Tervel of Bulgaria
Encyclopedia
Khan Tervel also called Tarvel, or Terval, or Terbelis in some Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 sources, was the Emperor of the Bulgarians
Bulgarians
The Bulgarians are a South Slavic nation and ethnic group native to Bulgaria and neighbouring regions. Emigration has resulted in immigrant communities in a number of other countries.-History and ethnogenesis:...

 at the beginning of the 8th century. In 705 he received the title Caesar
Caesar (title)
Caesar is a title of imperial character. It derives from the cognomen of Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator...

 which was a precedent in history. He was probably a Christian like his grandfather Khan
Khan (title)
Khan is an originally Altaic and subsequently Central Asian title for a sovereign or military ruler, widely used by medieval nomadic Turko-Mongol tribes living to the north of China. 'Khan' is also seen as a title in the Xianbei confederation for their chief between 283 and 289...

 Kubrat
Kubrat
Kubrat or Kurt was a Bulgar ruler credited with establishing the confederation of Old Great Bulgaria in 632. He is said to have achieved this by conquering the Avars and uniting all the Bulgar tribes under one rule....

. After the Bulgarian army
Medieval Bulgarian Army
The medieval Bulgarian army was the primary military body of the First and the Second Bulgarian Empires. During the first decades after the foundation of the country, the army consisted of a Bulgar cavalry and a Slavic infantry. The core of the Bulgarian army was the heavy cavalry, which consisted...

 crushed the Arabs during the siege of Constantinople (718)
Siege of Constantinople (718)
The Second Arab Siege of Constantinople was a combined land and sea effort by the Arabs to take the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople. The Arab ground forces, led by Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik, were held off by the massive city walls, decimated by an outbreak of plague and...

 Tervel was called by contemporaries the Saviour of Europe.

The Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans
Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans
The Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans is a short manuscript containing the names of some early Bulgar rulers, their clans, the year of their ascending to the throne according to the cyclic Bulgar calendar and the length of their rule, including the times of joint rule and civil war...

 states that Tervel belonged to the Dulo clan
Dulo clan
The Dulo Clan or the House of Dulo was the name of the ruling dynasty of the early Bulgars.This was the clan of Kubrat who founded Old Great Bulgaria, and his sons Batbayan, Kuber and Asparuh, the latter of which founded Danube Bulgaria....

 and reigned for 21 years. According to the chronology developed by Moskov, Tervel would have reigned 695–715. Other chronologies place his reign in 701–718 or 700–721, but cannot be reconciled with the testimony of the Imennik. The testimony of the source and some later traditions allow identifying Tervel as the son and heir of his predecessor Asparukh
Asparukh of Bulgaria
Asparuh was ruler of a Bulgar tribe in the second half of the 7th century and is credited with the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire in 680/681...

, who had perhaps died in battle against the Khazars
Khazars
The Khazars were semi-nomadic Turkic people who established one of the largest polities of medieval Eurasia, with the capital of Atil and territory comprising much of modern-day European Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the northern Caucasus , parts of...

.

Alliance with Justinian II

Tervel is first mentioned in the Byzantine sources in 704, when he was approached by the deposed and exiled Byzantine emperor Justinian II
Justinian II
Justinian II , surnamed the Rhinotmetos or Rhinotmetus , was the last Byzantine Emperor of the Heraclian Dynasty, reigning from 685 to 695 and again from 705 to 711...

. Justinian acquired Tervel's support for an attempted restoration to the Byzantine throne in exchange for friendship, gifts, and his daughter in marriage. With an army of 15,000 horsemen provided by Tervel, Justinian suddenly advanced on Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

 and managed to gain entrance into the city in 705. The restored emperor executed his supplanters, the emperors Leontius and Tiberius III, alongside many of their supporters. Justinian awarded Tervel with many gifts, the title of kaisar (Caesar
Caesar (title)
Caesar is a title of imperial character. It derives from the cognomen of Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator...

), which made him second only to the emperor and the first foreign ruler in Byzantine history to receive such a title, and a territorial concession in northeastern Thrace
Thrace
Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

, a region called Zagora
Zagore
Zagore ; also Zagorie, Zagora, Zagoria) was a vaguely defined medieval region in Bulgaria. Its name is of Slavic origin and means "beyond [i.e. south of] the [Balkan] mountains"...

