Kuwer

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Kuwer or Kuber ( Bulgarian Кубер; * before 635; † after 680) was a proto-Bulgarian Khan , son of Khan Kubrat and brother of Khan Asparuch . He belonged to the proto-Bulgarian ruling dynasty Dulo .

After the death of Khan Kubrat and in view of the hopeless wars against the Khazars , his five sons divided the empire and the people of the Bulgarians . Each son moved in a different direction and founded another empire ( Khaganat ), except for Khan Batbajan , who became Kubrat's successor to the throne. All of these empires bore the name of Bulgaria - Danube Bulgaria , Volga Bulgaria , Greater Bulgaria .

Khan Kuwer was the fourth son of Kubrat. He and his younger brother Alzek moved west with some tribal associations . He settled in Pannonia . According to the Byzantine source "Miracle of Demetrios of Thessaloniki " Khan Kuwer became ruler of the Syrmia region in 635 , but he had to accept the supremacy of the Avar khaganate and become its vassal.

Between 678 and 680 the proto-Bulgarians under Khan Kuwer rebelled unsuccessfully against the Avars, together with the Sermesianoi , descendants of the Roman provincial population of the Balkans. After the unsuccessful revolt against the Avar tribal leadership, Khan Kuwer and Khan Alzek parted ways. Alzek moved further west until he reached the Langobard lands. The Lombard King Grimoald granted him admission and assigned him the Duchy of Benevento . There he was settled by the Lombard Duke Romuald I and his entourage.

Khan Kuwer moved south, together with parts of the Sermesianoi and the 626 Roman prisoners who had been deported to Pannonia by the Avars. After an unsuccessful siege of Thessaloniki (682-684), he signed a treaty with the Byzantine emperor Constantine IV. Pogonatos and settled in the unpopulated area of Bitola (today's western Macedonia and eastern Albania ), which belonged to the Byzantine theme Thesalonica . There erected Kuver 680 a Khaganate , which also bore the name of Bulgaria. However, the designation of this empire as the West Bulgarian Empire is controversial.

No further information about Khan Kuver has come down to us, only it is assumed that an inscription found by Veselin Beševliev near the Madara rider is about the Kuverbulgaren. In this inscription Terwel describes his relations with the Byzantine emperor and with his relative (uncle), who was settled near Thessaloniki. This is Terwel's uncle , Khan Kuwer, the brother of his father, Khan Asparuch :

“[…] To the Bulgarians […] and came to Terwel . My uncles around Thessaloniki did not believe the emperor with the cut off nose and went back to Kisinas […] one of his […] by means of a treaty Terwel the archon gave the emperor […] 5 thousand […] the emperor won with me well. "

The arrival of the Bulgarians in Macedonia is described as a particularly dramatic event by a later author from the 11th century:

“When this people had withdrawn from the Avars, another, even more rampant and wilder, the so-called Bulgarians, came from the Scythian lands; this crossed the river called Istros and came like a scourge of God over the western areas ... And since they subjugated the Illyrian land, ancient Macedonia even as far as the city of Thessalonica and part of ancient Thrace ... they settled as permanent residents of this land . They relocated the inhabitants of every part of the country: the inhabitants of the lower-lying cities settled them in the higher-lying cities and those from the latter in the lower-lying cities. "

The Kuber Peak on Livingston Island in Antarctica is named after him.

literature

  • Veselin Beševliev : Първобългарски надписи . Издателство на Българската академия на науките, Sofia 1979.
  • Veselin Beševliev: Прабългарски епиграфски паметници . Издателство на Отечествения фронт, Sofia 1981.
  • Dimităr Angelov : The Origin of the Bulgarian People . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1980 ( publications of the Central Institute for Ancient History and Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR , Volume 10)
  • J. Fine: The Early Mediaval Balkans . The University of Michigan Press, 1983, ISBN 0-472-10025-4 .
  • W. Zlatarski: History of the Bulgarians I: From the foundation of the Bulgarian Empire to the Turkish period (679-1396) . Bulgarian Library, 5, Leipzig 1918.
  • Ив. Дуйчев (Ed.): Гръцки извори за българската история . Volume 3, Academia Litterarum Bulgarica, Sofia 1954–65, V 195–207, pp. 159–166. ( Djvu )
  • Warren Treadgold: A History of the Byzantine State and Society . Stanford University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8047-2630-2 .
  • Tadeusz Wasilewski : Dzieje Bułgarii . Ossolineum, Wrocław 1970, pp. 33-35.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Lexicon of the Middle Ages. Volume V, Artemis Verlag, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-8508-8905-0 , Sp. 1558
  2. ↑ a b "Acta Sancti Demetrii" (in Гръцки извори за българската история )
  3. ^ Raymond Detrez: Historical dictionary of Bulgaria. Scarecrow Pr., 1997, ISBN 0-8108-3177-5 , p. 267
  4. ↑ Zlatarski believed that they should have settled around 687 west of the Struma River .
  5. ↑ Бешевлиев, 1979, p. 94
  6. ↑ a b Бешевлиев, 1981, стр. 56-61 ( in digital form ); Vesselin Beschevliev : The Proto-Bulgarian Inscriptions . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1963, pp. 97, 102–111.
  7. ↑ Kisinas or Pelagonia is the ancient name of the region around Bitola
  8. ^ Theophylact: The sufferings of the martyrs of Tiberiopolis , In: ( Dimiter Kossew , Woin Boschinow, Ljubomir Panajotow (ed.): Macedonia - a collection of documents , Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, 1982)
personal data
SURNAME Kuwer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kuber; Кубер (Bulgarian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Khan of the Bulgarians
DATE OF BIRTH before 635
DATE OF DEATH after 680