Asparuh's Bulgaria

Initially, it occupied the lands of present-day northeastern and northern Bulgaria, Dobrudzha and lands northeast of the lower Danube. The creation and recognition of the new state was widespread in the 7th century. Even in the 9th century, Patriarch Nicophore and Theophanes the Confessor, who were the main sources for the events of 680-681, wrote with great sadness and pain about the shameful defeat of Byzantium by the Bulgarians.
This is no accident - Khan Asparuh forced Emperor Constantine IV not only to recognize Bulgaria, but also to pay it an annual tax; keeping this tax dependency on the empire until 966.

The only case in Europe

How did Europe's only case in the land of a living empire come to pass - in the case of the Eastern Roman Empire or, as everyone knows, Byzantium, to create an independent state that could withstand the vicissitudes of time and persist to this day?

In the 5th and 6th centuries the Bulgarians were already well known to the Byzantine chroniclers. At first, they were subject to the Huns, with whom they first, and then independently, invaded the lands of Byzantium. At that time, the Bulgarian tribes inhabited part of the steppes of the Northern and Eastern Black Sea coast, the lands north of the Caucasus and the steppes near the Sea of Azov.
In the mid-6th century, the Avars appeared in the lower reaches of the Don River, whose tribal union in the lands of present-day Mongolia was broken by the Turks. On the move east, they settled in Pannonia, taking with them some of the Bulgarian tribes. However, the Turks came from the east. The Bulgarians and the Khazars resisted, but ultimately accepted their supreme power while maintaining their internal autonomy. - this probably happened around 570. Thus the Bulgarian tribes ended up on the periphery of a huge state union, extending from China to Europe. Probably then the 12-year calendar, the Turkic military-administrative system and title, as well as the alignment of the troops with the center, left and right wing, were adopted.

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