. Whether Justinian's daughter Anastasia was married to Tervel as had been arranged is unknown.

Only three years later, however, when Justinian II consolidated his throne he violated this arrangement and commenced military operations to recover the ceded area but Khan Tervel routed the Byzantines at the Battle of Anchialus
Battle of Anchialus (708)
The Battle of Anchialus occurred in 708 near the town of Pomorie, Bulgaria .- Origines of the conflict :In 705, the Bulgarian Khan Tervel helped the ex-emperor of Byzantium, Justinian II to regain his throne after 10 years in exile...

 (near present-day Pomorie
Pomorie
Pomorie is a town and seaside resort in southeastern Bulgaria, located on a narrow rocky peninsula in Burgas Bay on the southern Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. It is situated in Burgas Province, 20 km away from the city of Burgas and 18 km from the Sunny Beach resort. The ultrasaline lagoon...

) in 708. In 711, faced by a serious revolt in Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

, Justinian again sought the aid of Tervel, but obtained only lukewarm support manifested in an army of 3,000. Outmaneuvered by the rebel emperor Philippicus, Justinian was captured and executed, while his Bulgarian allies were allowed to retire to their country. Tervel took advantage of the disorders in Byzantium and raided Thrace in 712, plundering as far as the vicinity of Constantinople.

Given the chronological information of the Imennik, Tervel would have died in 715. However, the Byzantine Chronicler Theophanes the Confessor
Theophanes the Confessor
Saint Theophanes Confessor was a member of the Byzantine aristocracy, who became a monk and chronicler. He is venerated on March 12 in the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church .-Biography:Theophanes was born in Constantinople of wealthy and noble iconodule parents: Isaac,...

 ascribes Tervel a role in an attempt to restore the deposed Emperor Anastasius II
Anastasios II (emperor)
Artemius Anastasius , known in English as Anastasios II or Anastasius II, , was Byzantine emperor from 713 to 715....

 in 718 or 719. If Tervel had survived this long, he would have been the Bulgarian ruler who concluded a new treaty
Treaty of 716
The Treaty of 716 was an agreement between Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire. It was signed by the son of the ruling Bulgarian Khan Tervel, Kormesiy and the Byzantine Emperor Theodosios III.- Background :...

 (confirming the annual tribute paid by the Byzantines to Bulgaria, the territorial concessions in Thrace, regulating commercial relations and the treating of political refugees) with Emperor Theodosius III in 716. However, elsewhere Theophanes records the name of the Bulgarian ruler who concluded the treaty of 716 as Kormesios, i.e., Tervel's eventual successor Kormesiy
Kormesiy of Bulgaria
Kormesiy was a ruler of Danubian Bulgaria in the first half of the 8th century. Western chronicles name Kormesiy "the third ruler over the Bulgarians", and he is sometimes considered the direct successor of Tervel....

. It is probable that the chronicler ascribed the events of 718 or 719 to Tervel simply because this was the last name of a Bulgar ruler that he was familiar with, and that his sources had been silent about the name, as in his account of the siege of Constantinople. According to another theory Kermesios was authorized by Tervel to sign the treaty.

Most researches agree that it was during the time of Tervel when the famous rock relief the Madara Rider
Madara Rider
The Madara Rider or Madara Horseman is an early medieval large rock relief carved on the Madara Plateau east of Shumen in northeastern Bulgaria, near the village of Madara....

 was created as a memorial to the victories over the Byzantines, to honour his father Asparukh and as an expression of the glory of the Bulgarian state.

The war with the Arabs in 717–718 and later life

On 25 May 717 Leo III the Isaurian
Leo III the Isaurian
Leo III the Isaurian or the Syrian , was Byzantine emperor from 717 until his death in 741...

 was crowned Emperor of Byzantium. During the summer of the same year the Arabs led by Maslama crossed the Dardanelles
Dardanelles
The Dardanelles , formerly known as the Hellespont, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with its counterpart the Bosphorus. It is located at approximately...

 and besieged Constantinople with 200,000 men. According to Arab sources his fleet consisted of 2,500 ships.

