Bulgaria

Abstract

The origin of the Gypsies in Bulgaria is tied directly to their early migration from India via Persia into Europe. Though the Bulgarian Gypsy newspaper Romano-Esi (Gypsy Voice), claimed in 1948 that “our minority has lived in Bulgaria since the seventh century,” led by the “leader of the Gypsies throughout the world, Berko,” most specialists trace Gypsy roots in Bulgaria to a much later date.1 Some Bulgarian Gypsies have even tried to promote the idea that they are descended from ancient Lydians or Ligurians.2 The reality, however, is somewhat different and theoretical. In all probability, the Gypsies began to migrate from India in the early Middle Ages and reached Persia sometime in the ninth century. By the eleventh century, they had moved into the Byzantine Empire from Armenia and had been referred to in a Georgian account, Life of Saint George the Athonite. According to this medieval text, Emperor Constantine Monomachus asked the Adsincani to get rid of the wild animals that were preying on the animals in his royal hunting preserve.3 The name, Adsincani, used by the Byzantine chronicler to refer to the Gypsies, “is the Georgian form of the Greek Atsínganoi or Atzínganoi” and is the root word from which the various names for Gypsies are derived.4 The Atsinganoi are mentioned again in Byzantine records in the early thirteenth century as ne’er-do-well fortunetellers, “‘ventriloquists and wizards’ … who are inspired satanically and pretend to predict the unknown….”5KeywordsCommunist PartyRoma PopulationEastern EUROPEGypsy GroupGypsy PopulationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.