
Episode 9 - The Balkan Provinces
The History of Byzantium
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Huns or Bulgars?
Roman and Byzantine authors were not good at accurately defining the barbarian peoples they wrote about. We know that after Attila's empire broke up there were still many Huns living in the area north of the Danube. As we know so little about the ethnic makeup and origins of both peoples, it's easy to see why contemporary historians would equate the two. So despite what it says on your map, I'm saying that the people who lived around the Black Sea coast were bulgars, with Huns living amongst them and slowly becoming absorbed into them. The majority of authors though seem to prefer bulgars as the term to describe the political units which dominated this region.
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