Leo III made a plea to Tervel for help, relying on the treaty of 716 and Tervel agreed. The first clash between the Bulgarians and the Arabs ended with a Bulgarian victory. During the very first stages of the siege the Bulgarians appeared in the Muslim rear and large part of their army was destroyed and the rest were trapped. The Arabs built two trenches around their camp facing the Bulgarian army and the walls of the city
Walls of Constantinople
The Walls of Constantinople are a series of defensive stone walls that have surrounded and protected the city of Constantinople since its founding as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire by Constantine the Great...

. They persisted with the siege despite the severe winter with 100 days of snowfall. In the summer of 718 the Arabs engaged the Bulgarians in a decisive battle but suffered a crushing defeat and had to abandon the siege. According to Theophanes, the Bulgarians slaughtered some 22,000 Arabs in the battle, while Zigebert accounts for 30,000. The Byzantine-Bulgarian victory of 718 and the victory of the Frankish king Charles Martel
Charles Martel
Charles Martel , also known as Charles the Hammer, was a Frankish military and political leader, who served as Mayor of the Palace under the Merovingian kings and ruled de facto during an interregnum at the end of his life, using the title Duke and Prince of the Franks. In 739 he was offered the...

 in the battle of Tours
Battle of Tours
The Battle of Tours , also called the Battle of Poitiers and in Battle of the Court of the Martyrs, was fought in an area between the cities of Poitiers and Tours, located in north-central France, near the village of Moussais-la-Bataille, about northeast of Poitiers...

 stopped the Muslim invasion in the interior of Europe. Khan Tervel was called the Saviour of Europe by his contemporaries.

In 719 he again interfered in the internal affairs of the Byzantine Empire when the deposed emperor Anastasios II
Anastasios II (emperor)
Artemius Anastasius , known in English as Anastasios II or Anastasius II, , was Byzantine emperor from 713 to 715....

 asked for his assistance to regain the throne. Tervel provided him with 360,000 gold coins and sent troops. Anastasios marched to Constantinople, but its population refused to cooperate. In the meantime Leo III sent a letter to Tervel in which he conjured him to respect the treaty and to prefer peace to war. Because Anastasios was abandoned by his supporters, the Bulgarian ruler agreed to the pleas of Leo III and broke relations with the usurper. He also sent to Leo III many of the conspirators who had sought refuge in Pliska
Pliska
Pliska is the name of both the first capital of Danubian Bulgaria and a small town which was renamed after the historical Pliska after its site was determined and excavations began....

.

Family

Tervel may have been married to Anastasia, daughter of Emperor Justinian II
Justinian II
Justinian II , surnamed the Rhinotmetos or Rhinotmetus , was the last Byzantine Emperor of the Heraclian Dynasty, reigning from 685 to 695 and again from 705 to 711...

 and his first wife Eudoxia.

The 17th century Volga Bulgar compilation Ja'far Tarikh (a work of disputed authenticity) represents Tarvil (i.e., Tervel) as the son and successor of Atil'kese (i.e., Asparukh), and as the predecessor of Ajjar
Ajjar of Bulgaria
Ajjar or Ayyar , is the name assigned by the 17th century Volga Bulgar source Ja'far Tarikh , to the successor of Tervel on the throne of Bulgaria....

 (otherwise unknown, but possibly the first of two lost names of the Imennik). The Ja'far Tarikh also names Tarvil as the father of the later ruler Kermes (i.e., Kormesiy).

Honour

Tervel Peak
Tervel Peak
Tervel Peak is a triple peak rising to 810 m in Friesland Ridge, Tangra Mountains on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica overlooking Peshtera Glacier and Zagore Beach to the northwest, and Charity Glacier to the southwest...

 on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands
South Shetland Islands
The South Shetland Islands are a group of Antarctic islands, lying about north of the Antarctic Peninsula, with a total area of . By the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, the Islands' sovereignty is neither recognized nor disputed by the signatories and they are free for use by any signatory for...

, Antarctica is named after Tervel of Bulgaria.

External links

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