Tervel is a town in northeastern Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

, part of Dobrich Province

Dobrich Province

Dobrich Province is a province in northeastern Bulgaria, part of Southern Dobruja geographical region. It is divided into 8 municipalities with a total population, as of December 2009, of 199,705 inhabitants.-Municipalities:...

. It is the administrative centre of Tervel Municipality

Tervel Municipality

Tervel Municipality is a municipality in Dobrich Province, Northeastern Bulgaria, located in Southern Dobruja geographical region, about 30 km south of Danube river...

, which lies in the westernmost part of the province. As of December 2009, the town has a population of 6,667 inhabitants.

History

The old Ottoman Turkish

Ottoman Turkish language

The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...

 name of the town was Kurtbunar ("well of the wolves"): the village was first mentioned in Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 tax registers of 1673, although the area has been inhabited continuously since antiquity by the Getae

Getae

The Getae was the name given by the Greeks to several Thracian tribes that occupied the regions south of the Lower Danube, in what is today northern Bulgaria, and north of the Lower Danube, in Romania...

 tribe of Thracians

Thracians

The ancient Thracians were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting areas including Thrace in Southeastern Europe. They spoke the Thracian language – a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family...

, then the Slavs and the Bulgars

Bulgars

The Bulgars were a semi-nomadic who flourished in the Pontic Steppe and the Volga basin in the 7th century.The Bulgars emerge after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire in the 5th century....

, and constituted a part of the Bulgarian Empire

Bulgarian Empire

Bulgarian Empire is a term used to describe two periods in the medieval history of Bulgaria, during which it acted as a key regional power in Europe in general and in Southeastern Europe in particular, rivalling Byzantium...

 during most of the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

. In 1878, Kurtbunar became part of the newly-liberated Principality of Bulgaria

Principality of Bulgaria

The Principality of Bulgaria was a self-governing entity created as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. The preliminary treaty of San Stefano between the Russian Empire and the Porte , on March 3, had originally proposed a significantly larger Bulgarian territory: its...

 and it was promoted to a district centre of Silistra

Silistra

Silistra is a port city of northeastern Bulgaria, lying on the southern bank of the lower Danube at the country's border with Romania. Silistra is the administrative centre of Silistra Province and one of the important cities of the historical region of Southern Dobrudzha...

 County on 26 July 1882. The village was part of Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

 along with all of Southern Dobruja

Southern Dobruja

Southern Dobruja is an area of north-eastern Bulgaria comprising the administrative districts named for its two principal cities of Dobrich and Silistra...

 between 1913 and 1940, and the name was rendered as Curtbunar. It was also a district centre of Durostor County

Durostor County

Durostor was a county of Romania, in Southern Dobruja, with the seat at Silistra .The county consisted of 4 districts : Accadânlar, Curtbunar, Silistra and Turtucaia...

 under Romanian rule. The modern Bulgarian name honours Tervel of Bulgaria

Tervel of Bulgaria

Khan Tervel also called Tarvel, or Terval, or Terbelis in some Byzantine sources, was the Emperor of the Bulgarians at the beginning of the 8th century. In 705 he received the title Caesar which was a precedent in history. He was probably a Christian like his grandfather Khan Kubrat...

, a successful 8th-century Bulgarian monarch. The former village was proclaimed a town in January 1960.

Tervel has a museum opened in 1986. It features an ethnographic

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

 collection, an art gallery and an archaeological exposition, including a 3,500-year-old human skeleton

Human skeleton

The human skeleton consists of both fused and individual bones supported and supplemented by ligaments, tendons, muscles and cartilage. It serves as a scaffold which supports organs, anchors muscles, and protects organs such as the brain, lungs and heart....

.

External links