Asen dynasty

The Asen dynasty ( _bg. Асеневци, "Asenevtsi") were a dynasty of rulers of a medieval state, called in modern histography the Second Bulgarian Empire, between 1187 and 1280.

The Asen dynasty and the Second Bulgarian Empire rose as the leaders of a rebellion of the Vlachs and Bulgarians against the Byzantine Empire at the turn of the year 1185/1186, rebellion caused by the increase in the Imperial taxes.

Early rulers from the Asen dynasty (particularly Kaloyan) referred to themselves as "Emperors of Bulgarians and Vlachs". Later rulers, especially the successful Ivan Asen II, styled themselves "Tsars (Emperors) of Bulgarians and Greeks".

Some members of the Asen family entered Byzantine service in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries, and the late descendants of these Byzantine Asenids may well have been the Romanian "boyars" of the clan "Asan". The name also occurs as a family name in modern Greek, and could go back to the same name.

Rulers from the Asen dynasty

Origins

The origins of the dynasty, especially the ethnic background of the three Asen brothers (Teodor I Peter IV, Ivan Asen I and Kaloyan) are still a source of much controversy, debated between Romanian and Bulgarian historians [For more detailed information see Kaloyan of Bulgaria (Disputed origins).] . There are three main hypothesis regarding their origins:

# Vlach origin (Romanian or Aromanian), a view supported by many Romanian historians, who say that there's no reason to question the ethnicity, mentioned in some chronicles.
# Bulgarian origin, a view that is common among the Bulgarian historians who reckon that all native sources use predominantly the terms Bulgaria, Bulgarians and Bulgarian, that tsar Kaloyan claimed provenance from the rulers of the First Bulgarian Empire and that it's just a matter of terminology and for certain period by "Vlach" the medieval sources meant "Bulgarian".
# Cuman origin, as some of the names in the dynasty, including Asen and Belgun (nickname of Ivan Asen I) are derived from Cuman language.

In their own administrative documents and correspondence, the three rulers viewed themselves as descendants and successors of the Bulgarian Tsars Samuil, Peter I and Simeon I, and the state they founded as a continuation of the First Bulgarian Empire. However, this could be just a way to proclaim their legitimacy for the throne of the Empire.

A detail in the chronicles of Nicetas Choniates tell us that Asen spoke Vlach language: a Greek priest was kidnapped by Vlachs of the Haimos Mountains and implored Asen to let him go speaking in the language of the Vlachs.

In a corespondence, of 1199, the Pope talks about the "Roman descent" of Kaloyan, thing which is also reminded in Kaloyan's response. The meaning of this also has been debated: it is unclear whether the Pope referred to the Romanic origins of the Vlachs or to the Eastern Roman Empire.

It has also been speculated a Hungarian origin (and therefore "Roman Catholic"), but there's no evidence to support that claim.

Name

The name of the dynasty comes from one of the brothers, namely Asen I.The etymology is most likely of Cuman Turkic origin, derived from "esen" which meant "safe, sound, healthy" and the Belgun nickname seems to be derived from Turkic "bilgün", which meant "wise". This could be explained by the fact that in other places, early Romanians used names of Cuman origin, for example a diploma of 1383 in Sibiu had a list of names of Romanians, which included among names of Romanian and Slavic origin, a few names of Cuman origin. Also, the most important dynasty of Wallachia had a Cuman name (Basarab dynasty)

Alternately, the name could also be of Pecheneg origin, since that language was rather similar to Cuman, however this hypothesis is less likely.

Footnotes

ee also

* History of Bulgaria
* List of Bulgarian monarchs
* History of Vlachs

References

*
* Bănescu, Nicolae, "O problemă de istorie medievală: crearea şi caracterul celui de al Doilea Imperiu Bulgar (1185)", Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile Secţiunii Istorice, 3rd series, 25 (1943): 543-590
* Vasary, Istvan (2005) "Cumans and Tatars", Cambridge University Press: pp. 34-42
* Stephenson, Paul (2000) "Byzantium's Balkan Frontier — A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204" pp. 289-300