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Utigur or Bulgar Vund (vh'ndur, Vanand) is the name used by historians and geographers like Moses Horenaci, Procopius Caesariensis and his continuators, Agathias of Mirena, Menander Protector, and Theophylact Simocatta in the 6th century to refer to those Bulgars of the Eurasian steppes along the coasts of the Black Sea in Patria Onoguria who had came under the control of the Western Turkic Kaghanate to be also known as Unogundur. Menander Protector mentioned an Utigur leader in the latter 6th century called Sandilch. In the early 7th century, Khan Kubrat of the Dulo clan was "ruler of the Unogundurs".

The Bulgar ancestors of the Utigurs represented the Pontic-Kuban part of the Hun Empire, and were ruled by descendants of Attila through his son, Ernakh.

Etymological Origin theories

Yury Zuev and some modern Bulgarian scholars identify the Bulgar Utigurs as one of the tribes of the Yuezhi. According to Yury Zuev and Edwin G. Pulleyblank the Utigurs of Menandr are Uti, and the word Uti was a real proto-type of a transcription Yuezhi < Uechji < ngiwat-tie < uti.

History

By 567CE some Northern Bulgar groups came under the control of the Varchonites who were migrating to Pannonia to be known as Avars. The southern Bulgar groups along the northern coasts of the Black sea had become known as Utigurs when the Western Turkic Kaghanate (who were violently opposed to the Pannonian Avars) conquered them and installed Sandilch as their leader. He ruled under the dominion of the Western Turkic Kaghanate as Sulifa (from Pyn. Xielifa 苏李发) to designate the Turkic title Elteber (Baltavar). Under Sandilch, the Utigurs allied with the Byzantine Empire against their Avar-controlled Kutrigur Bulgar relatives.

Although anachronistically regarded as a son of Kubrat, Altsek and his Bulgars were forced west into Ravenna (Italy) when Kubrat's Utigurs defeated the Avars in alliance with Byzantium and reunited the Utigurs and Kutrigurs into a single Crimean Bulgar confederation in Patria Onoguria renamed as "Old Great Bulgaria".

After Kubrat's death in 665AD, his empire was divided when his appointed heir Batbayan submitted to the Khazars of Kubrat's second son Kotrag who settled Batbayan's army at the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers where they founded a Khanate known as Volga Bulgaria .

Other sons of Kubrat carried the Utigur name to the Danube and Pannonia Secunda by April 677. Some submitted to a restored Avar Kaghan, while others rebelled moving south to the Pelagonian plain under the leadership of Tervel's Uncle, Kuber in alliance with Khan Asparukh's Utigurs who successfully occupied the southern banks of the Danube following the Battle of Ongal. Kuber's Utigurs displaced some of the populations that had already settled in the region of Macedonia, and intermingled with the populations that remained. Following the Battle of Ongal, Asparukh settled a portion of the Utigur Bulgars in Moesia, to establish the state which would become modern Bulgaria. In the 8th century, the Kuber Bulgars merged with Asparuh's Bulgars who had by the late 7th century already taken both sides of the Danube River.

See also

• History of Ukraine
• History of Bulgaria
• Kutrigurs
• Huns
• Old Great Bulgaria
• Sabirs
• Volga Bulgaria
• Bulgars

References

1. Browning, Robert (2003). Justinian and Theodora. Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 1-59333-053-7.
2. Menandri Fragmenta. Excerpta de legationibus. - Ed. C. de Boor. Berolini, 1903, p. 170
3. Nisephorus Patriarcha. Breviarium. Ed. C. de Boor, p. 24
4. Yu. A. Zuev, EARLY TURKS: ESSAYS on HISTORY and IDEOLOGY, p.38 and p.62
5. http://www.protobulgarians.com/Kniga%20AtStamatov/Prarodina.htm
6. http://www.protobulgarians.com/PODSTRANITSA%20NA%20DR%20ZHIVKO%20VOYNIKOV/ZHIVKO%20VOYNIKOV%20-%20PROIZHOD%20NA%20BAALGARITE%20-%20KNIGA%20-%202009.pdf
7. Pulleyblank, 1966, p. 18
8. Bulgarian historical review, Volumes 19–20, Publishing House of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1991, p. 44.
9. Heritage of Scribes: The Relation of Rovas Scripts to Eurasian Writing Systems, Gábor Hosszú, Rovas Foundation, 2012, ISBN 9638843748, p. 287.
10. national Historical and Archeological Reserve Madara, Sofia 2009, Pecham valdex, p.26

External links

• Bulgars
• Late Antiquity