Telerig

Khan Telerig ( Bulgarian Телериг ) was the ruler of Bulgaria from 768 to 777. He is the successor of Pagan , who was murdered 768th

In May 774, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine began a large-scale attack on the Bulgarian Empire. A fleet of about two thousand ships was to sail towards the Danube Delta and land a large force that was to conquer the northern regions of the Bulgarian Empire. The emperor himself commanded an army that attacked the south of the Bulgarian empire. But although the fleet was able to successfully land the troops near Varna and the emperor was able to conquer some southern areas of the Bulgarian Empire, he withdrew for inexplicable reasons and thus failed to break up the Bulgarian Empire again.

Telerig, in turn, began a campaign against the supposedly weakened Byzantium with an army of around 12,000 men. This failed, however, as his war preparations were betrayed by spies in his vicinity. The forewarned Byzantine emperor defeated the Bulgarian army with 80,000 men in the battle of Berzitia . But even after this victory and the subsequent pursuit of the Bulgarians, the Byzantines did not succeed in weakening them decisively, as the emperor's fleet - due to unfavorable winds - could not reach its landing points either.

After the defeat at Berzitia, Telerig suspected that there were spies in his immediate vicinity. In order to expose this, he let the Byzantine emperor know that he would abdicate and go into exile in Constantinople. Constantine believed Telerig's request and also complied with his request to name the spies, allegedly in order to bring them to safety after Telerig's abdication. However, Telerig did not think of abdicating and going into exile, as some Bulgarian rulers had done before him. After receiving the list of spies, he immediately had it executed.

But despite the elimination of the spies, Telerig did not feel safe, probably due to the defeat at Berzitia. After the death of Constantine V in 775 AD, he asked the new emperor Leo IV again for asylum. Leo granted him this request and Telerig fled to Constantinople, where he also accepted the Christian faith . As a patrician under the name Theophylactus , he married a cousin of the Empress Irene .

Others

The Telerig Nunatak on Greenwich Island in the archipelago of the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica has been named after Telerig since 2005.

literature

• Mosko Moskov: Imennik na bălgarskite hanove (novo tălkuvane) , Sofia 1988.
• Jordan Andreev, Ivan Lazarov, Plamen Pavlov: Koj koj ev srednovekovna Bălgarija , Sofia 1999.
• Bahši Iman: Džagfar Tarihy , vol. III, Orenburg 1997.

predecessor	Office	successor
Pagan	Khan of Bulgaria 768-777	Cardam