels and plays about individuals at odds with society. Born in Bulgaria, Canetti settled in England in 1938 and wrote in German.

Bulgarian Language, the national language of Bulgaria, also spoken in Moldova, Turkey, Greece, Romania, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Bulgarian and the closely related Macedonian language form the eastern group in the southern branch of the modern Slavic languages and are written in the Cyrillic alphabet. They are outstanding among Slavic languages in having eliminated nearly all noun inflections, often using prepositional phrases instead. They have also taken on several regional non-Slavic traits, notably the use of a definite article and its placement after the noun (see Yugoslav Languages) and the use of a clause where other Slavic languages use an infinitive. Old Bulgarian (9th-11th century) is believed to be essentially the same as the earliest form of Old Church Slavonic (10th-11th century), the medieval Macedonian dialect that became the liturgical language of the Eastern Orthodox Church and for which the Cyrillic alphabet was devised. Middle Bulgarian dates from the 12th century and Modern Bulgarian from after the 16th century. The local form of Church Slavonic remained the Bulgarian literary language until a literary language based on modern speech was adopted in the 19th century. Bulgarian has absorbed loanwords mainly from Russian, Church Slavonic, Greek, and Turkish. It has two principal dialect groups, eastern (the basis of the literary language) and western.

Bogomils, members of a religious sect that arose in the 10th century in the Balkans. The chief centre was in Bulgaria and the cult spread among other Slavic peoples. The movement resulted from a blending of Eastern dualism and an evangelical attempt to reform the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The Bogomils, whose fundamental doctrines are attributed to a priest called Bogomil, held that the first-born son of God was Satanael. Satanael rebelled and created, in opposition to the original spiritual universe, a world of matter and human beings. The Supreme Father gave these human beings a life spirit. This life spirit, however, was kept in slavery by Satanael until a second son of God, the Logos, or Christ, came down from heaven and, assuming a phantom body, broke the power of the evil spirit, who was henceforth called only Satan, the divine name, El, being dropped. The Bogomils practised a severe asceticism, despised images, and rejected the sacraments. They accepted the whole of the New Testament, but of the Old Testament only the Psalms and Prophets, which they interpreted allegorically. The morals and ideals of the Bogomils seem to have been much above the average of their time.

In 1118 the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus executed the leader of the sect for heresy. At the time of the Muslim conquest of Bosnia in the 15th century, the majority of the Christians who embraced Islam, the religion of the conquerors, were Bogomils. Before the Bogomils were suppressed they influenced the development of the Albigensian and Cathari groups of France and Italy in the 12th and 13th centuries.