Bulgaria

From Slavic.info

Although the Bulgars were originally a Turkic people, the inhabitants of Bulgaria have been for centuries considered members of the Slavic race. They first appear on the historical scene toward the beginning of the sixth century in ferocious pillaging expeditions into the territory south of the Danube which was then inhabited by Slavic tribes. In the empire that they established, the numerically inferior Bulgars intermarried with their Slavic subjects, which resulted in the conquerors being absorbed by the conquered. The former abandoned their native Turkic language, adopted Christianity in 864 and with it, of course, the use of writing in the Cyrillic alphabet.

In the first part of the tenth century Simeon, the greatest ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire, after frequent battles with Byzantine emperors, extended the borders of his state to the Adriatic Sea. After his death in 927, the empire decayed, and following a disastrous defeat at the hands of Basil the Bulgar-killer, Bulgaria was annexed to Byzantium in 1018, fated to remain a Greek province for almost two hundred years. In 1396 the Bulgarians, after frequent battles with Byzantine emperors, were incorporated into the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire under whose rule they were to remain for the next five centuries, during which time the Bulgar nation as such ceased to exist for all intents and purposes. After being liberated by Russia in 1877, Bulgaria made gradual progress towards independence. This goal was achieved in 1908 when the Bulgarian ruler took the title of King and proclaimed the existence of a free state. Most of the territorial gains made during this period have been lost since 1913 due to Bulgaria's unfortunate foreign politics.