Arbanasi

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Arbanasi (Bulgarian: Арбанаси, also transliterated as Arbanassi) is a village in Veliko Tarnovo Province of Northern Bulgaria, set on a high plateau between the larger towns of Veliko Tarnovo (4 km away) and Gorna Oryahovitsa. It is known for the rich history and large number of historical monuments, such as medieval churches and examples Bulgarian National Revival architecture, which have turned it into a popular tourist destination.

The village's name comes from the Greek word Αλβανικος or Αλβανος, which, like Turkish arnavut, was used to denote Albanians and other people that came from parts of Macedonia and Albania that had a large Albanian population, regardless of nationality.

1 History
2 Sources
3 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Early history

The earliest written document that marks the beginning of Arbanasi's history is a royal decree by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent from 1538, according to which the sultan offered the lands of the modern settlements of Arbanasi, Lyaskovets, Gorna Oryahovitsa and Dolna Oryahovitsa to his son-in-law Grand Vizier Rustem Pasha as a gift. The four villages are united under the name arnabud karielari in the document.

Other sources that mention Arbanasi are the notes of Pavel Đorđić from 10 January 1595 addressed to the Transylvanian Prince Sigismund Báthory. The village is also mentioned by the Roman Catholic bishop of Sofia Petar Bogdan Bakshev, who visited Tarnovo in 1640. He remarked there was a town up in the mountains, from where the whole of Tarnovo could be seen, that had about 1,000 houses.

The lack of other documentary material leaves different opinions and speculations about the settlement's origin, name and population. It is accepted by some scholars that the village was populated by Bulgarian boyars that came from the westernmost parts of the Second Bulgarian Empire after Ivan Asen II's important victory over the Byzantines near Klokotnitsa on 9 March 1230, when the tsar conquered Arbanashkata zemya, "the land of the Albanians". This assumption is supported by 19th-century notes from Georgi Rakovski and other scholars.

[edit] Heyday

There is considerably richer documentary material, such as correspondence and chronicler's notes on religious books, preserved from the 17th and 18th century, that evidences that Arbanasi reached its economic blossoming between the second half of the 17th and the end of the 18th century. The settlement had over 1,000 houses at the time, its population consisting mostly of eminent merchant families. Handicrafts were well-developed, with copper- and goldsmithing, vine-growing and silk production playing an important part. The homes of the rich merchants, as well as the five churches built in the years of progress, bear record of the economic upsurge and prosperity.

[edit] Decline

As a result of well-organized brigand raids in 1792, 1798 ad 1810, the settlement was pillaged and burnt down. The plague and cholera epidemics further damaged the town's well-being. The richest merchants fled to Wallachia and Russia. A new settlement of Bulgarians began after 1810, when people came down from the Elena and Teteven parts of the Balkan Mountains, but Arbanasi could never again reach its former heyday. An Ottoman royal decree of 1839 deprived the town of its former privileges and the development of handicraftsmanship after the Crimean War almost ceased.

Arbanasi was a stronghold of Greek cultural affiliation for centuries. Greek language was official in the town, there was a Greek school and divine services were in Greek. This, however, did not reflect the local population's national self-consciousness, as Arbanasi residents took part in the organized armed struggle of Bulgarians that ultimately led to the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule as a consequence of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78.